Thinking it Through

Ever thought of what might be the best option to write your thesis? Is it really the best move to do all that brainstorming and then outline and then this and that and the other?

Not really. Some students use real studying tips and actually work better when they do the paper backwards.

 

That’s right… Backwards.

 

It’s actually very simple. You know the basic steps. Your instructor wants to see your notes, what types they are, and how they relate to your thesis, topic, or even the paper in general. Maybe they are simple thoughts that you came up with and scratched on a napkin because it was the first thing available. I have never seen a student that didn’t have their notes so scattered around that they had to remember what came first, plus remember what the assignment was in the first place.

 

This is how it works. Write the paper first. Write what you know. Don’t look anything up at all. Just write. It can be random, scribbles, little drawings related to the topic in the corner. Essentially, this is your rough draft before the hard part begins. You are telling yourself what you already know. All you have to do now is fill in the blanks.

 

So you have a preliminary sitting in front of you. Within it, you haven’t the first clue of where to place your in text citations, much less what you need to look up to have citations. You know what you wrote because somewhere in the back of your mind, a teacher at one point got to you and instilled it there.

 

Use your notes, your scribbles, or whatever it may be to become your search terms. These are the key elements that will help you to find the scholarly articles you need to make your paper succeed. Get a base of notes, and create your outline from this and your preliminary paper. You already have the basic information. What you are doing now is expanding on it. Granted, it might seem a little barbaric to do it this way, but what’s the point in organizing notes if you have no clue where they go?

 

Believe it or not, this works with scholarship essays. Whether it is weird scholarships or those targeted at a certain group of people, many of them require an essay before acknowledgment, much less acceptance. Write the pre-write, the roughest of drafts you have ever created and expand on what you already know. Don’t know anything? Go to the library and sit down with a book. Let it have pictures in. Visual stimulation will get you a lot further than you ever expected.

 

Once you have a “real” rough draft, you are ready to knock your instructor’s socks off with your witty knowledge, and a little more than what you thought you knew in the first place.