As students, we all know how daunting it can be when you are faced with a syllabus that names an essay as one of your required projects for the semester. Even for someone who loves writing for HerCampus like myself, writing an academic paper can be incredibly intimidating. My goal for this article, as a college senior graduating this Spring, is to outline some of my personal favorite tips and tricks I have curated throughout my years in academia to hopefully make your experience a bit easier! I have broken down these tips into a four-step process that can be remembered by the acronym “D.O.O.R.”
1. Define
Most of the time when you are assigned an essay in a class, you will be presented with some form of an assignment description. This could be given to you by the professor in many forms, but most commonly it will be via document. The goal of the “define” step is to decipher this description and define what the professor expects of you. The easiest way to do this would be to first copy the description the professor provides you and paste it into the document where you will be writing your paper.
Next, read through it all and highlight the most important keywords that define the requirements of the paper. Of course, you will want to take note of the font and page layout requirements, but make sure to find the key topics and questions the professor wants you to focus on or answer. Once you have read through the entire description, separate each of those key topics and questions and begin to answer them as if they were short answer questions on a quiz. Don’t worry about being too formal with your language yet, just get your ideas out onto the page. This will break up the work and make it less intimidating while still clearly defining the direction of your essay.
2. Outline
Now that you have several short-answer-style paragraphs, you will need to start inserting class concepts and other source citations. No matter if you are required to find sources to support your claims or if you are required to pull from a certain text such as a textbook, use the answers you wrote in the “define” step to find the best sources and/or text quotations. Once you have collected them, begin to make an “outline” that pairs these sources with the appropriate short answer paragraphs.
For example, let’s say you are writing your paper for a Communications course. In step one, you wrote one of your short answer paragraphs about the topic of dealing with conflict. In your outline, place quotes and sources related to conflict management together with this paragraph. This will not only help you keep all of your thoughts organized, but also will help you make sure everything you want to write about in your essay is properly supported with evidence from your research. Once all of your paragraphs are matched with quotes, your outline is complete and you can move on to step three. Almost there!
3. Organize
At this point, your paper should look a little bit like a to-do list. You have everything that you would eventually like to cover in your writing accounted for and properly paired with quotations and sources. Now, you just have to figure out how to put it all together. This is the step that can cause a bit of panic in some people, and that is totally valid! We are taught all throughout school that writing in a perfectly proper, professional manner is the only acceptable way to create academic writing, but nearly no one actually thinks or talks in that way. This leads to students becoming stumped at how to begin writing when they know what they want to say, just not how to say it “right.”
The trick here is to just begin to “organize” all of your points by furthering your paragraphs with more explanation and elaboration, tying in your quotations in the context of what you’re writing and connecting everything with transitions. Treat this step as if you were trying to explain everything to a friend. Don’t worry too much about sounding professional just yet, just talk about what you already know. (Thanks to all of the prep work you’ve done!)
4. Refine
Finally, it comes time to “refine” what you have written. Once you’re satisfied with your work from step three, go through the entire essay and make edits. Essentially, this is the proofreading step. Make changes to your voice and vocabulary to make it sound more professional and add any necessary elaboration so that the length matches the requirements. Ensure all of your quotations are properly cited in the style required by the professor and make sure your bibliography is ready to go. While refining you can do anything that will make you the proudest to submit your work.
And just like that, you’re done! Writing essays is notoriously disliked in academia for a reason. They’re daunting, time-consuming and can be pretty dull and tedious depending on the topic at hand. But they don’t have to be a chore! I hope that with these tips I have gathered from my own experience as a student, I will be able to help other students create papers they enjoy putting their time into. The feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing work that you are proud of is truly unparalleled. Now go forth, and put your best essay forward!
