Completing your first University Assignment (Part two)
Welcome back to the topic that is most likely to put you to sleep. Unfortunately assignments don’t go away, no matter how hard you wish. They also don’t disappear with any sort of animal sacrifice and then all you’re left with is the stain in your carpet and the cloying scent of incense. But I digress.
This part of the series will hopefully illuminate a little more of the processes that you can choose to try when you’re writing your first assignment. You can also choose to completely ignore the advice given here and opt for the pressure cooker method.
Research
I used to find this the hardest part of being a University student as, before I came to Murdoch, the most research I had to do for essays was to glance through my textbook. I learnt the hard way when it came to writing my first assignment. Thankfully the University doesn’t just hand you off without any sort of support. The library has a stack of easy to access online materials and there is the Student Support centre where you can be shown how to access it all. Add Google Scholar to the mix and you should have little problem finding relevant data for any assignment.
A big part of learning to do proper research is learning correct referencing styles. The University has handy referencing guides up and it never hurts to ask your tutor which style they prefer. If you don’t reference properly you can lose marks or even end up accused of plagiarism. So, try to avoid that.
First Draft
A legal studies professor once told me that I should simply write an introduction and then never read it again until I’d finished the essay. That way I could delete the introduction and write a much more appropriate one when I was done. The hardest part of writing is actually getting started and with a first draft you just need to keep plugging away until it’s done. It doesn’t have to be perfect, or even good, once it’s finished you can start the distilling process.
This is an important part and if you use a first draft you usually end up with a higher quality essay. It also helps you see what areas of your argument need to be improved and what areas don’t work at all. Write it, leave it for a few hours and then read it with a fresh mind. Failing that get a friend to read it and ask them what they think. Be prepared for sometimes harsh criticism.
I’m in the middle of my own assignments at the moment so this post will be briefer than the last. In the final post of this series I’ll hopefully talk about final drafts and submission. I might also bore myself senseless with those tasks and end up talking about more animal sacrifice. Half the fun is in the anticipation!
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