I think grad school is the perfect way to kill a love for research papers.
Not interesting. Not that informative. And just plain time consuming.
I'll try to remember for my current class not to leave my research paper until the last minute.
At least it always gets done, right?
And I have yet to receive anything other than a high A on my research papers.
But... here I sit... with my references scattered around me and about 1/3 of my paper written.
At least it's the hard part.
In case I haven't shared how I write research papers:
1. Find references, compile reference list.
2. Read through references. Highlight portions to be used as quotes or main ideas.
3. Make general outline of paper.
4. Go through all references and add quotes to outline. In the process, make outline more specific.
4. Center, bold, italicize points in outline according to headers (if you're using APA, at least).
5. Write paragraphs around the quotes and re-arrange as necessary.
6. Write intro and conclusion based on the rest of the paper.
7. Write Abstract, which is basically the same as the intro and conclusion... who thought this format up anyways?
8. Do a real quick proof read.
9. Make sure all citations are correctly formatted.
10. Done! Yes, I added the last two steps just to make it an even 10.
Now, that system may not work for everyone, but it sure works well for me.
Like I said, haven't gotten lower than a high A yet.
I think I'm taking grad school for granted. It really hasn't been that bad, thusfar... and I'm almost finished.
I'm thankful for the degree I am earning... and I am thankful it is almost finished.
What am I going to do with it? Be a stay at home mom.
But it'll be good to have.
Today was all about homework and relaxing.
We went and got some groceries. Just the necessities.
Since Matthew bought a rifle our bank account has been living from paycheck to paycheck.
Well, I guess it was a combination of the rifle and our tickets to California.
P.S. We leave in 10 days! Woot!
So... after that little vacation things will begin to even out again.
And when I say living paycheck to paycheck, I mean that I don't want to move around our savings at all.
Matt always whines "we have $____ in the bank!". But I am not willing to move our nest egg... or whatever that is.
No, I don't have plans for it. Unless we adopt.
But it's good to have, right?
Maybe we find out the Marines aren't for us. We do the 4 years and then we buy a house.
It'll be nice to have that nice, big down payment ready.
Ok, enough of a break. Time to crank out some more of this paper.
I am currently adding in all of the quotes to the outline. That is the meat of the paper after all.
All the fluff can be written in minutes, literally.
And... break!
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