Advice to Start the Semester

Today's topic: Advice to start off the semester

This week's writing tip was inspired by one of the new students in our program, who wrote to me asking what general advice I would give to someone new to graduate school.  However, my advice applies not only to new students, but to all students.  Hopefully these suggestions will help you manage your writing more effectively.

1. Ask questions. 

Many students are reluctant to ask questions of their instructors.  Sometimes it's because of shyness.  Sometimes it's because they don't want to "bother" the instructor.  Sometimes it's because they haven't taken the time to read through their syllabus, rubric, or assignment prompt carefully enough to formulate any questions.  By the time they realize they're not clear on what is expected of them, it might be too late to ask substantive questions.

It is crucial to make sure that you fully understand what is expected of you in class.  If you don't fully understand a writing assignment, or something on a grading rubric or syllabus, ask for clarification.  If the answer you get doesn't fully clarify the situation, then keep on asking questions until you are 100% clear on what you're supposed to do.  Remember, if your instructor doesn't know you're confused, s/he can't help you.  Most instructors have had the frustrating experience of having to give a student a low grade on a paper because s/he just didn't understand the assignment.  When this happens, nine times out of ten the student never asked a single question about the paper before turning it in.

The same goes when you're working with me on a paper or presentation.  If I give you a comment or suggestion that you don't fully understand, make sure to ask me to explain more thoroughly.  That way, we can both be confident that we're communicating clearly.

And remember: Questions aren't bothersome.  They are a crucial part of the learning process, and you're here to learn.  We are here to help you do that.

2. Read your assignment prompts, rubrics, and syllabi carefully.  Turn your assignment prompts into checklists.

Let me give you an example to illustrate why it's so important to read assignment prompts carefully.  Many instructors write assignment prompts in paragraph form.  Most writing assignments will ask for a number of different things--some description or definition, some explanation, some analysis or interpretation, etc.  Often, we ask students to analyze by using the word "Why?"  That one word can ask you to delve more deeply into a topic.  But it's a three-letter word, and can be easily missed in a block of text.  If you miss that "Why?" you might end up leaving that important analysis out of your paper, which could have serious repercussions for your grade.

I can tell you that one of the main problems I see in student writing is a failure to fulfill each of the requirements of the assignment.  Students frequently, FREQUENTLY miss something--often, it's something crucial. 

So.  Read course materials carefully.  Ideally, read assignment prompts aloud.  Reading aloud forces you to slow down, so you will be less likely to miss something.  Also, it's a good idea to turn assignment prompts into checklists.  If your prompt is written as a paragraph, copy and paste it into a new document and put each requirement on a separate line.  Once you've written a first draft of your paper, you can use your checklist to make sure you haven't missed anything. 

3. Seek out help when you need it.

Again, we (the faculty) are here to help you learn.  Don't flounder around alone.  If you need help, ask for it.  If the help you need is in writing or presentation prep, send me an email; that's what I'm here for. 

And please, if you need help, don't put it off.  I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a student say, "I WISH I'd come to see you earlier in the program!"  Often, a student puts off coming to see me until late in the game.  I can still help them then, but students who go this route often wish they'd asked for my help sooner.  Learn from their experience.

4. Read your writing out loud.

As I mentioned earlier, reading aloud forces you to slow down.  This alone makes you far more likely to catch mistakes--both big mistakes, like problems with sentence structure or organization, and small mistakes like typos.  Also, oddly enough, research shows that when we read silently we don't read every word on the page.  We skim our eyes over the text and pick up the meaning, but we don't "hear" how the sentences sound.  This means that we can easily miss confusing or awkward sentence structure in our own writing.  Reading aloud solves this problem.

There is a wealth of evidence in the field of composition and rhetoric (a.k.a. writing) that supports how helpful this technique is for writers.  You don't have to read your paper aloud every time, but you should do an oral read-through at least a couple of times before you turn in your final draft.

5. Use the resources available to you. 

For my part, this includes the "Writing Resources" website on Blackboard, my "Writing Tips" blog and "Writing Tip of the Week" emails, and the occasional brown-bag workshops I offer, not to mention my one-on-one consultation services. 

We also offer you many other terrific resources.  Beverly Hilton, the Medical Center Library's liason to the College of Nursing, is one example.  Beverly is a wonderful resource for any questions you may have about conducting a literature search, using the library websites or databases, etc.  Robert Shapiro, the Medical Center Library's resident EndNote guru, is another wonderful resource.  Robert is always happy to answer questions about the EndNote software, and he teaches classes in EndNote throughout the year. 

In addition to that, your advisor and professors are all wonderful sources of information and inspiration.  These are just a few examples of the many resources available to you here.

I could go on for another four pages, but I promised myself I'd stick to the top five.  I hope you found this week's post helpful.  As always, happy scribbling!