How to lose in writing a term paper

 by Dennis Mumaugh


 

Ten proven ways to make your term paper harder:

  1. Don't do any research. After all the references on the web pages are enough. It isn't as if the instructor has read them.
  2. Don't look for basic sources. After all, the first two citations on Google ought to be enough.
  3. Charge off and write everything up without doing any research. Unless you are very unlucky, you'll make some bad assumption that forces all of the paper to be thrown out anyway.
  4. Jot some ideas down and fill in the blanks. After all developing a coherent theme and logical discussion is not needed for a technical paper.
  5. Just cut and paste some extracts from the web pages. It doesn't matter if they have any coherency. There is no chance you will be able to glue the ill-fitting pieces together. Also hope the instructor doesn't read web pages or use a plagiarism checking service.
  6. Don't start until three days before the assignment is due. Then pull three all-nighters in a row. Lack of sleep will ensure you write bad papers. With luck, you will get sick and blow some other classes too!
  7. Don't ask the professor any questions when questions come up; just put off working on the paper and hope the problems will magically solve themselves before the due date.
  8. Don't use any of the techniques that you learn in this class. This works best if you don't attend class at all, so you avoid polluting your mind with the course material.
  9. Don't bother doing any of the assignments; surely you are graded on only your final paper, right? Count on the extravagant mercy of the course staff and on having lots of time later on to finish the paper. Of course neither will materialize, and you'll get so far behind that you can't finish the paper!
  10. Don't do any planning. No schedules, not preliminary drafts, nothing but a single stream of consciousness document. After all we don't need to use any of the techniques we use for software development do we?