A Guide to Managing a Large Project
Planning your paper
If you plan your paper, you will be able to write it faster. Different styles work for different people. You can try:
- Making an outline
- Drawing a web
- Free-writing
Plan in whatever form works for you, but make sure you write it down.
Planning your time
Planning your time is equally important. How long do you have until your paper is due? How long is it going to take you to write it? What else is going on in your life? Pull out your planner and break your paper down into steps.
Research
When to begin your research
Start researching when you start planning your paper. In a paper where critical sources are required, they should be integral to your argument. You don’t want to be left cramming essays that barely work into a paper you’ve already planned (or worse–written).
The wonders and joys of physical books
Go to the library. Find physical books of critical essays. Check them out of the library. Take them home. Benefits of researching through books at the library include:
- Forces you to plan (and act) ahead of time
- Books are organized by subject– you can quickly find many books on the same subject in the same place
- You can take them with you to read between classes, during rehearsals or shows, in the green room–anywhere
- They won’t block you after the first page or have random sections of pages missing
- They smell good
- Easy access to the Reference Desk and the Circulation if you have any questions
give yourself time to Write
- To those of you who spend their time staring at blank Word documents: write in multiple drafts. Working in drafts can alleviate the pressure of starting a paper, and takes less time than you think.
- Give yourself permission to write a bad first draft, and put more time into revisions.
- Maybe you don’t have time to sit down and write your whole paper. Instead, try writing one body paragraph at a time–maybe one a night, for as many nights as you need. (NOTE: This strategy works best if you have already planned out your essay, and if you have planned your time well enough to space your work out.)
Revise
Allow time in your process for you to come back to your paper after taking a break from it to revise.
Read your first draft. Ask yourself :
- How are my body paragraphs organized? By history/chronology? By subject? Compare/contrast?
- Do my body paragraphs have topic sentences? Are they focused enough to have topic sentences, or should I reorganize my work?
- Are there any parts that stick out? Anything that doesn’t fit in with the rest of my work?
- Have I proven my thesis?
- Is there a clear line of reasoning that leads from the beginning of the paper to the end of it?
Read your paper out loud. Ask yourself :
Were there any sentences that I stumbled on? Mark them; come back to revise them later
Were there any particular words I found myself repeating too often? Jot them down, look up synonyms
Have a friend read your first draft. Ask them :
What they think your paper is about? Is that what you thought it was about?
Was there anything in your paper that was unclear? Could they follow your reasoning?
Was there anything in your paper that felt irrelevant? Redundant?
The last step is to edit
Sometimes, spelling and grammar mistakes can be difficult to catch (and Spell Check doesn’t always cut it). Some possible strategies:
- Change the font
- Your eyes adjust to the font you’ve been looking at and glance over minor mistakes. Change the font to give yourself a chance to look at things from a different perspective
- Especially helpful for visual learners
- Read out loud
- ReForces you to slow down and look at every word
- Especially helpful for auditory learners
- Print it out early
- I always catch minor mistakes in my paper as I’m printing it out, with no time to spare to fix them electronically and print a second copy
- Learn from my mistakes