How To Write a Term Paper

[randomness]

My friend nihilistic_kid is a published novelist who used to make something vaguely resembling a living as a term paper artist. In the above titled post, he gives some advice to undergrads:

Spring Break is over, at least in the US, and so now the shank of the semester has begun. Time for term papers! As a former term paper artist I've learned a few things about papering. Things you will not learn from other sources simply because almost nobody has the experience I have. Composition specialists, your professors, and writing center tutors have not written 5000+ model term papers in virtually every field and in every length and format.

So, if you hear different from what I am saying, remember that I am right and they are wrong.

Note: this is "How To Write a Term Paper" not "How To Learn Something." Learning is your problem!

The remainder of the post outlines the process in eight steps.

I also recommend his piece about writing for a term paper mill, "The Term Paper Artist" published in The Smart Set, at Drexel University.

I think if I'd read his post when I was an undergrad, I would have handed in more of my papers on time.

Comments

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

The point that students are asked to write term papers without ever reading them is really personally important to me. A lot of the reason I hated the sciences in high school was that I really didn't understand what a "Lab Report" was supposed to be like; it was described ad nauseum, but showing samples would have been cheating, or something. (In lab bio when I was TAing it, we pushed hard to restructure the pedagogy of lab reports to be more example driven, and section by section, and to get the students reading scientific papers so they'd understand what the lab report structure was based on.)

The second point, about schools basically cheating students, is a lot more complex and depressing.