Papers

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Does anyone else find writing 7 page papers impossible?

Not really because I have done a few college papers above seven pages. Three so far in this academic here at Mason.

Not impossible, but definitely excruciating. I have a 5 page paper due Thursday, and a 10 page paper due next week. I know what I want to write about and how I want to say it, but actually doing so is like trying to tell someone how to build a rocketship in a language I have never learned. I don't think language is my natural language, if that makes any sense.

I wish I could offer you some advice, but honestly, I need some myself.

Crotchety-old-man here - if you had to do them on an electric typewriter, doing them on PC is just gravy...

I did a 16 page paper in English.

I was going to make it 30, but I just decided oh well.


Can you tell I like writing papers?

(Note: It was on a philosophical topic that I really enjoyed, Transhumanism.)

In general, I find them intolerably unpleasant. I have two reports due this semester, and it's like my major has turned on me.

When I took philosophy courses, it was fairly easy to write several pages (though never more than 10), but that's because philosophical language is very easy to organize - it has a logical flow which most papers really don't. There's nothing so beautiful as setting up your points and letting them fall into place to combine to annihilate someone else's argument.

I count myself lucky that I've scarcely had to write anything in the 6-10pp range, let alone in the 10+ range. Life is good when you major in math.

Papers probably employ some pretty beefy theory of mind stuff - you need to understand what the potential reader knows, and how they will process the organization of your paper. It's even harder when you factor in the fact that most papers seem to work under the assumption of an artificial audience, which adds a level of abstraction to it. Although the 'pedantic mode' works pretty well actually.

No, writing papers was something I enjoyed.

I can write papers many times the minimum length, without fluff.

yeah. 7 is cake now. i just wrote a 25 page grant application. now THAT was hard. by the time i was done i never wanted to look at it again.

Not impossible, just extremely tedious.

It bores the heck out of me, but I don't think it's impossible. I've done three 7+ pages this year (8, 11, and 14 pages), and I have one more to go.

They do suck, but I found outlines actually help me; I never use them on shorter papers.

depends really
i mostly just write lab reports
i have come up with some pretty lengthy papers in other courses too

but knowing you need 7 pages and waiting to start it and the start of it is horrible
i remember doing a paper for english comp 2 i think
i just needed some kind of jump start, it wasn't cheating but i looked up papers about it and there was a site full of papers
they show you the beginning for free which was exactly all i needed
sometimes it just seems like there's so many different ways to go you can't even find a starting point and what's worse is you can't find an ending point

The key in good papers which i don't even do anymore and should, is finishing ahead of time and having the teachers look at it
that way any comments they make should allow you to fix it into "their" view of perfect otherwise they're demented
oh, fixing this that and this is what you would do.... okay, now i can cater to your design