College is not about partying, college is about essay writing. To succeed in it, you need to learn how to avoid these basic mistakes.
Research Mistakes
Research mistakes are tricky — mostly you don’t know about them before you professor shows you, but if you make enough research mistakes all your paper will collapse. Here is the list of the most probably research-related errors college students make.
- Using a standard Google search instead of Google Scholar search. This way you will drown in mediocre blog-posts instead of browsing through the most recent and relevant studies.
- Ignoring libraries. Students often think that it is much faster and easier to find everything online. Wrong! Your college library is not a home for useless manuscripts, it is updated rather often, and it is updated according to the courses and professors’ demands. So most probably it has lots of books and printed studies related to the topic of your paper.
- Not limiting time for research. You can do research for days, and though you can find some real treasures this way most probably you will just lose time. So, when you receive an assignment to write a quality college essay, define the exact amount of time you would like to spend on research and don’t exceed it. If you don’t have enough time for research from the very beginning, it is a good time to get help with writing an essay from someone you trust online.
Problems with Content
- Choosing a boring topic. It is a possibility that your topic was given to you by your professor, in this case, you don’t have much space to make a move. But if you just have a general topic, and can choose the more narrow one, you should come up with something engaging. Choose not something that sounds good, but something that will make you interested in finishing your essay.
- Being boring yourself. For example, you need to write a paper on Gender Studies. And you start writing about the lack of diversity, about equal rights, so on. These are all important topics, but you should be able to cover more interesting angles of the story.
- Plagiarizing. This is the worst sin of academic writing and whatever happens, you should not do it. It seems easy not to copy someone else’s texts, but it is much more difficult not to allow technical plagiarism to spoil your paper. Be very careful with paraphrasing, put in-text citations every time you use some else’s thought and make a double check using online anti-plagiarism software.
Problems with Formatting
- Using outdated citation manual. If the required formatting style is APA, you should not be worried too much, as they don’t change their rules very often. However, of the required style is MLA, you should find the latest updates. Of course, your professor may also not be aware of the most recent changes, but it is better not to risk it.
- Leaving formatting for the last minute. When you do so, you are can rest assured that you won’t have enough time to complete formatting the way it should be done. Use citation generators while writing, it will make your paper more complete before the submission date.
Problems with the Organization of the Writing Process
You would not believe if we told you how many papers were not finished due to a poor organization of the writing process and procrastination. To avoid it:
- Make a brief plan and estimation of how much time it will take to write every piece approximately. This way you won’t feel like you have all the time in your hands.
- Establish a suitable working pattern and work accordingly. Even if you need to rest 20 minutes after writing for 15 minutes — it is ok, just continue doing it, don’t stop.
- Don’t eat too much sugar and make sure to breathe fresh air once in a while. Fresh air will keep your brain active. If you overeat sugar and junk food you will feel energetic briefly and later your sugar will drop, and you won’t be able to do anything.
There are myriads of mistakes a college student can make when working on college essays, but if you learn how to avoid the listed ones, you will be way ahead of your classmates.
