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Term Papers the Expedited Way!
By Lawrence | March 10, 2008
Last we left off, we were discussing how to go about constructing a very large project and all of the elements you would require for that. However, if you are working on a short deadline and you are also stressing over the assignment, chances are your paper falls somewhere in the 3 to 8 page range. This is a common middle ground for assignments that teachers love to inhabit. Not coincidentally, it is around the three page threshold that your paper will start to demand a little more than a haphazard jotting down of your thoughts. As you are expected to expound upon your topic at some length, you will find it useful to organize your points.
Lacking organization, you might start off well with a very cogent piece of writing that tackles your subject head on. Still, the chances that you will run out of steam, or put down a paragraph in the completely wrong place, go up if you do not organize.
How can a paragraph be in the completely wrong place? Don’t I, as the author, enjoy poetic license?
No, you do not, because you are writing a report, not a poem. Creativity is valued at university, but it must know its place for most assignments. For term papers, creativity is the hand-maiden to Queen Organization. Creativity must wait for the Queen to finish her point before jumping in to add sparkle to the writing, or to steer the paper into an unusual line of pondering, etc. The Queen must be a stern monarch and not let her servant get out of hand.
A paragraph or passage can be in ‘completely the wrong place’ if it obviously writing that is appropriate for one area of the paper like intro, middle or conclusion, and it finds itself in the wrong section. Like a bra on the magazine racks at Wal-Mart, it stands out.
Let’s say you have an 8 page paper on Medicaire, and your thesis is that “…the hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers and the government contribute to the dysfunctional expenditure that is crippling America.” If you had a thesis like that, you may want to apportion out the responsibility to your four primary contributors in succession. That is, you would fully discuss hospitals’ role, then insurance companies, and so on.
If you just start right in on an 8 page paper like this, without planning, it is pretty likely something to do with pharmaceuticals would end up in the insurance section. This is not such a big deal if it happens once, or twice, but a paper filled with a random recounting of facts is going to lead your teacher to conclude that you did it in a hurry.
The trick is to do the paper in a hurry, but make it look like you took your time.
There are lots of ways to organize the medical paper; you could go by date, listing the relevant actions, legislation and scandals chronologically. Or you could come up with a list of core events or issues that have most strongly shaped the outcome of Medicaire, and ‘cross reference’ them with your primary actors. For example, one core event could be the rise in cost of malpractice insurance. You could do an italic header The rise of Malpractice, then explain how hospitals, drug and insurance companies and the government contributed to malpractice.
There are lots of paths to take with your paper. Whichever one you choose, make certain that you define it well, and then stick to your own plan. Bad grades happen when creativity gets out of hand. If Maid Creativity lowers your grade, then she is a haughty poseur whose masque has been stripped away and true identity revealed- Sloppiness! And people who cling to their right to be sloppy in the name of creativity are fast and loose thinkers. They do not realize what is in their own best interests. Don’t be one of them, kids! Do your papers the right way- the GoodTermPaper way!
Topics: Term Papers and Essays |