subject: College Essays, Are You Prepared To Write One? [print this page] Most students have a great time in college, although many of them find assignments, essays and exams a bit of a chore. It just isn't enough to enjoy your professors, you need to learn from them and be able to use what you have learned to write essays and pass exams.
Nobody really knows why the word essay seems to strike fear in the heart of even the most able student, but it does. A student may contribute well in class and are very diligent about attending lectures, doing their homework, and yet they are scared of writing essays.
There are various ways you can go about writing college level essays once you know what the professor expects from you. Your professor is there to help and if you're not sure what you need to do for a particular essay, you should ask your professor to explain it to you more clearly.
Once you understand what you are being asked to do, you are more than halfway there with the essay. Most essay questions are quite clear about what you are expected to do and once you recognize that, the rest is easy.
It's best to start gathering research material for your essay as soon as possible The material may include the notes that you have taken in lectures, any class handouts you may have had from your tutor and books and journal articles from the college library. Once you have studied the material, you have what you need to go onto the next stage of your task which is planning the essay.
It's easier to write a good essay once you have a plan that should consist of what you need to include in the essay and how it should be constructed. The planning stage of an essay is a lot easier if you brainstorm the ideas first.
Brainstorming involves writing down everything that you can think of in relation to your essay question. When you brainstorm you simply write down the first thing that come to mind. Once you have done the brainstorming you can look through what you have written, discard anything you think is irrelevant and then number the rest of the points in order of importance.
Once the ideas are numbered take one at a time and expand on that idea. You'll be surprised at how much you actually know already..
Expanding on the points you have noted down should provide enough material for a rough draft of the main part of your essay. Read through everything that you have written and think what conclusions you might draw from what you already have. Write down your conclusions and then read through the whole thing again, this is where you can do some tweaking so that the main points raised, follow logically onto the conclusion.
The introduction to an essay is usually the last part you write rather than the first because it's in the introduction that you tell the reader what you are going to say or argue. The main body will then be saying what is laid down in the introduction and the conclusion really tells the reader that you have said what you intended to say.
