Why Your Essay Is Still Useful & Important After Handing It In

An essay is for life, not just for the semester.

Yes, you thought you could put that essay at the back of your mind, especially now it’s been marked and you didn’t get the marks you were hoping for.

But the last thing you should do is shelve that work and forget it ever happened.

Those pieces of paper contain your own work. Your sweat and toil. So if you could have done better, or want to do better, then you need to pay attention to your previous labour and what has become of it. For an insight on your essays, look at these 7 tips:

  1. Digest the feedback from your tutor – It’s for your own good. Don’t just moan and tut at your grade. Don’t make excuses or tell yourself that the tutor doesn’t know what they’re on about. Now is your chance to see what you could have done better, or read where you didn’t apply yourself. Put your pride to one side and take in the comments. I gained a lot of valuable help by doing this throughout my degree.
  2. Keep an open mind and take it easy – While it’s important to take in your feedback, it’s not so important to obsess over your actual marks. The more you worry, the harder it becomes to push forward with your academic development. What you need to do is take a relaxed approach to the results. Were you strong in one area and weak in another? Was a particular sentence or theory highlighted with a positive comment? You shouldn’t just make note of areas for improvement, you also need to focus on when you did the right things. With a bit of balance, you’ll find it a lot easier to cope with the less effective parts of your work.
  3. Read your essay again and see what you think – When you take a fresh view of your work from your own perspective, are you happy that you handed the work in? Are you so impressed with certain passages that you think you can’t have possibly written them yourself? Do you want to give yourself a First, or a Third? Be as honest as you can. You will either come to a greater understanding of why you received the mark you did, or you will wonder why you’ve not been uncovered as the greatest writer in the world. If it’s the latter, then you need to take your head from the clouds and get a better understanding of what’s needed in an essay (and read the next tip!).
  4. Have a one-to-one meeting with your tutor for more in-depth feedback – If you can do it, arrange to spend some time with the tutor who marked your piece and see what they would suggest about improving your style, your ideas, and whatever they believe you can improve to pick your mark up. Some tutors actively encourage this, while others keep quiet and need a bit of encouragement themselves. If you can get them out of their shell, you may find out a lot more than anyone else on your course. Don’t give up, because a little bit of extra effort can make a big difference.
  5. Reasonably question your result/feedback – If you still can’t understand what on earth’s going on and you seriously believe your masterpiece has been marked far too low, why not ask for further information and clarification? But be reasonable. Don’t fly off the handle and don’t be cocky about things in the hope of making a point. Your reasons for asking why you got a particular result and feedback are more for you to get a grasp of what you missed and to understand the actual marking process a bit better. You can write the wittiest comments and funniest lines, but if it doesn’t cut the academic mustard, you’ll still not get the best marks possible.
  6. Enjoy your good grades, but keep striving for more – That is to say, don’t be lazy! If your marks improve and the essays grow in quality, that doesn’t mean you’re home and dry. I took my eye off the ball for one of my course modules and ended up with a rather poor mark for the last essay on the module. The rest had been corkers, so I stopped thinking about it as clearly as I should have been. Never wise!
  7. Make notes – Next time you’ve got an essay to write, will you remember what you learned from past feedback? To get the most from past essays, note down what you want/need to improve, make a plan of how you can enhance your essay’s structure based on previous, more muddled writings.

jump (photo by gozdeo)

The post that didn’t post…

I had my new post ready and waiting to automatically upload last night.  It seems that, for some reason, it didn’t post even though it said it had.  If you did get to read it, great.  If not, at least it’s up now to read!

Oh well, these things happen.  Anyway, sorry for the delay.  I only just noticed!

Technology, eh?

EduLinks Extra – zen habits new E-Book

I wanted to let you know about a great E-Book that should help you knuckle down with your degree study.  In fact, it should help with anything you want to be productive in.

ZEN TO DONE: The ultimate simple productivity system – by Leo Babauta

It’s $9.50, which in English money is currently about £4.50 (well, that’s how much it was when I bought it anyway).

I’ve got the book and I hope Leo is successful in getting it off the ground.  His blog, zen habits, is also an impressive (free) resource.  Even if you don’t want to make any purchase, zen habits is well worth making a regular read.

For your info, Zen To Done is a system for enhanced organisation and productivity, to “keep your life saner and less stressed, with a set of habits”.

Habits are, in my opinion, both good and bad things.  If you develop something to the point of increased productivity, it must be good.  Once the productivity wanes, it’s time to develop new habits!

Obviously, there are habits that are bad from the outset, but let’s not go there!  That’s a different conversation entirely.

One last thing, I’m considering writing some reviews of general study books that are geared at university and Higher Education.  It’s not a definite, but I believe it to be a worthwhile feature and I’m working on how I could go about reviewing some of the books.  Sometimes, you just can’t beat the ease of a book.  Easy to browse, easy to bookmark, easy to dip into.  And with university, you can’t exactly get away from books, can you?

EduLinks – Social networking, self loving, and improved thinking

1. The Guardian – Students tell universities: Get out of MySpace!

[Yes, everyone uses social networking sites.  University staff are frequenting them too.  Are the students happy?  Of course they aren’t!  As Jisc project manager, Lawrie Phipps says, “Students appear to want their cake and eat it”.  So will it be all one happy family, or will something have to budge?]

 

2. BBC News Magazine – The lost art of leftovers

 [It was recently announced that we throw away the equivalent of about every third bag of our shopping.  That’s madness, but I’m not too surprised.  The most dumped foods are:

  • bags of salad
  • fruit
  • bread
  • pasta
  • cheese

I can totally and utterly believe that.  I’ve been guilty of that in the past.  Not much now, but it can still happen.  Naughty us!]

 

3. Seth’s Blog – The Wikipedia Gap

[A different take on study.  Why can’t Wikipedia be used to get the facts fast?  What’s to say the information on Wikipedia is less accurate than from somewhere else?  While it would be madness to write a scholarly essay based only on Wikipedia, I think it’s great that we can all find out chunks of information on pretty much any topic we want.  Once we’ve consumed the basics, we can get down to the deeper academic insights.  Anyway, the post on Seth’s Blog is definitely one to cause controversy, so see what you think.]

 

4. Seth’s Blog – We accidentally marketed ourselves into a corner

[Another post from Seth.  While based on the American system, I still found myself recognising aspects of what he’s written.  Let’s just say it’s something to allow our minds to wander over.]

 

5. BBC – Productive Arguing

[When I was in the thick of things at uni, it was pretty standard to hear arguing all over the place. Lots of love too, of course, but arguments all the same. The BBC article has some good hints on helping things go a bit more smoothly. The main thing to remember is to choose your words carefully.]

 

6. Time – Facebook more popular than porn

[Nuff said. Some good background info on Facebook.]

 

7. We The Change – 7 Effective Ways to Implement Positive Thinking

[Pep yourself up and pep up others in turn. “Being positive is actually far more realistic than being negative.”]

 

8. Think Simple. Be Decisive – The Secret to Self Loving

[No, nothing rude. Unless you count a date with yourself as a bit risque. This article is all about making time for yourself. You know it makes sense.]

 

9. New York Times – Why Google Turned Into a Social Butterfly

[Google’s new attempt at a social networking web standard has its reasons. OpenSocial will keep things open for the search company, rather than hide social networkers behind closed doors. Major players in social networking are joining in the initiative, but Facebook isn’t. So what’s going to happen?]

 

 

10. Guardian – Upgraded A-Levels still fail campus test

[Seems a bit worrying. The article says that most students who fall into this problem don’t bother taking action because of the cost and time it takes. I don’t know how common this is or why it’s happening, but hopefully it won’t be a normal feature of the uni applications process…]

 

11. BBC News – Energy alcohol mixes ‘harm risk’

[Double Vodka Red Bull anyone?]