Back in the early days of Study Hacks, I introduced the paper research database. The idea was to build a database of every quote you might need to cite in your paper. These citations could be sorted by date or type, and be linked to their matching source. The technique works because it helps you build and organize a comprehensive understanding of an event or idea before you start writing about it.

I should be clear: I love this technique. I used it to write two massive art history research papers while here at MIT. Recently, however, when I began the research process for my new book, I found myself drawn to a new strategy: the paper research wiki.

In this post I want to explain this approach, which has the potential to significantly improve the complexity and confidence of your written arguments.

The Basics of a Research Wiki

The research wiki I’m currently using is not my first attempt at this strategy. In fact, it’s the fourth research wiki I’ve started. The first three quickly faded in disuse. This last attempt, however, has become an incredible aid to my writing.

What’s the difference? It all comes down to structure…

If you jump blindly into a wiki, and start creating pages left and right, you’re unlikely to gain much benefit. When I attempted this approach with my first research wikis, I ended up building a page for every idea or piece of information, with few internal links. The site soon devolved into an overly complicated, wannabe notebook.

For my latest wiki, by contrast, I enforced structure. Specifically, I introduced a strict information hierarchy:

• At the bottom level, there are primary sources. Above them are second-level structures. Above them are third-level structures, and so on.
• My linking rule is simple: pages can only link to those from a lower level. Primary sources cannot link to any other pages. Second-level structures can link only to primary sources. Third-level structures can only link to second-level structures and primary sources. Etc.

As you ascend through the levels of this hierarchy, you increase the complexity of the ideas being captured. For example, here’s a screen shot of the home page for my book research wiki:

Notice, I have two types of primary sources: interview subjects and research papers. Each interview subject has his or her own page where I capture all of the relevant information — from contact information to interview transcripts. Each research paper has a page with a full citation and summary. These are the foundational blocks on top of which everything else about my book is built.

My second-level structures are ideas. For example, if you click on the ideas link you’ll see a list that includes the Failed Simulation Effect. The corresponding page describes the idea, linking back to the relevant primary sources, including the relevant research papers and students who exhibited the effect.

At the third-level, I have annotated outlines for each of the major parts of my books. The annotated outlines link heavily to both ideas and interview subjects.

When it comes to writing a part of the book, I can start with the relevant annotated outline and quickly drill down to the needed information. As you might imagine, this allows me to write with great confidence.

Applying the Technique to Your Paper

For a standard college research paper, I would suggest the following information hierarchy (this is only a suggestion, feel free to modify as needed):

• Have your primary sources include the actual primary sources: books, articles, interviews. Create one page for each such source. Include on the page the properly formatted citation and a list of the relevant quotes you might use from the source.
• Have your second-level structures include events and ideas. Create one page for each of these items. On the page, you can link every quote and fact in your description to the matching primary source.
• Have your third-level structures capture timelines and comparison charts. For example, you could have a page that orders and dates a sequence of important events (linking each to its matching second-level page), or a page that compares different related ideas (linking to the matching idea descriptions).
• Have your fourth-level structures capture large arguments. Here you can draw freely from all of the lower structures.

Notice, this wiki is different than an outline. Starting from the fourth-level argument pages, you should be able to easily drill down to the primary sources needed to build a standard flat outline. In other words, put most of your thinking into the wiki, then generate the pre-writing outline at the last minute.

The Advantages of a Wiki Approach

Wiki-driven writing enjoys two important advantages. First, the structure of the wiki helps you structure your research. Plugging your research into a clear information hierarchy is superior to simply creating a large pile of stuff. Second, working through these different levels forces you to do lots of high-level thinking before you get to the outlining and writing phase. In some sense, your paper research wiki requires you to master the nuances and complexity of the topic before you think about what you want to say about it. I can tell you from experiences, this is the approach that generates A* results.

Finding a Wiki

If you’re tech savvy, you could potentially setup your own wiki on a personal web hosting account. But I suggest just using PBworks (formerly PBwiki), which has every feature you need, works fine, and is free. It takes roughly 7 seconds to setup a PBworks wiki, so the required effort is minimal.

Practice Makes Perfect

It takes a little time to customize this technique to suit your own tastes. But if you’re serious about producing high quality papers, then I highly suggest experimenting with this strategy. I’ve been loving it.

As longtime Study Hacks readers know, I’m a big promoter of the autopilot schedule. In case you’re new, let me briefly review: The autopilot schedule is a set of fixed times and locations for finishing your regular work each week. For example, you might decide to always tackle your history reading assignments Monday morning, from 9 am to 11 am, in the study carrels found on the 6th floor stacks of the main library.

The shadow course, described below, is a simple optimization to the autopilot schedule that can generate huge benefits.

An Imaginary Course

The shadow course method asks that you adjust your autopilot schedule to include an additional course. This course doesn’t really exist, but you pretend like it does. (The name comes from the fact that it shadows your real courses.) Set aside a reasonable amount of time in your autopilot schedule for handling the work for your shadow course; I recommend allocating roughly one hour per course per week.

Here’s the key point: use the time set aside for your shadow course to begin ridiculously early preparation for tests and papers in your real courses. The key words are “ridiculously early.” Starting from week one of your semester, you have to use your shadow course blocks toward this end.

For example, you might use this time to…

• …reformat your notes into study guides that are ready for review.
• …write mini-textbook chapters that cover the material.
• …fill in holes in your knowledge by going to back to the textbook and preparing targeted questions for your TA.
• …review the big ideas from recent lectures by giving talks on the subjects to imaginary classes.
• …practice the proofs and problems from technical courses to master the insights.
• …work through hard concepts using the notebook method.
• …begin collecting and building a database of sources for a large research paper.

To help cement the habit, and to make it an enjoyable part of your student schedule, I recommend that you choose the most exotic possible location for your weekly shadow course time blocks. For example: in the woods (if you’re at Dartmouth, I personally recommend the cross country trail for doing quiz-and-recall lectures); a quiet cafe; or anywhere else equally contemplative and separated from your daily student life.

The Power of the Shadow

The effect of the shadow course can be immense. Imagine, for example, that you divide your shadow course time evenly among your real courses, giving you an extra hour of preparation per course per week. In a 15 week term, this means that when you arrive at the end of the semester, you’ll have an extra 15 hours of preperation under your belt for each final and major paper you face.

Imagine how much better you would have performed on your last test or paper if you had been able to set aside 15 extra hours to prepare.

To make things even better, because this time is spread out across an autopilot schedule, these hours all maintain a high intensity of focus — a feat which would be impossible if this time was condensed into a small number of long study session.

The result: your performance enters A* territory while reducing the amount of time you have to study or write at the last minute.

But I Don’t Have That Time!

Some students will complain that they simply don’t have enough time in their schedule to add an entirely new class. I’m sympathetic. But let me make the following strong suggestion: if you don’t have time for a shadow course, consider quitting something to make time. The benefit gained from your shadow course hours will swamp the benefits gained from whatever boring club you ditched to make room. And studying spread out over the entire semester causes much less pain than studying crammed into reading period.

The Power of Non-Conformity

To steal a phrase my friend — and one of my absolute favorite bloggers — Chris Guillebeau, there is real power in non-conformity. This holds especially true for students. There’s something about thumbing your nose at the conventions followed by your peers and, instead, doing something completely, ridiculously different, that can help pry you out of a rut and make outstanding things happen.

(Photo by Absolut1)

Welcome to Week 4

This is the fourth and final post in our four-part series 4 Weeks to a 4.0.  Let’s do our review. In week one you gained some control over your schedule. In week two you mastered taking notes in class. And in week three you streamlined your assignments. In other words, we’ve covered all regularly occurring academic work. This leaves us only to tackle the big infrequent stuff. I’m talking about studying for exams and writing papers.

Week 4 Assignment: Create Project Folders

Your assignment for this week to adopt the project folder method, which I describe below. This simple method streamlines the process of studying for exams and writing major papers. I used it throughout my time at Dartmouth, and swear by its effectiveness. You can also see aspects of it in action in our ongoing finals diaries series.

The Project Folder Method

Buy a box of plain manila file folders. Set aside one folder for each exam and paper you having coming up in your semester. Label the folders with the corresponding subject and exam/due date.

For the exam folders, do the following:

• Print the relevant class notes and assignment notes. Label each clearly. Add to the folder. If you took notes in a notebook, either make photocopies, or just rip the pages out of your notebook.
• If the exam is for a technical course, include problem set solutions, past exams (if the upcoming exam is cumulative), and any sample tests made available by the professor.
• On the front cover of the folder write out a study plan using the date/action list method. A date/action list is a collection of specific review actions labeled with the date when you will do the work. The key word is “specific.” Don’t put down: “4/23 – study.” Instead, put down something like: “4/23 – meet with TA to discuss how to solve the problems I got wrong on the last four problem sets.”
• Mark each of these dates on your calendar to remind yourself you scheduled work. If you end up needing to change the plan, mark the new plan on your folder and change the relevant dates on your calendar.

For the paper folders, do the following:

• At first the folder will be empty. As you gather research materials, however, this is the place where they all go. This will keep you organized.
• On the front of the folder, use the date/action list method from above to construct a plan for researching and writing your paper. Follow the same rules as with the study plans. That is, record pairs consisting of a date and a specific action. This plan will probably change more than a study plan as you get going, so make sure you record all changes on your folder and your calendar.

Once you’ve created the folders, follow their corresponding plans. If you’re having a hard time fitting in time for all of your exams and papers, then you may need to do some emergency schedule clearing, setup a visual panic schedule, or perhaps even declare a temporary activity vacation. But don’t hide from what has to be done. The project folder approach makes the work you face explicit and unavoidable — allowing you to better spread out the work and streamline the steps.

Summing Up…

Once you finish this week’s assignment you’ll be done with the program! These lessons aren’t a miracle cure. For example, it’s possible that your schedule is so overcrowded that no amount of smart habits can save you. It’s also possible that you’re suffering from deep procrastination, which thwarts attempts to follow even the most basic advice.

But if you stuck with the program for all four weeks, your technical study habits will be better than 99% of all students, which should put you on track to better grades and less stress.

For those of you who followed the program, let us know how it has been working for you. 

Unlike many hacks you read here, the strategy I want to describe today is not designed to reduce your study time (though I don’t think it will add much to your schedule either). Instead, its purpose is to help you transform from a good student into an exceptional student.

It starts with the simplest possible tools…pen and paper.

The Notebook Method

This method applies to the following academic situations, among others…

• Writing an essay or paper.
• Working on a problem set or technical take home exam.
• Tackling a difficult book or reading assignment.
• Designing a project for a computer science or engineering class.

The idea is simple…

1. Buy a sturdy college-ruled notebook dedicated to the relevant class. (I use the 100 page, 1 subject, college-ruled Stasher by Roaring Spring, but many people also swear by the Black n’ Red.)
2. Buy a good pen. (Nothing beats a black uniball micro 0.5mm.)
3. Take your notebook and pen and go to the most relaxing, meditative, non-distracting place possible. The deep stacks of the library is okay. Hiking 30 minutes into the woods or onto the dunes overlooking a windswept springtime beach is even better.
4. Spend 1 – 3 hours working out your thinking on the task at hand in the notebook. Spend the last 20 minutes carefully summarizing your results on a clean page that you mark with the date and a title.

For example, here is a snapshot from a page of my PhD thesis notebook:

Preceding this summary page in the notebook is another few pages of rougher notes, also from today, on which I was trying to work through the tricky details of these same ideas. This final page details the polished result of this thinking. I needed to get this right, and a long afternoon with my notebook was the only way I could coax what I needed from my mind.

Inside the Method

In an age of distraction, the notebook method produces a rare commodity: high-quality thinking — the type of thinking that can make a student into a star.

Its power sources from the following truths…

1. Writing down your thoughts forces you to clarify what you’re thinking and confront ambiguities or inconsistencies. It’s hard work! You’ll probably feel painful resistance the first few times you try this method, but you must persevere. Eventually you gain familiarity with the novel sensation of deep thinking.
2. You can’t check e-mail using a spiral-bound notebook. You also can’t update your Facebook profile or tweet about your YouTube channel. If you’re high up in the library stacks, or, better yet, in the woods or on the beach, it’s just you and your notebook. Eventually your urge toward distraction will give way.
3. Paper facilitates creative thinking. You can draw arrows, and circle concepts, and sketch structures. Something about a good ballpoint scraping across a thick-grained paper stock unlocks areas of your mind that tend to hibernate when you’re slumped over your laptop in a crowded study lounge.

This method applies anywhere that requires deep creative thinking. Use it to figure out your argument for an English course, or to master organic chemistry equations, or to deduce why, exactly, that Nietzsche book frustrated you so much on your first read through.

Regardless of how you apply this method, its result will be the same. It takes you out of student survival mode and helps you down the path toward mastering the increasingly lost art of good, hard, deep thinking.

Related Posts

• Adventure Studying: An Unconventional New Approach to Exam Preparation
• An Adventure Studying Case Study
• How Two Extra Hours Can Make Your Paper Two Times Better
• Conquer Complicated Material with the Mini-Textbook Method

(Photo by Absolut1)

Electronic Flatness

A reader recently wrote me with an improvement to my flat outline method for research paper writing. The original method asked you to build an ordered list of the topics you want to address in your paper, and then start typing in quotes from your personal copies of the research sources directly into the outline, putting each quote under the relevant topic. By the time you start writing your paper, this flat outline contains all the information you need — allowing you to focus on writing without having to rummage through a pile of sources.

This reader noted, however, that for some papers, she had to read lots of electronic sources, usually in PDF format. It seemed like a waste to print each of these and then manually type the quotes she needed into her flat outline. So she innovated a new approach.

It works as follows:

1. When reading a PDF source on your computer screen, if you come across a quote you want to capture, do an image screenshot. On a Mac this means pressing Command + shift + 4, and then dragging a box around the quote.
2. The image will appear on your desktop. Immediately rename the image in the format “Author last name cit # pg #”, with cit # standing for the citation number — if it’s the first quote, it’s cit 1, second, cit 2, etc. (See the screenshot at the top of the post.)
3. Build your flat outline in Microsoft Word as usual. To add a quote to the document, drag the image file right where you want it in the document; the image will embed itself automatically, as shown below:

This technique is best suited for medium size papers. For short essays, it might be overkill. For long research papers, I’m still a fan of the paper research database. But for medium size papers that require you to quickly process a dozen or so electronic sources, this tip can help you capture relevant quotes fast, so you can spend more time crafting the story: the step that makes the difference between a ‘B’ and an ‘A+’.

As most first-time authors will admit, writing a book can be daunting. The scale is so massive that it cannot be thought of as a single task; it’s not something that could be completed in one big gnarly push. At first, this induces panic. But as the process continues, the author falls into a more comfortable job-like routine. Day after day, he returns to the manuscript — a little editing here, a little research there — and soon loses touch with the big, scary, massive concept known as “writing a book.”

Months pass.

Then one day, a deadline arrives, and the author steps back to see the results of his longterm efforts; something that looks, strangely enough, quite a bit like a real book. There is no hard finish point. He could keep tweaking or editing or polishing ad infinitum, and he probably secretly wants to. But the deadline seems as good a place as any to stop, and the current draft gets sent off.

This probably sounds nothing like the frenzied last minute pushes that define your own stressful student paper writing adventures, which is exactly why I’m telling you about it. For, you see, this post presents a simple yet outlandish idea: You should consider writing your student papers like authors write massive books.

As always, allow me to explain…

The Paperback Writer Method

To write a student paper like a book means the following:

1. Start work on the paper immediately.
2. Make progress in small batches: 1 – 2 hours at a time, on at least 2 – 3 days out of each week.
3. Finish a full draft of the paper well before the deadline. (It’s okay if these are really terrible, you’ll knock it into shape over time.)
4. Keep tweaking and editing and polishing, in little batches, until the deadline arrives.
5. Spend a lot of this time not just writing, but also thinking — thinking hard about what you’re saying, why you’re saying it, and what would be better to say instead.

I started following this method in the spring of my senior year. Not surprisingly, this was the first semester after I finished writing my first (paperback) book. It changed my student life.

Let’s explore why…

Living the Paperback Writer Lifestyle

Here’s the thing about this method: it requires more hours than doing the work in one long push right before the deadline. I admit this. But at the same time this work is a lot less painful. Like the professional author, it’s not about the big scary capital-P “Paper.” It is, instead, about little daily pushes.

The biggest advantage, of course, is that the papers it produces are significantly better than those written the day before. If you use the paperback writer method — and take it seriously, especially the part about putting aside time to think — you’ll score an ‘A’ on every single paper.

The alert reader might wonder how this method fits with my existing paper advice; e.g., flat outlines and the three-pass editing method. Think of these strategies as weapons in the arsenal of the paperback writer practitioner. As you work in small batches over a long period of time, you can use, for example, a flat outline to organize your thoughts and the three editing types of the three-pass method to keep sections tamed.

A Simple Experiment

I know this method is asking a lot, and it might not fit with all types of student personalities. But if something about this pain-free approach resonates, let me invite you to try a simple experiment. Take one paper — a small one — and apply this method. Go from assignment to submission without ever working more than an hour or two at at time. Hand in a manuscript that you thought about and tweaked and polished for weeks. Experience the reaction you get from the professor.

If you get this far, I have a suspicion that, like me, you’ll never look at paper writing the same way again.

(Photo by jefield)

When faced with an essay or small paper, most students follow a similar pattern. You glance over the relevant readings, crack your knuckles, sigh loudly, check your Facebook feed once more, just in case some vital change in a friend’s relationship status requires immediate, intense attention, then, with great resignation, start writing. You type a little. You add a quote that makes sense. You glance at that little page count number in the lower left corner. You type a little more. Eventually you hit your magic page count. A couple quick editing passes and you’re done!

The Problem With Writing-Centric Papers

I call this approach writing-centric: it centers all the relevant activities around the core activity of writing. Here’s the problem: it produces mediocre papers of the type that drive professors, over time, to a slow, but ever darkening despair regarding the state of American youth.

For short papers and essays it would be inefficient to completely revamp your style. In this post, however, I describe a simple tweak to your process — requiring 1 – 2 extra hours — that will significantly increase the quality of your paper (and your experience with the writing process.) It will also make your professor’s day.

The Idea Vacation

Let’s rewind our story of typical student writing. You’ve just finished glancing over the relevant readings — we assume, because these are essays and small papers, that you’re responding to class reading, not conducting significant research. You turn to your keyboard, ready to dive in…but wait! Not yet! Step away from the computer…

Instead: take your readings and go for a walk. Wander campus asking yourself questions such as:

• “What do I really think about these topics?”
• “What did this writer really mean?”
• “What are different things she could have believed instead, and why did she choose this particular angle? “
• “What would I have said?”
• “What do I really think about this? Why?”

Allow the first, obvious thoughts — the type that fuel writing-centric papers — to come and go. Then push deeper. Keeping asking hard questions. Dig out a tiny gem of thesis that fits your personal take on the material. It doesn’t have to be brilliant. But it should be both: honest and nuanced; something you actually believe. This might take a while. Let it. Enjoy being outside and spending time with your mind. (This is a good step to combine with an adventure studying expedition.)

Once you think you have something, settle down in the most inspiring possible room in your college’s library system. Bonus points for plush chairs, old wooden book cases, and, of course, tarnished old oil painting portraits old solemn looking white men. (See, for example, the Dartmouth Tower Room image at the top of this post; courtesy of Susan Simon.)

Settle in and go back through the relevant readings. Start fleshing out some of the details. Take some notes. Maybe sketch out a simple topic-level outline.

When you finish, you should be at a point where you can give a convincing little speech about your idea. Indeed, in a perfect world, you would take your idea vacation right before office hours, so that you could immediately pitch your idea to your professor.

Time Alone With Your Mind

One of the biggest surprises about the experience of the modern liberal arts student is how little time they actually spend just alone with their thoughts, sifting through, in a complicated inner monologue, what they believe and why. Essays and small papers offer you this opportunity. Most students ignore it and instead just blaze ahead blindly in their comfortable, “I hate papers!” writing-centric approach.

I’m suggesting that you try something new. Take a 1 – 2 hour idea vacation before your fingers hit the keyboard. Not only will you produce the type of paper that can pull a professor out of his low-grade despair, it actually has the possibility of making paper writing something that, if not anticipated, is, at least, no longer dreaded.

A Study Hacks Mini-Crash Course in Paper Writing

If you’re relatively new to Study Hacks and the style of paper writing I preach here and in my book How to Become a Straight-A Student, here’s a collection of past paper-writing posts that will help bring you up to speed:

• How to Transform Your Professor Into Your Paper Writing Partner
• How to Edit Your Paper in Three Passes or Less
  
• How to Use a Flat Outline to Write Outstanding Papers, Fast
• How to Build a Paper Research Database
• Downgrade the Importance of Writing in Paper Writing

Working on college assignments is a lonely affair. It’s just you, a big pile of ambiguously defined work, and that lovely little voice in your head, trying, with all of its devilish might, to navigate you down some of the worst possible work paths — “No,” it yells, “it would be ridiculous to start so early, you have, literally, hours before this assignment is due…let’s go drink.” The result: last minute frenzies; all-nighters; angry conversations with your parents about how they don’t understand the difficulty of your schedule. The usual.

Team Professor

Here is a simple strategy to add some accountability into this process (at least, the process as it applies to writing major papers): Meet with your professor every other week during her officer hours, starting with the week the paper is assigned. Use this time to discuss your paper in progress and refine your efforts going forward.

Worry not. You’re not disrupting the professor: office hours are mandated by the school and this time is open for exactly this purpose — students wanting to discuss issues relevant to class. Indeed, many professors are glad to have any student actually show up.

The question, of course, is what to talk about. Let’s start with the bad…

What Not to Discuss

A few ground rules:

1. Don’t ask a professor to read a draft. The writing is your job. If you need help, visit your campus composition center.
2. Don’t list your woes. For some reason, and I haven’t quite figured this out yet, many students ask for help by trying to convince the other person that they are beyond help. Avoid this. Don’t run down your sad sap list about how hard it is for you to make progress on the paper. (“I looked everywhere, and can’t find a single mention of this person…”)
3. Don’t ask “what’s next” questions. These meetings can be used to discuss specific issues or ideas. Don’t just say, “I don’t know what to do,” and hope the professor will start making decisions for you.

What You Should Discuss

With these prohibitions out of the way, we can turn toward to good. So what do you discuss in these meetings? In general, follow this structure:

1. Summarize the work you’ve done so far. What sources have you looked at? How did you find them?
2. Discuss the content, not the assignment. Forget the paper for a second. What interested you in the research you’ve done so far? What surprised you? What was a waste of time? Discuss the current version of the story you are putting together for the paper.
3. Outline your options for moving forward over the next two weeks. Where do you want to be in two weeks? What’s your plan for getting there?
4. Ask for advice. Now that the professor understands where you stand intellectually and logistically, she can offer some guidance. She might, for example, challenge you on your story, pushing you in places to develop more nuance. She might also point you toward some sources that you did not know about. Finally, she might have some tips for accomplishing your two week goal. Take it all in…

Make it Happen

Finish what you said you would. When you show up in two weeks, you should have completed what you discussed in the last office hours and have a new set of insights and goals to review.

The benefits of this process are two-fold. One, you’re making regular progress, early on in the assignment. Two, your efforts are being tweaked and shaped by the most useful possible source: your professor. This ensures that not only is your paper going to get accomplished without crazed, all-night frenzies, but that, also, you’re on your way toward producing a sophisticated piece of writing.

In short: Less pain. Better grade.

The last paper I wrote was a research paper for an art history seminar. When I began the process, I had a suitably erudite topic in mind. I was going to examine a particular piece of installation art and make some interesting connections to information theory; the standard fare of big complicated ideas that form the backbone of these types of papers.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t start my researching looking at these big complicated ideas. Instead, I went back to the basics.

Way back…

The Return of the 5th Grade Research Paper

My first step was to find a handful of basic books about the artists in questions: one was written by their son (it was a husband wife team), and the other two were exhibition catalogs. I then used these high level sources to reconstruct the basics of their life story. Piece by piece — asking the simple questions:

• Where did they get started?
• What were there first works?
• What were their jobs?
• Where did they live?

I captured all of this information in a carefully dated time line (captured in a table titled “basic chronology” in my paper research database.)

This should sound familar. The technique I used here was exactly how I was taught to research in the 5th grade. You find the big, basic overview sources and carefully write down the facts.

As we move through college we accumulate a disdain for such 5th grade simplicity. Good papers deal with complicated ideas. Facts are boring. Intricate arguments in obscure journal articles and cleverly titled monographs are where to find the real action!

So why did I bother with the remedial time line?

The Importance of the Fact Scaffolding

There was a time when I did not build these basic information time lines — which I now call fact scaffolding. This technique is actually one I learned later in my undergraduate career, as I began to research how straight-A humanities majors consistently churned out top papers.

My early papers suffer due to this omission. They suffer for two reasons:

1. Lack of Confidence: No matter how complicated your argument, if you’re hazy on the basic facts structuring the events, or people, or ideas in question, it shows. You begin taking exaggerated side-steps around the potholes of your knowledge. On the other hand, when you know, in detail, the storyline on which your argument is located, this understanding shines through. Read a good non-fiction book. Notice the ease with which the author makes asides or little comments (e.g., “interestingly, he had heard similar arguments back in his undergraduate years at Oxford under…”) that give you confidence that he knows what the hell he is talking about.
2. Undirected Research: Research is hard when you don’t know the world in which you’re searching for your ideas. My early papers miss and misuse all sorts of sources because I was diving in head first without first taking the time to see where I was. Once you know the story, you know both where to look and what you are finding.

Building a Fact Scaffolding

There is no magic method here. Instead, just a simple rule: before you begin your paper research, build a high-level understanding of the people, events, and ideas that are relevant to your topic. And here’s a crucial addendum: Date everything carefully! There’s nothing worst than getting halfway through your paper and not knowing which event happened first or the order in which ideas were first presented — these small bits of information can have a huge impact on your argument!

A few thoughts to help you get started:

1. Grab Beginners Books: You’ll grapple with the hard stuff later. Right now, you’re in 5th grader mode. Find a textbook or suitably easy introduction to the topic. In the beginning: the more simple, the better.
2. You Can Use Wikipedia: I’ve written before about avoiding Wikipedia as a cited source. Here, however, is one place where it is really useful: getting a quick, very high-level overview on the topics you will later be researching in more detail. It’s especially useful for pinning down quick bios on people.
3. Don’t Forget Ideas: Fact scaffoldings are not just about people and events. They also can include ideas. What are all of the schools of thought relevant to the one you’re studying in detail? Summarize each. At a real high-level: how are they different? Who promoted each? What are their relevant time lines?

In Summary

The idea is simple. Put aside a few days at the beginning of your paper writing process to master all of the fact-based information surrounding your topic. Only then should you dive into the deep research on your big ideas. The confidence and insight of this strong foundation will support a powerful paper.

The Editing Balance

Paper editing is a tricky task. It has to be done well. Nothing scuttles a paper faster than obvious mistakes or sloppy construction. You must, however, be careful. Too many editing passes can bloat the paper-writing process. In Straight-A, I present a simple three-pass system that finds this balance between effective and efficient. It casts a critical eye on your structure — and your mechanics — without unduly burdening your schedule.

The Argument Adjustment Pass

The first pass of the three-pass system focuses on your arguments. You’ll fix low-level mistakes later, so don’t worry about those for now. The pass works as follows:

Read your paper on your computer screen. As you proceed paragraph by paragraph, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is the argument I’m making here compelling? If not, cut the paragraphs. Be ruthless. At least 10 – 20% of this initial draft is probably bloat: the result of trying on arguments for size and worrying about reaching the page limit. This is your chance to atone for your sin of lexographic abundance.
2. Is this the right place for this argument? If not, move the paragraphs elsewhere. Often, when you first encounter the full flow of the paper, some rearrangement makes sense. Be ready to shuffle to maximize impact.

When this pass is complete, your paper should consist soley of important, compelling arguments, presented in the most effective order. Some significant cutting and shifting probably took place. If it didn’t, you’re probably not doing the process justice.

The Out Loud Pass

Now that your arguments have been whipped into shape, it’s time to ensure that the paper reads like the erudite scholarly effort you want it to be. When you see students obessively reviewing their paper again and again, this is typically the goal they are trying to achieve. Here will explain how to accomplish this in just a single pass through the paper. How is this possible? The key is using your voice…

The out loud pass works as follows: Print out a copy of your paper. Lock yourself in your room. Begin reading your paper out loud, with careful articulation. As you move through the work, sentence by sentence, keep your ears tuned for the following:

1. Clumsy sentences. Is the wording awkward when you read it?
2. Bad transitions. Does the movement from one line of reasoning to another seem abrupt or strained?
3. Mistakes. Is a word spelled wrong? A word missing? A grammer mistake?
4. Lack of clarity. Is a sentence labored? Is there a simpler way of saying what you are trying to say? Can it be cut all together?

Every time you notice one of these red flags, make a mark on your print out and then keep going. After you finish a major section (e.g., around one or two pages), stop, return to the document on your computer, and fix all the places you marked. Rewind and re-read, out loud, each of these fixes to make sure that the new version reads smoothly. Then continue.

The key to this phase is to ensure that every word gets read out loud in its final fixed form. Something about the act of articulation can root out those subtle mistakes and awkard complexity in a way that reading silently — even dozens of times — will fail to do.

The Sanity Pass

The final pass allows you to answer the key question as you finish up the paper-writing process: “Am I insane, or have I put together a damn good paper?” The goal of this final pass is to experience your work in one uninterrupted flow. To savor your arguments. To experience the work in the same way your professor will.

Print out a copy, settle into a comfortable chair, and read through the entire paper. If you stumble across the occasional stubborn mistake, just make a quick mark and keep moving. Enjoy your efforts. After this pass is complete, return to your document and make any small edits you encountered. You’re now ready to hand in a stand out work.

Timing the Three Phases

The key to the three-pass editing process is to seperate the out loud pass from the other two. The out loud pass takes time. It takes energy. If you do it right after the argument adjustment pass you’ll be too fatigued and sick of your writing to accomplish the out loud portion correctly.

With this in mind, quarantine the out loud pass to its own day. The sanity pass can be done close to the deadline. Indeed, some students do it the morning of the due date to get excited about the paper before handing it in. So the out loud pass can occur as soon as the day before a deadline, with the argument adjustment pass happening two days before. Just be sure to keep the out loud portion isolated from the others and the whole process will transpire with a minimum of pain.