A Day In The Life: Essay Writing

Hello all!

It's the middle of semester at Uni and for us Arts students, this means essays on essays on ESSAYS. Also means that there will hardly ever be a break between essays until the semester ends. Hooray! 

We are currently at the end of our mid-sem/Easter break. Which isn't really a break, but more like a "non-teaching period". Especially since Claire has had three essays to do/due in the past week. Killing it. 

And since this blog is about our life, our experiences, we figured why not make a post about our essay writing days for you all. So, buckle-up, friends, and feel the relate-ability. 

ALSO, stick to end, where we'll give some essay-writing tips!

On a typical day that we spend essay writing, we start with lying in bed, buried under our doonas and blankets in our respective rooms, denying the fact that we have to get up.
It's the hollidaaaaaaays. We don't have class, whhhhhhyyyyy do we need to get up?

And then one of us get's out of bed, and you can hear the floorboards creaking as they walk around the apartment. This guilts the other into getting up because HEY LOOK, I DID IT, YOU LAZY PERSON. (This is what being a twin is like. Constant competition. No joke)

And so we roll out of bed, put a jumper on (Claire has been wearing our hometown footy team hoodie and Grace has commandeered Claire's college jumper), get a cup of tea, eat breakfast, brush teeth and then sit at our desks. 

This is when we think, "Oh, I'll just check Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/YouTube, it won't take long." 
This takes about an hour. 

Long story short, it takes a while for us to actually start writing something. Sometimes we when we are motivated we start writing at like, 10am. (edit from Grace: Speak for yourself, I start writing at 9am thank-youverymuch)

And so, we have started writing (somewhat). 

THEN, the procrasta-tweeting starts. 

Honestly.

Why do we do this?

Maybe we should write a 2, 000 word essay entirely in 140 character increments/tweets

Procrasta-tweets turns into procrasta-watching

And then the singing starts.

We like listening to music while we write. Since it's autumn, Claire has been listening to Vance Joy's album on repeat (he's just got the vibe). Grace is always listening to wedding mixes on 8tracks. Or Broadway. Because Broadway time is ALL the time. 

Sometimes for essay writing days we go to the library (even during the Uni break). Which works for a while...

But then we just hit a wall and go loopy.

(WHY IS GRACE ON WIKIPEDIA?! NEVER REFERENCE WIKI.)
(Update: She was using it for background knowledge, not research)

All in all, essay writing get's a bit tough, and it will take over your life and make you feel like everything you're writing is awful, and you just don't care anymore.

Don't worry, we understand.

But here is the thing: keep pushing through! You can do it! Just keep writing and before you know it, you are over the +/- 10% minimum of the word count. Hooray!

But here are some tips that we have picked up over the past year for you:

1. Use actual books from the library. E-books and journal articles are great, but if you look for a book in the library catalogue and go find the book on the shelf, you will find other books in the same section that could be helpful and relevant. You could end up going in looking for one book and walking out with three. Also, it demonstrates breadth of research, so it's always a good thing that your tutors will appreciate.

2. Another good thing about using books is that most come with a Reference list. Look through what references the author used, find them, and use them yourself. Stacking up the number of references you use. (Because let's be real, who hasn't struggled to find "10-15 sources" for an essay?)

3. Start writing your essay a couple of days before your essay is due, and set word targets. For example, this is a tip we picked up from our friend Marissa, and we set 500 word targets for the day across a varying number of days, depending how long the essay is. This means that there is less stress on you while you're writing, you can take more breaks or get finished early and have the night off. Breaks are important.
However, if you have reached the 500 words but feel like you could do more, go for it. It makes you feel more accomplished and you might surprise yourself. Claire set herself a word target the other day and she ended up writing the whole essay. 

However, we know that everyone has different methods for what works for them, and that's cool. If it works for you, go with it. This is just what works for us :)

In conclusion, (we can never escape it!) essay writing is a unique and strange experience. But we get the job done! We cannot stress this enough: We do get our essays done on time. Procrastination and all.

(Edit from Grace: I think the fact that we leave a whole week usually just to write an essay allows us to procrastinate as much as we do but still manage to finish our assignments the day before their due.)

So good luck, fellow students! We believe in you, and hey, maybe send us some of your procrastination tweets to us at @graceful_claire. We'd love to hear them.

And whatever you do, please stay away from the Buzzfeed Quizzes.

Stay Gold!

Claire.