fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3440 ]

[ SECRET POST #3440 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3440 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

SORRY KAIJIN, YOU'RE USUALLY COOL, BUT THIS IS THE WORST ADVICE YOU COULD HAVE GIVEN OP.

As someone who literally grades undergrad papers as part of her job, we can tell when you do this.

Use a thesaurus to choose larger words in place of smaller words.

The aforementioned sentence is horrifyingly abominable advisement which will make your manuscription laborious to decipher and also really silly.

Slightly decrease margins. Slightly increase spacing when possible.

Spacing is really obvious. PAINFULLY obvious. Margins? Literally all I have to do is hold your paper next to somebody else's.

Use quotes in your paper.

Every year I warn my sections about "quote potpourri." Tossing random quotes in doesn't make your paper look good. Tossing in quotes to replace your own writing is a bad idea. Use quotes when they enhance your argument, not to do your work for you. We notice.

Write a sentence and then explain that sentence in new words.

We notice when you write things that are redundant. We notice when you write things that are the same as what you already said.

There is an art to it that may be hard to do if you are not used to doing it.

AND YOU AREN'T GOING TO LEARN IT IN SEVERAL STRESSFUL HOURS, SO DON'T.

Make sure to use your opening sentences and closing sentences to pad out each paragraph.

Throughout history, from the dawn of time, in the tradition of eating out vs dining in, students have used really stupid padding techniques and we laugh at them.

A 3-5 page paper should take you 2-3 hours of work once you get some books to reference.

I'm a fucking pro and I take at least an hour a page if I'm starting from scratch. Maybe you're faster, that's okay! But fast writing means more editing, and that's going to take you more than 2-3 hours. OP, actually TAKE TIME TO DO THIS.

ACTUAL ADVICE

Set aside time to do this.

PROOFREAD PROOFREAD PROOFREAD

Don't panic, but don't let this slip any more. Start now.

DO NOT TAKE ANY OF KAIJINSCENDRE'S ADVICE, THEY MEAN WELL BUT THIS WILL TORPEDO YOU

Edited 2016-06-05 05:08 (UTC)

^ this is all truth; please listen to chard!

I mean, I had a 4.1 when I graduated high school. My English teacher actually taught me some of those techniques because I was "too terse". His words, not mine. If this was a 20 page paper, I'd be more concerned. But a 3-5 page paper on dining in vs eating out? Come on, that is child's play (especially if that is for a midterm paper). I could write a paper on that right now in two hours.

Edited 2016-06-05 05:21 (UTC)

I mean, I had a 4.1 when I graduated high school.

I also had a really fucking awesome GPA in high school (though less than a 4.0 because I challenged myself with advanced physics and calculus when math isn't my best subject and also my high school did not do bullshit like GPAs over 4.0). And I realize now that high school GPAs mean... pretty much nothing in college. I mean that. I have given Cs to kids who told me they got excellent grades in high school. That's great! You can still fuck up a paper.

My English teacher actually taught me some of those techniques because I was "too terse". His words, not mine.

HS English teachers sometimes give absolutely awful advice. It got you less nervous, but... I'm telling you, I actually grade papers. I see this all the time. I would have agreed with some of your advice before getting on this end of the paper and realizing how incredibly obvious padding and fucking around with spacing is.

But a 3-5 page paper on dining in vs eating out? Come on, that is child's play (especially if that is for a midterm paper).

What's easy for you is not easy for everybody. Papers are incredibly hard for some people and that's okay. Telling a person having trouble with an assignment "this is so easy for me!" is very little help at all.

I could write a paper on that right now in two hours.

And if it's full of padding and has fucked up margins and spacing, if it's full of quotes and redundancies that don't have much to do with the argument, if it's full of longer words for no good reason (and when students do this they often forget that synonyms can have different connotations, so it gets REALLY interesting), it's not getting a great grade.

I'm sorry if this is coming across as harsh. I don't mean it to. It's just that I don't want someone to end up with a bad grade over this.

Edited 2016-06-05 05:41 (UTC)

Also--I'm incredibly serious about the spacing and margins issue. There are many classes where graders will mark you down for it, sometimes quite harshly. If you're messing with margins and spacing, you're often breaking the rules of the assignment. Don't do that!

Set aside time to do this.
PROOFREAD

As a bullshitter of essays, I wanted to chime in and agree with this, but also say specifically: if you take your time to write the first draft properly, when you're proofreading you'll basically just be checking for sense and spelling. But if you write it quickly and shoddily, when you come to proofreading 'editing' will suddenly become 'rewriting entirely'. And you can't really afford too much of that if you're working to a deadline.

This. OP, fooling around with margin size is a really old trick and only the n00biest of n00b instructors would actually fall for it. Besides, in order for that to make a significant difference, you'd have to increase your margins by so much that it'll be really obvious to someone who's been grading papers for hours and has many, many examples of papers with correct margins in front of them.

The thesaurus advice is equally laughable. You can't just randomly plug in substitutes from a thesaurus willy nilly. That, too, is an old and obvious trick. A savvy reader will notice that you're using bigger words when shorter ones would do, and they're going to know why. All that padding will be super obvious and embarrassing, because it alerts the reader that this was a rush job.

It's 3-5 pages, and you have a few days. Just take a deep breath, set aside the time to do it without half-assing it and write the paper. And don't procrastinate again.

also strongly seconding this - If you're looking to get good marks, anyway. If not, and you're just aiming to pass with minimum requirements fulfilled, any of kaijinscendres "tips" can be applied and widely have been. yes, your teacher will probably recognize them and roll their eyes (unless they're kaijin's teachers who will actually like it), but if you're having trouble getting to 3 pages you can use them as a last resort. I've seen them applied in college level papers, and usually the people somehow got through with it.

that said... WTF? 3-5 pages in "a few days" on pros and cons of "eating out or cooking at home" and it's not enough time? Yeah you should at least take 1 hour a page but that means 2-3 days with like, 3 hours each would be plenty of time to brainstorm, structure, write and proofread.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3440 ]

THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!

Re: THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!

Re: THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!

Re: THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!

Re: THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!

Re: THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!

Re: THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!

Re: THIS IS FUCKING HORRIBLE ADVICE, OP. DO NOT TAKE IT! IF YOU DID ALREADY, FIX IT NOW!