Been There: Done That - Getting Started on an Essay

In this series I’m sharing tips and advice for university students, from my experiences as a recent graduate, current Master’s student and now undergrad lecturer. As I say in the classes I teach, without wanting to brag, I did well at uni, I know what I am talking about and I want others to do well too. So I’ve been writing some articles with my thoughts and tips, that hopefully will offer something additional to the hundreds of how to survive uni articles out there. Those articles are great and I read tonnes of them but to be honest there’s only so many times I can read “schedule in breaks”. The other genre of that advice may as well have been written by your professors the way they insist the only way to get ahead is read everything on the reading list, and it’s not practical or helpful to suggest things like that when we know the current student experience is more about juggling work and study, commuting and dealing with a student mental health crisis.

This is a quick one today, as I am writing it at the end of my first week of Master's lectures and teaching on the undergrad. In both the seminars I taught this week I got my students to look at the coursework and assessment requirements for their modules – yes, even on week one, even for the first years. The reason I do this is because while your module leaders are interested in giving you all the background, history and understanding of their module, my job as a seminar lecturer is to get your coursework done and done well (the other part is putting into practise the bigger learning and abstract concepts of the lectures).

So here I am going to suggest some tips for these early weeks, and getting started on your coursework tasks. If you have exams in your module, my suggestion is to get hold of past papers and apply some of the techniques here in picking apart what will be expected of you, as well as making a list of potential topics.

1.??????Download your coursework brief, save it or print it off.

2.??????Don’t panic – this is early in the semester so if you don’t understand any of it, that’s because you haven’t been taught it. The reason we’re looking at this now is so you will know when these topics do come up that they might be relevant for your coursework and you can bookmark, save or highlight them for the coursework.

3.??????Check your deadlines, write them down and plan your time accordingly. Actually, plan to submit a day or two before, to account for last-minute Turnitin scores, tech failures and life. I hope you won’t be using the days immediately before the deadline to be writing, but life gets in the way – you might still be using this time to format your reference list or cutting down your word count though.

4.??????Pull apart the question, title or task – here I usually suggest my students get two coloured highlighters (or do this on their digital copies, if you’re not a hundred years old like me). First highlight the action verbs, the doing words, this tells you what the task is, what is expected of you (describe, compare, discuss, evaluate) etc. In your second colour highlight the key terms, these will be the starting point for your literature review.

One of my coursework essays looks like this (this is a master’s level question, so don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense, or looks really long, it’s just for example):

What are the benefits and drawbacks of the medical model of mental illness? Critically evaluate the pros and cons of psychiatric diagnoses, the impact of past experiences on mental health and potential alternatives to conceptualise service user experience.?

"Critically evaluate" are my doing words, and "medical model", "psychiatric diagnoses", "past experiences" and "service user experience" are my topic areas. So taking this question I have my overall topic (the medical model), and I have some areas I know I need to cover.

5.??????With this information I am going to make a skeleton plan of my essay, for this step it would look something like this:

Title (copy and pasted from the question - What are the benefits and drawbacks of the medical model of mental illness?)

Introduction

Pros of psychiatric diagnosis

Cons of psychiatric diagnosis

Impact of past experiences

Potential alternatives

Conclusion

Here you can see I haven’t added any new content yet, but I have made sure I will cover all of the areas that I’ve been told to. This is my skeleton plan so as I read or have a lecture I will slot in thoughts, studies or papers, into those headings.

6.??????From the step above you’ll start fleshing out your skeleton plan as you go along through your lectures and lit review, but another thing I do before that even starts is break down the word count, so the task is less daunting. This is a four thousand word essay, so I know what I’ve got to play with – check if your department has margins, generally, they say +- 10% - so at the top of my page I’ll write word count: 3,600 – 4,400 as a reminder.

Introductions and conclusions I generally dedicate 10% of the wordcount to* (this is in an essay, rather than a research report, where your intro and lit review is more of your wordcount) so now I know I have 3,200 words for the body of my essay. I have four points to make so 800 words for each. This sounds common sense, but it’s worth noting down – one because it makes the task look less daunting, two because you want to give equal consideration to each point.

*at this stage you don’t know what your intro and conclusion will be, but on my plan I know that in my introduction I’ll need to define key terms, outline the importance of the essay and then signpost my reader what I will talk about in the essay. For the conclusion I’ll write myself a note saying “summary of points made, here’s what I said, implications of this, and a final statement.”

7.??????The bit that gets you higher marks is critical evaluation. I cannot stress this enough. In first year I tended to add a point on critical evaluation at the end, but it is a better tactic to weave your critical evaluation in. Every time you make a point, ask yourself what the alternative could be, could there be another interpretation – at this point lots of students are like “I don’t know what the answer is because some studies say X and some say Y” this is great, because that is your critical evaluation! At undergrad and particularly first year “this study says this,?however other studies suggest something else” is perfectly fine. I have noticed in my experience that students feel they personally are being asked to answer the question posed in the title, and at this level, it’s more about presenting the ideas and showing you understand them (this may be psychology specific but humans are complicated and unique, so the best answer is often “both, and…”)

So, after each point I might write in another colour, Critical Evaluation. Then again as I go along, I’ll find a study or I’ll have a question that isn’t answered, that I’ll slot in here.

Now my plan looks like this:

Title (copy and pasted from the question - What are the benefits and drawbacks of the medical model of mental illness?)

Introduction (400 words) – define topic and terms. Why is this important, why do we need to know? Signpost what I’ll be saying in this essay

Pros of psychiatric diagnosis (800 words)

-?????????Have I critically evaluated this?

Cons of psychiatric diagnosis (800 words)

-?????????Have I critically evaluated this?

Impact of past experiences (800 words)

-?????????Have I critically evaluated this?

Potential alternatives (800 words)

-?????????Have I critically evaluated this?

Conclusion (400 words) - summary of points made, here’s what I said, implications of this, and a final statement/ call to action or identify further debate needed etc (SO many essays end abruptly, probably due to running out of words, but this is the closing thought you leave your marker with, so do try to wrap up your essay).

So there you have it. I really recommend doing this early, and keeping your skeleton plan open alongside your lectures, or printed out in the front of your folders, so you can add to it as you go along. By the time you sit down to actually write your essay you already know what you want to say and where, as well as have some points and studies ready to elaborate on.

Godspeed.