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I am tearing through a fat pile of essay proposals with a pencil right now, and some overarching suggestions come to mind. This may be helpful for those of you seeking to become a better academic writer, or even those who want to ascend beyond the point of moderate retardation which appears to be the status quo.

1. Read the fucking project hand-out. Read it once and then read it again. It has a list of things you should include in your paper, stuff like "clearly articulate your thesis" and "make sure you use more than one site of analysis" and "don't use MSN smiley faces to prove a point". It's a hand-holding list. When you submit a three-page stream of consciousness diatribe about how House M.D. is disrespectful to his patients because he is jealous of their working legs, you are slowly killing me.

2. They have these webpages, see, where you can find examples of how to cite sources. MLA, APA, whatever you want. PRINTING OFF A MACLEAN'S ARTICLE AND ATTACHING IT TO YOUR PAPER WITH A RUBBER BAND IS NOT THE SAME AS CITING.

3. You spelt my name wrong. And the prof's name. And your name. Q: How is this even possible? A: Microsoft Word spellcheck.

4. Once upon a time in undergrad, I wrote many a paper that was absolute bullshit. For the most part, these somehow passed rigorous academic inspection because I talked a lot about the "Internet" and used a lot of gigantic buzzwords I stole from this aforementioned "net". The end.

Kids, I can spot this crap from a mile away. Even name-dropping micro-macrosociology and hypermegaconflict theory doesn't change the fact that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, and haven't for at least three paragraphs.

5. This reminds me of teaching seven-year olds in Korea: then and than are not the same word. They are different! Also alienation is not "alien nation".

And that's about the limit of my vile condescension, at least for today.

Posted by Chris at 05:18 PM >> Commentations (5)