With the start of the school year, students will face old and new problems alike: having to adapt to a schedule, homework, exams and of course, essays. While essays can be one of the most entertaining, most creative parts of the course work they can also be stressful and challenging, as writing is not an easy feat.
Some of them try to cope with their problems on their own, while others choose to pay for writing papers and get professional help. The latter is more convenient and effective, as it guarantees timely delivery of a well-written paper without any struggles on your part. There are many reasons why students choose to get professional writing assistance, but the most common ones are:
- Complexity of the topic
- Lack of time
- Not enough research
When putting together an essay, students tend to face many issues: what do I write, and how do I do so ? How can I make my writing concise, readable ? How to summarize my points in a way that delivers as much information as possible, without being too verbose ? Another significant issue is the dreaded “writer’s block”: when the anxiety over what to write prevents the writer from coming up with ideas. When confronting this issues a writer can feel inadequate, but they shouldn’t: they are extremely common and fairly easy to solve. In this essay, I am going to explore some of the common writing problems that students face and how to solve them in a satisfactory manner.
First issue: writer’s block
Perhaps the most common issue is that of writer’s block. In the words of Tom Wolfe: […] I now know what writer’s block is. It’s the fear you cannot do what you’ve announced to someone else you can do, or else the fear that it isn’t worth doing. Everybody has experienced writer’s block when looking at an assignment, feeling their anxiety rise as their mind draws a blank and refuses to come up with ideas. This problem can stem from many issues: in essays without a given topic the possibilities can feel overwhelming, feeling that our essay might be lacking compared to our usual work or compared to other’s work, inability to get started because we feel “lazy” or “unsure of what to write”… However, at the core of this problem is approaching the process of writing in an unhelpful manner.
We experience writer’s block when we think of the finished essay, of the perfect product, and we can’t imagine how to get there. Instead, we should approach our essays like a work in progress that we can refine through editing: just start writing on any topic, read the essay, edit it and soon the essay that you couldn’t get started is good enough to be handed in !
Second issue: Inability to write in a concise manner
According to the Eberley Center of Carnegie University, most students admit that they are woefully unprepared to write essays. When asked about it, numerous students cite that they don’t know how to explain their ideas in a concise manner or how to configure a paper in a manner that is interesting, engaging and readable: most students start writing essays with little more in mind than a thesis statement and a required lenght, which often leads to “writing in circles”, repeating the same ideas with different words and adding fluff in hopes of meeting the required word lenght.
To avoid this, students should create a “skeleton” for their essays before they get started. Delineate the parts that your essay requires (often an introduction, a thesis statement, several paragraphs that explain your ideas and a conclusion or summary), summarize what core idea each part should include and improve from there. After that, the essay can be polished through editing.
Conclusion
There are many problems students commonly face in writing, with two of the most prominent ones being writer’s block and inability to write concisely. If students approach the essay as a work in progress, create a skeleton for it and improve it through rewriting and editing this problems can easily be dealt
References cited in the article:
Wolfe, Tom. “The Art Of Fiction No. 123”. Interview by George Plimton. The Paris Review, 1991.
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