Recent content by Tommy

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    The “5-paragraph essay” is dying and good riddance

    The AI point is interesting. If ChatGPT can generate a perfect 5-paragraph essay in 3 seconds, why are we still teaching it? Professors are already shifting to in-class writing, oral presentations, and project-based assessments. The essay as a take-home assignment might be dying. My poli sci...
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    Stop writing to discover your argument. Write because you already have one.

    This is excellent advice for certain kinds of writing. For humanities papers where you're making a specific argument? Absolutely. You need that thesis locked down. But I'd offer a counterpoint from the sciences: sometimes the writing itself is analysis. When I write up results, I'm not just...
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    The "note to future me" trick that got me through essay writing. 📝

    I’ve heard writers call this "downhill writing"—you always stop at a point where you know what comes next, so starting the next day is easy. But you’ve taken it a step further with the actual note. I like it. My problem is I'm always too tired to write anything coherent at the end. Maybe I’ll...
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    Stuck choosing an essay topic. Do I pick what I love or what's "safe"?

    We can choose our own topic, which sounds great until you're staring at the infinite abyss of possible questions. My problem is that I have two very different ideas, and I can't decide which one to go with. Option A: The "I actually care about this" topic. I'm really interested in the ethics of...
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    Um... my professor said my essay "lacks argument." I thought an argument was a fight? 😅 Help!

    Okay, so I got my first college essay back and... I don't even know what happened. In high school, I always got A's on my essays. I did the same thing here—introduced the topic, wrote five paragraphs about it, wrapped it up nicely. And my professor wrote in big red letters: "This is summary, not...
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    I committed sacrilege: I wrote my introduction LAST. Here's why I'll never go back.

    I know, I know. Every writing teacher ever says "start with an introduction, it tells the reader where you're going." But for my last big essay, I tried the opposite. I wrote the entire paper—body paragraphs, conclusion, the works—and only wrote the introduction when everything else was done...
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