College Essay Writing Tips

For many people studying in school or college, writing a research paper is a tedious task. It’s even more difficult challenge for those who we view such assignments as useless, obligatory, routine, too difficult and just ones that take their precious time away. With such attitude, surely it’s hard to gather enough strength and inspiration to write something good. But if we take this assignment as a challenge to ourselves, a chance to develop our mind and become more capable of understanding this world around us, the accents and attitude shifts to completely new area.

My claim is that writing college research papers, more specifically the very act of research, develops our critical thinking. And without critical thinking, without ability to compare and analyze different facts and information, people are merely dumb. They get brainwashed very easily, as they accept every bit of information without a slightest effort of intellectual challenge. Advertisement, media, propaganda own their brains, creating distorted image of reality and dictating values and principles that are most convenient for the system, corporations, and virtually anyone who has influence on such people.

Unintelligent people do not have their own opinion, they know only what they are taught to, either by school, or family environment, or community, or certainly, media. They just repeat words and attitudes, like parrots.

If you follow this pattern of development, you become a slave to life situations and can suddenly wake up in the mid forties to realize that you have a job that you hate, are surrounded by people you don’t like, and you have not really ever made a single decision on your own. This is not a question of fate or luck, it’s a question of intelligence and self-confidence, self-respect in the end. How can one may the choice about their life if he has not learned to make a choice in the first place? If he’s used to repeating and conforming only?

Of course, I cannot say that our educational system is a key solution to this problem. Sometimes it has more drawbacks than virtues: it’s not able to get people interested, it's obligatory, and it contains a fair deal of brainwashing that we may have to get rid of during our entire lives. Like those ready opinions about events, processes and certain persons embedded in factual information in history books without any hint that such information is disputable.

And this is what makes us dislike school or college, avoid it. But as every thing in the world, education has its good side as well. In the sense, it does teach some techniques of thinking and developing our mind. You might say that research paper is not the best technique for analysis, math would do much better with this task. This statement is quite fair, math develops our abstract thinking and logic, our ability to analyze. But it also has some tricks: you are taught one way to deal with the problem, and your task is to recognize this way in further situations and apply it accordingly. None challenges mathematical rules (except very small number of prominent folks). But you develop your thinking as the number of rules grows and it gets more and more difficult to recognize the right solution for each task. You have to think fast, and think differently. This method, while certainly good, will not fit those who does not feel comfortable in the world of numbers.

In this case, a research paper is a perfect instrument of self-development. Why? Because in the first place, this is a research. And its very idea implies your ability to see different solutions for one problem, ability to find various points of view, compare them, analyze, evaluate and define the ones that you feel best suitable for the situation, or formulate your own opinion. A research paper is always about exploration. Thus, a thesis «F.D.Roosevelt was a president of the USA» or «The Earth goes around the Sun» will not do for a research paper (though the latter did in Middle Ages), because it does not contain any challenge, any problem to explore. In research paper, you learn to see many sides of one problem, many opinions. And you have to deal with that.

No person was born to become a part of a crowd, a faceless sheep or parrot. We all have inner aspiration to perfection, a need to become realized, an in-born desire to know the truth. I don’t even have to prove this to you as you certainly had this feeling many times in your life, a need to create something and be someone, perhaps you just weren’t sure what this «something» was. This inherent need is what makes us human. Those who managed to fulfill this need have become true masters of their lives. But many of us just lack faith in our ability to create something significant.

If you don’t like writing research papers just because you’ve got some low grades on a few of them, don’t be so quick to give up. If every man who takes a guitar first time in their lives and fails to produce a beautiful melody, gave up, we would not have rock, blues, jazz, funk, punk, etc. etc. - all modern music at all. If everybody, who tried to do an acrobatic stunt gave up after first fall, we would not have acrobatics, a beautiful sport showing amazing abilities of human body and mind’s capacity to control it. Mastering every art takes practice. Only with practice you can learn to do something well. You have to learn the art of writing research papers, some basic recommendations and tips on how to make your research profound and meaningful. Naturally, first we practice on some easy topics with not so many challenges, and as we succeed on these ones, the task complicates, and just like in mathematical problem, our mind becomes suddenly able to analyze and produce new ideas.

I don’t say, now be an A+ student on all your courses. The true original meaning of education was to help people find a field of human thought, a science that would interest them most. We don’t have to toil on all subjects, even on those we’re not inclined to, just to be smart. We have a great opportunity to find what really appeals to us, makes us interested, helps us develop our in-born talents. So don’t turn your back on entire school just because of few teachers or subjects.

Also, I don't say that we can learn only in school. All our life is the process of learning. However, school, and especially college, can be a good environment, as it offers you communication with people who have expertize in some areas of human life (teachers) and some insights on problems in world and science that you can develop, if you get by chance interested.

Moreover, it’s a real betrayal of our mind to stay ignorant and uneducated, in a world and time where all information is so easily available. You don’t even have to go to the library or this very same college. You can get information on virtually everything, online. Now, for instance, on Iraq war you can read information from the government, opinions of people who think the war was necessary to fight terrorism, of those who oppose the occupation and think that its goal was getting control of oil, presence in the region and maintaining American currency dominant, you can read opinions of European and Russian journalists and scholars on geopolitics, you can even read media in Iraq, different Iraqi analysts and even communicate with real people from the region via chats or instant messengers to get their local vision of the situation! In the whole history of humanity there has never been so much information available as now, on every subject. The only thing needed is desire to learn.

An ability to think critically creates a great value in your life. You become a decision-maker. You’re not just blindly living a life without choices, a conventional, boring, designed by someone else existence.

As you develop you mind via research, soon you will be able to see alternatives not only in academic topics, but in real life situations. You’ll find out that you’re researcher of your own life, an active participant, a critical evaluator. A creator.

***

On this site, I will be posting some useful information on making good research papers. Some advices, little techniques and secrets that will help you start your own research with enthusiasm and confidence.