Academic Writing Blog

Socializing: More than Partying

Take advantage of office hours when you have question and not just after you receive a grade that you don’t like. Look up your professors, online and in library databases, to find out what they have written and published, if it interests or impresses you, let them know. Just because everything about socializing isn’t easy for you or the way others do it strikes you as insincere or manipulative doesn’t mean that you can’t find a way to engage your department, both professors and students, in a way that develops your professional contacts and suits you.

Don’t just get a degree, get skills.

In college, you are developing several sets of skills. Among them are learning professionalism, developing your written and spoken communications skills, applying logic and developing analyses, as well as learning about a field or fields in depth. In some schools, this takes over completely and can leave new graduates out in the cold, especially in a tough job market. There are countless graduates in English, communications, and business every year and a lot of them will end up looking the same on paper.

How to approach a rewrite.

It’s important to think about readability, quality of information, and quality of organization, when writing. Often times, the best way to improve your writing grades is to improve your writing style so that your papers are a pleasure to read, even if the research is light or imperfect. Just like you probably prefer reading that is pleasurable, so does your grader.

Are Online Classes a Good Idea?

The answer is, it depends. The most important question to ask when approaching online classes or distance learning is probably, Are you taking the class to fulfill a requirement OR to learn new information or skills.

“I literally do not know how to study.”

Studying is a problem for many students, especially if they’ve always done well enough school simply by doing the readings, the homework, and paying basic attention in class. Different people hit their personal wall at different times. Some people never do because they avoid classes they are not certain of succeeding at, or they lower their expectations rather than raising their efforts. The truth is, all of that is fine. It’s OK to avoid challenges; it’s OK to seek them.

Dealing with Mental Illness as a Student

There won’t be any answers here, but sometimes it’s good to be reminded that there are options, especially because so many mental illnesses function in ways that hide your options from you. Depression and anxiety each make it their job to the erase possibility of improvement. Other illnesses persuade you that nothing was ever wrong in the first place; it’s just other people’s perceptions that are off. No blog post can account for everything that mental illness will put a person through

Summer Classes Are Over, Now What?

Relax. Yes, folks, that is the advice. Plan to spend two weeks doing as little as you can get away with before you start readying yourself for fall. Go to bed early, sleep late, have an extra helping or two of your favorite foods, and focus on rest and recovery. Read your favorite book, watch your favorite moves, spend time with your favorite people, whatever works for you!