How to finish your paper quickly, without compromising quality
–In nature, living things are designed to be energy efficient. Instinct dictates that we try to spend the least amount of effort to get by. The problem is modern life has an extremely long-time horizon.
Losing weight, studying a foreign language, getting a degree, learning to drive, take a lot of time and consistent effort. So, people being people, we tend to postpone things and we tell ourselves that we still have plenty of time to do it.
“I’m going to start dieting on Monday”, or “I’ll do my homework the weekend before its deadline”, are common excuses that we tell ourselves. Procrastination is just as integrated into our nature as ambition.
So, regardless of how you got into this situation, you have to write a last-minute essay.
What’s the fastest way to write an essay? How can you condense a two-week task into something that you have to complete during a Sunday afternoon?
This article aims to walk you through that process.
Calm down
It’s never good to make important decisions based on emotions. It’s the day before the deadline, you are tired and have other things to do, and you are panicking slightly. You are thinking of all the steps that you have to go through (research, outlining, planning, writing, editing, and spell checking), and this is making you even more put off and discouraged.
In fact, this is what can ruin any effort: trying to think of it all at once. It is much more productive to take things “step by step”. How do you eat an entire cow? Well, one bite at a time.
Psychology also tends to back this up. People are often afraid of starting a task, but once they get started, it is not nearly as bad as their imagination plays it out.
Remember when you were a kid and were afraid to jump off the trampoline at the local pool? But once you started with your first jump, it became easy to do it again.
Sitting in your bed and torturing yourself with thoughts of how much you don’t want to do this, isn’t going to help you to write your last-minute essay.
Pre-game your actions
Two lumberjacks were competing to see how many trees they could cut in an hour. One of them worked very hard, skipped his allotted break, and he still lost. Then, he turned to the winner and asked “how could you beat me, even though I was cutting for the entire time, non-stop?”.
The winner explained that he spent the first 20 minutes sharpening his ax, and then he got to work
Many students are similar to the lumberjack who lost. They start writing chaotically, and even though they put in a massive amount of effort, their essay gets a low grade.
Meanwhile, a smarter student will take the time to plan out an outline of the paper, with sections, arguments, intros, and conclusions. They “sharpen” before they cut.
If you have a good outline, the essay writing process will be much smoother. It will feel like coloring within the lines of a coloring book.
Also, it will prevent any asymmetry in your text. If you are writing each argument at a time, it is hard to allocate the right amount of words. It is not common for the student to notice that he/she has spent 150 words on the intro, and another 200 on the first subheading.
Of course, you’re not going to delete all of that work, so you’ll try to cram another subheader and the conclusion to not go beyond the allotted 500-word target.
Almost 80% of the work is done if you plan out the paper before you start writing. Out of all the steps to write an essay fast, Outlining is the most underrated and effective.
Don’t be afraid to get creative
In part, this shortcoming can be blamed on some teachers. Students think that their teacher wants the student to just rephrase an article that they found online. It comes as no surprise that students hate writing papers because it is seen as needless busy work.
In truth, if the teacher wanted to test how much you memorized, he would have just given you a test. An essay assignment is meant to test your academic argumentative skills.
“Water is wet”. Ok…why? How did you come to that conclusion? Are there situations when water isn’t wet? What causes water to be wet, and so on.
Regardless of whether you are in college or high school, all of the knowledge that you learn will be wasted, if it stays locked in your head. You have to learn to express yourself.
Ever since we were little, teachers used to tell us: “put it in your own words”.
In order to put something in your own words and explain it, you have to understand it first. By requiring you to say it, you have to go through the process of rationalizing and debating the point in your head.
Hire a pro
How to write a good essay fast? Well, you don’t have to write it yourself. All of the previous advice was for people who are on a deadline but can turn in their paper if they work hard and smart.
Yet, some people genuinely cannot spare the time for a certain task. For example, some people are working while they are in college. They have to work a full-time job, study with the rest of the students, and take care of the normal responsibilities of life like cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, etc.
For this type of person, there will be situations when they cannot finish an extra piece of homework. There simply aren’t enough hours in a day.
Thankfully, this problem is so common that an entire online industry has grown overnight. An essay writing service such as Trust My Paper promises to deliver a quality essay in a short amount of time.
If you want to free up a weekend so you can go on a date, visit your parents, or get rid of exhaustion by catching up on sleep, be sure to hire a pro to do some of the heavy lifting.
Be your editor
The internet is full of press releases and essays with good content. However, many of these articles feature mistakes that make them look sloppy. It’s a shame to read a piece that is making good points, only to see typos, misused words, or copy+paste content.
It is very important to do a final check-up of your paper. Be sure to see that there are no spelling mistakes or phrases that are used too much. Also, the greatest mistake that an academic could make is to plagiarize. The essay should be checked for plagiarism.
Thankfully, there are many online tools (both free and premium) that promise to facilitate this process. Choose accordingly depending on your budget.
Conclusion
Most people who risk not delivering a paper on time have problems that are not related to the paper itself. Every student is tempted to postpone a task until the very last moment, and then be intimidated by the vast amount of work that has to be done in a single afternoon.
But if you don’t manage to avoid procrastination, you can always complete the task by getting to work and not giving yourself the time to dread and think about the amount of work. Outlining, editing, and proper spell checks will also improve the process.
If all else fails, you can always hire a professional essay writing service.
