Finals Week Help: Fool Proof Way to Write a Research Paper

Finals. The time of the college kids year where your drink more coffee than consume food. Read a book longer than you sleep. And don’t shower for days. At least that’s how it is for me.

Many finals are the dreaded cumulative exams, with professors expecting you to remember every detail of every lecture and every sentence in the textbook. Yeah right… But during my time in school, research papers have been the main finals for my classes.

After 5 semesters of writing final research papers, as well as many others in my writing courses, here are the easy steps to write a research paper fast and simple.

Pick your topic

Try to think of something out of the box, because the ideas that first come to mind are what everyone else will be writing about. Be unique, so you don’t get compared to another classmate.

Research

Find credible sources that support your topic. My favorite site is Google Scholar. It’s free and easy to use. When you find these sources, cite them right away on a Word Document, and then under the citation, copy and paste information that can be used in your final paper.

Do this for every source you find, and then you’ll have all your information in one spot. You wont have to search the Internet for the source ever again.

Create Your Thesis

Using the research, what is the main point that your paper is trying to convey? Use this as your thesis statement.

Organize

Using the research information, categorize it on to an outline. Find the information you want to use it your intro, organize the other information into the topics that will be our body paragraphs.

Add in Transitions

Now you have all your research, and it is organized into the subtopics of your paper. In the outline, add the transitions you will use to go from one body paragraph to the next.  Here is a great website full of transition phrases, http://larae.net/write/transition.html

Write the Paper

Using your outline with the research and transitions, write the paper! Paraphrase your information and only use direct quotes when there is no other way to say the information. Don’t forget to do your Work Cited page. Lucky for you, you already cited all your sources!

Edit

Lastly, edit your paper. First, read the paper like you normally would, then read the paper starting with the last paragraph working your way up to the first. By editing it in these to ways, you will be able to catch grammar or spelling mistakes you may have missed before.

Try not to procrastinate too much writing your paper. All of the steps above could be completed in one day, but it is best if each step is given its own individual day.

Good luck on finals and may the odds be ever in your favor.