Picture gacked from Unimelb Adventures. Because CORGI.

Essays & Exams: how to write a bitchin’ paper.

The Essay

I would imagine students are not fans of the Research Essay. SO MANY WORDS SO MUCH RESEARCH SO MANY ESSAYS ALL DUE TOMORROW WHY CAN’T WE ALL SIT IN A PRAYER CIRCLE AND DRINK OUR FEELINGS INSTEAD D: D: D:

While abusing your keyboard trying to reach that wordcount is not necessarily the funnest thing ever, here are some tips to write a bitchin’ Arts essay.

BORROW ALL THE BOOKS

That’s right. Be That Annoying Student. When the list of essay topics comes out, pick one you think sounds palatable, get your ass down to the library, and borrow all the books you think are relevant to the topic. Will they all turn out to be relevant? Probably not. But do you want to be doing research for your essay, and find That One Book is totally relevant to your argument but you can’t get your hands on it because some student has already checked it out? NO. And let’s face it – the beauty of renewing books online is that once library book is checked out, the student who did so will hold onto it until the essay deadline. I.e. if you do not get the book you want now, YOU NEVER WILL.

But in doing so, you must realise that it cuts both ways – once you do the Annoying Student Bookrush, you cannot begrudge someone else who has beaten you to the punch. Instead, you are bound by the rules to shrug your shoulders and give them respect. It is all fair game in love and war. And by war, I mean essays. And by love, I mean…er, love. I guess.

SHOW YOUR TUTORIAL TEACHER YOUR ESSAY PLAN

As your tutorial teacher will be marking you essay, the purpose of this is twofold:

1. To make sure your essay is on the right track (which track is that? The one that pleases your tutorial teacher)
2. To make sure your tutorial teacher knows you are a dilligent student who values his/her opinions – better to be remembered as that hardworking, albeit slightly neurotic student than not be remembered at all come marking season.

One thing I learnt is that since teachers don’t read drafts, make your essay plan practically a draft, but with all the appearance of a plan.

My essay plans were usually 1000 words each, but my teachers never cottoned on. I did this using a combination of dot points, arial 9 font and single spaces, the latter two ensuring that my plan never exceeded 2 pages.

I tended to catch my teachers off-guard just after a class ended, but they were always nice enough to take time to read it. Bless you, nice teachers. My teachers never really offered many comments besides whether or not they found my plan satisfactory – you might get more detailed feedback if you, you know, bothered to make a appointment with them. But if a teacher comments that your plan is, ‘good’, ‘on track’ or that, ‘everything seems fine’, it usually yields a H2A.

And of course, there are some times when your essay is H2A material, but some suggestions or opinions by your teachers may help lift it to H1 material. (Once again, bless you, Robin Cameron; now a fancy research fellow type. Congrats on that PhD. I owe you a drink should I ever see you again. Or at least some xanax and oreos. Still have no idea what a ‘trope of metissage’ is.)

Have Many References

I usually aimed for 25 – 30. It seems like a small thing, but if all else fails, show your teacher that you tried very very hard by doing much research.

Have Your Friend Read Your Essay

For comprehensibility and grammar reasons. By the end of my essays I’m so sick of looking at them that I am a fail spellchecker. And the Microsoft word spellcheck is a fail grammar checker. So get a fresh pair of eyes to do it. Buy your friend a pizza to thank them. Just make sure it’s not one of those crappy Union House pizzas. Eurgh.

Craft An Original Argument

This is probably the key to an H1 essay, as opposed to a H2A.

H2As are awarded to essays that are perfectly good, but not great. A great essay is not only well-researched, but presents the material in a creative, original argument.

Your teacher is intimately familiar with the subject. They have researched all you have researched before. They have read all the journal articles you have read before. They have read all the arguments you have read – they may even have thought of some of them. You cannot hope to find any research they have not found.

This is where having a pre-set list of topics comes to your advantage. The limited variety of topics means your teachers be reading dozens of essays retreading the same material. If you can surprise them, they will love you. Or at least love your essay.

There is one simple, yet mindblowing – and frankly, very fun – way to make your essay original: CHALLENGE THE PREMISE OF THE TOPIC.

For example, take the essay topic: was Hitler a great leader?

Most students would argue yea, nay or to a certain extent, likely using the same research as your, but in differing varieties. What they are doing is merely arguing within the limits of the topic – they are accepting as fact then, that Hitler was a leader. They only question the word, ‘great’, which they will debate by saying, ‘Hitler did this, and this, but he didn’t handle that too great, and he didn’t do that’.

But if you could instead challenge the basis of the question by asking, ‘was Hitler even a leader, dude, srsly? Did he even lead?’ You will likely be making an argument that 90% of the students would not have thought to make. If you could somehow use the research material to expand the scope of the topic beyond Hitler, by, for instance, crafting an argument that Goebbels did most of the leading, practically speaking, and Hitler just made out with Eva Braun and played ‘pin the sharp pokey object on the poor innocent Jew’ , you’ve got a great argument that Hitler wasn’t a great leader, because he wasn’t a leader at all, period.

And then you could argue, yes, Goebbel did all the heavy lifting, but Hitler was charisma personified and Goebbels could never achieve that on his own because he was failcakes at public speaking and rallifying people. And even though Hitler didn’t do much otherwise, there would be no Jew-hating Nazi Aryan is Awesome Kill All Humans Germany without Hitler, so in that sense he is a great leader – well then, you’ve got yourself a H1, my friend.

(PLZ NOT TO BE BELIEVING THIS FOR HISTORICAL ACCURACY. I don’t actually know how competent Hitler and Goebbels were. And I don’t know what the hell Goebbels did besides Holocausting innocent Jews, the little shit.)

The Exam

FEAR NOT, CITIZENS. The exam is considerably easier to study for and do well on than the essay. For one thing, it’s usually 2 hour exam, if I recall correctly. 2 short essays. Whack them out and you’re done.

Remember what I said about the Same Old Dudes setting the Same Old Syllabus every year?

Well, the same is true for exams. The same questions usually come out. Just worded slightly different. Or sometimes even verbatim.

As such, the best way to prepare for exams is to look at exam questions from the previous year or two, and prepare answers for those.

I would usually pick out 3 past exam questions from 3 different topics a day or two before the exam, borrow the textbook from the library, and use the textbook and the readings to write out as detailed an answer for each question as I could. Learn/memorize my answers, head into the exam hall, bang that sucker out, and Bam. Done. H1.

Of course, when doing past exams, pick topics that are also in the syllabus this year. That kinda goes without saying.

(But I said it anyway. Just in case.)

Even if you find that the exam questions for a particular topic you prepared on aren’t the same as the previous year’s question at all, by preparing an answer to the previous year’s question you’ve likely learnt enough information to be able to write out a pretty decent answer anyway.

And that, my friend, is the key to getting a great mark in an Arts subject in Melbourne Uni.

As with anything, to do well you must be prepared to put in effort. If you can cruise on by and get an awesome mark without studying at all, I envy you. And also, you don’t need to be reading this! But it’s not just about the volume of effort, but channeling it productively. Minimum effort for maximum gains – which hopefully these posts will help you achieve. The weather’s too nice to be stuck indoors for too long anyway.

(Unless it’s winter. But that’s gloomy enough without extra studying. SO THERE.)