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Everyone – and I mean everyone – has trouble starting and finishing term papers. An assignment can seem so overwhelming you can torture yourself by worrying about it all semester long. Whether it’s an English essay or a research project, here are some tips to make the process less painful:
 
Understand the assignment
There’s nothing worse than trying to crank out a paper on a weekend and then realizing that you’re not quite sure what your instructor is looking for. So check in with him or her first to make sure you’re on the same page. The same goes if you have to pick a topic for a research project. Getting a green light beforehand can help prevent confusion later.
 
Make a game plan
It’s nearly impossible to throw together a big research paper at the last minute. Just think about all the steps involved: selecting your topic, honing your thesis, finding sources, reading texts, choosing the best nuggets to support your argument, writing an outline, organizing the material, writing, assembling a bibliography and revising. You’ve got to break this into manageable chunks. So think about how much time you have before the deadline, and make a schedule with enough time to complete each task. This website gives a nice overview of the steps: http://www.aresearchguide.com/1steps.html#step4
 
Don’t procrastinate
Now that you have a tidy schedule, make sure you stick to it. If other homework gets in the way, move the task to another day when you have more time. If you leave everything until the weekend, you may have little time to actually write and revise your paper....

Early on, you were taught the five paragraph essay form as an effective way to organize your first efforts at writing an academic essay. We don't wholly disagree that it is a good place to start learning to think and write, but the five paragraph essay is not sophisticated enough for the intellectual work you will be asked to do in college. Don't let it become a crutch to your intellectual development!The main problem with the five paragraph essay is that it is exactly backwards. You are supposed to begin with a thesis statement, and then lay out arguments in support of this thesis. But a thesis should be the end product of independent thinking, and not the starting point. Whereas in high school you were likely given topics and simple thesis with which to work (like compare/contrast...

What a cute little animated film! But how do you think this student did on that paper?!? Instead of...

Triangulation is a technique for focusing and developing your ideas by looking at a general topic from three different perspectives: (1) the static view; (2) the moving view; (3) and the thing in its context. For the purposes of demonstration, let us say that you want to write a paper about capital punishment but are not sure what it is that you want to say about it. Let's triangulate:(1) The static view of "the thing itself." First, think about your subject in terms of its characteristics: What is capital punishment? What are considered capital offenses? How is capital punishment carried out? What images are conjured up by words like capital punishment, death...

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Use Every Resource You Have: The application is just one tool that everyone uses to get accepted. Do not overlook the other areas of the process that can improve your chances.
Build a Team: The application...

(This article is © Nils Osmar 2009)
Stories can be told from any of three viewpoints:First person (“I was hungry...”)Second person (“You were hungry...”)Third person (“She was hungry...”)Generally it’s most workable to choose, and stay with, one point of view in a short story. Shifting your point of view feels sloppy to your readers, and leaves them unsure of where to focus or how to process or interpret the story.First person narrative: Stories told in first person are easy to relate to, as they involve us directly.  Because of the use of the personal pronoun “I,” we may feel as if we are the narrator, or as if we’re sitting down in a private conversation listening to him or her tell the story. (Sometimes we (readers) start out sympathizing with the narrator in stories told in this voice, then feel irritated or betrayed when we learn that the voice we’ve been identiifying with is that of someone repulsive to us, such as a child molester or serial killer.)The narrator isn’t always the most active participant in a first person story.  She might be only an observor, or someone who’s relating the story second-hand. Here’s how a first person protaganist might describe a murder he or she committed:“I felt nervous, but energized, feeling the weight of the glock in my hand. Michael was standing with his back to me. He looked tense, frightened.  He turned to say something, then saw the gun and froze. I smiled and pulled the trigger...”In the above example, the narrator can speak with authority about his or her own feelings (physical and emotional), but can only surmise Michael’s feelings. (The narrator doesn’t tell us that Michael was tense and frightened -- there’s no way for him to know this -- only that Michael looked that way.)For comparison, here’s a sloppy version of the above narrative, which drifts out of first person into Michael’s point of view:“I felt nervous, but energized, feeling the weight of the glock in my hand. Michael was standing with his back to me. He felt tense and frightened.  He turned to say something, then saw the gun and froze. He was shocked to see the gun pointed toward him, and wondered why I was aiming it at him. I smiled and pulled the trigger...”The problem with the “sloppy” version is that the narrator is telling us things he couldn’t really know, about Michael’s thoughts and feelings. We can surmise others’ feelings from their reactions, but we’re not them and can’t speak authoritatively about what’s going on inside their heads.Here’s the same scene as it might...