The Oddest Thing She's Ever Said

Help, do you have any advice for writing argumentative papers for college that you have 0 motivation to do and know nothing about the topic? And thinking about it makes you depressed? You're like the smart, wonderful big sister when it comes to paper writing and creativity.

Ugh, this feeling.

I had something like this happen to me the other night; obviously, it wasn’t for a college paper anymore, but I had a business proposal to write for a potential client, and I just did. not. want. to. do. it. I was tired; I had worked all day; I had gotten shitty news that afternoon; I was sick. I was in NO MOOD or mindset to do the damn thing, but I had to. Because being a grown-up sucks sometimes. (A lot of the time.)

Whenever I hit a writing roadblock, I usually start by doing my research on the topic. This is the easy part, because generally, with internet access and a library, you can get shit done without having to do any of the writing, so it’s kind of like fruitful procrastination. Start easy; start on Wikipedia, and go from there. Skim reference books on the topic; read articles from field journals. Feed your brain a little bit, and enough to get some handle on where you want to base your argument from. It doesn’t have to be a stellar, mind-blowing, thesis-winning argument (unless it happens to be your thesis); it just has to get the job DONE and meet your professor’s requirements. 

QUICK STORY-TIME ABOUT THIS FACT: During college, I noticed a lot of my friends absolutely killing themselves and wasting a lot of time over their assignments and routine essays. They treated their final papers for classes as if they had to be worthy of publication in The Atlantic and help discover a cure for cancer. Newsflash— they do not. The objective of essays like these are to just show your professor that you have a grip on the information and can make an informed, intelligent argument that makes sense and accomplishes a goal. Really, that’s it. It doesn’t need to be your best work. It’s not worth not being able to go out and do the things that you really WANT and NEED to be doing in order to slave over that essay for an A+. A B is fucking fine. No one in your future career is really going to care or even know that you half-assed a stupid paper on symbolism in Italian Renaissance art so that you could go get drinks with friends on a roof-top beer garden on a lovely, hot spring afternoon, instead. And if they DO, tell them the reasons why getting drinks was a more personally enlightening experience that taught you more about life than writing that stinking paper did. College is not about completing EVERY. SINGLE. ASSIGNMENT. to your absolute best ability and making them time- and energy-consuming chores. It’s about learning in class and growing up and learning who you are as a person OUTSIDE of campus. Believe me. I operated this way all four years of college and was a Dean’s List student for 3 of them. If that doesn’t tell you that you can be a great student without busting your ass for asinine assignments, I don’t know what does.

Now, back to our scheduled programming on how to get this paper finished:

Next, resign yourself to the fact that you need to get that shit DONE. Find a place to park yourself with no distractions— not in your room, not near a TV, not anywhere where you will end up thinking about other things you could possibly do to put this off any longer. Personally, I like to find an uncomfortable chair, because not being comfortable where I am makes me want to actually finish it faster. To isolate myself and focus, I plug my headphones in and find one song on my iPod that I can put on repeat and drown everything else around me out. (Make it something that you know REALLY WELL and like enough but not too much so that you can actually tune it out as just “white noise.”) Give yourself strict instructions about finishing the assignment— i.e, “Even though I’m hungry, I can’t eat until this is finished,” or “I can’t look at that text I just got until I finish this paragraph.” Giving yourself something to work for is a good way to motivate you, even if it is just for a bagel or a text from a friend at that point.

And just WRITE THE DAMN THING. Let your brain take control of the writing; at this point, you should be able to trust that it knows how to formulate an essay and the sort of language and form that it needs to follow. About 75% of my college essays were just trite essay bullshit held together by relevant facts from my research to anchor the rest of it down. A paragraph is, after all, a statement supported by following sentences of facts, analysis, argument, and connections to your thesis. And a thesis is just that main statement that you’ve decided to run with. Tie it all together, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to thesis, and BOOM, you’ve got your paper. When you find yourself thinking, “Eh, good enough,” you’ll know that you’re done. Now, go celebrate by doing whatever it is you REALLY want to be doing. And go have a drink on me to celebrate.

XOXO

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