work ethic
noun
a belief in the moral benefit and importance of work and its inherent ability to strengthen character.
This is what work ethic means to Dictionary.com. To some of my friends, work ethic is a myth. They say, “What is this foreign concept called ‘work’ that you speak of? And why would you do such an unpleasant-sounding thing? What? To get A’s? I thought those were a given!” Okay, so maybe I exaggerate a little bit, but it’s true–some people, for whatever reason, have somehow managed to get away with not doing much work and just got A’s all their lives! Now, this isn’t going to be a rant against anyone’s school system (I think others could write a much better post on that than I can), but instead, a reflection on work ethic in attempt to give hope to those who think it may be too late for them to develop it.
In case I haven’t made it clear, though, I have what I would honestly consider to be very good work ethic. I don’t brag about many things (other than my decked-out dorm and my vast knowledge of Taylor Swift), but I think my work ethic is worthy of some horn-tooting. How did I develop this work ethic, you ask? Well, in high school, I was in the International Baccalaureate, or IB, program. For those of you who don’t know what it is and who think Wikipedia is too long-winded to look it up, it’s a program that many high schools (and middle schools) around the world have, with a fairly standardized curriculum in certain core subjects with the aim of promoting a well-rounded Liberal Arts program. It’s also a hell of a lot of work. Anyway, in this program, we had a lot of writing to do, so we started early. In freshman year, our term papers would be 4 pages. I know that’s considered a “short paper” here in college (or at least here in Pomona), but 4 years ago, that was 4 pages more than I was used to writing. Anyway, every year, our standard of an average paper would increase. By the time we got to writing those papers that we had to submit to IBO (the powers that be of IB), a normal paper for us would be 5-6 pages and we would only have a couple of months to write them. We never got much time to write these papers because 1. they were assigned so often and 2. there were so many of them to write. I remember I actually had only 2 weeks to write my Theory of Knowledge (IB’s version of a philosophy course) paper, which was by far the shortest amount of time I had ever had to write a paper in, but I succeeded and ended up getting a good score on the paper (a B) from IB.
Since I had to get so many papers done in such a short amount of time, I inevitably ended up finding which method worked for me. My personal method, when it comes to writing papers, is to lock myself in my room for one day and just hand-write the entire thing. I know I’m killing trees by hand-writing these pages and pages of papers, but hear me out: If I have to come up what to write while staring at a blank computer screen, the whiteness of Microsoft Word will drive my fingers insane and cause them to open up a browser, click on the address bar, and type in “facebook.com”. However, a college-ruled sheet of paper is not blank–it has blue lines on them, which keeps me from going insane.
I kid, I kid. But in all honesty, I think there is some value for some people in hand-writing their papers first. Having to write directly on my laptop makes me nervous. Maybe it’s because I feel like I’m wasting electricity and battery by having my laptop open while I stare at it. Maybe I just like the feel of a pencil in my hands and the ability to write all over the margins. Maybe I’m vainly obsessed with my beautiful cursive handwriting. Or maybe it’s because I really am just worried about getting distracted by the internet. Whatever the reason, it just doesn’t work for me. So maybe the next time you’re having a hard time writing a paper directly on your laptop, you could try handwriting it first!
However, I think writing the paper wouldn’t be so daunting if it weren’t the first step. That’s why I make the first step something else: research. Before any paper, whether it’s a research paper or a literary analysis, I always do background work first, and I always try to do it in the most relaxing way possible. If it’s a research paper, I’ll snuggle up in bed and just look up articles on my phone instead of sit at my desk and stare at the 20-page long articles on my laptop. If it’s a literary analysis, I’ll read the passage in chunks and annotate it in intervals (say, in 10-minute intervals throughout the day) so it’s not so daunting to unpack and analyze a passage of literature. When I have all of my research done, I remind myself that I have everything that is going in my paper in my hands; I just need to organize the information in the right order and get the right words out.
The step before actually writing the paper can be pretty tricky, because you have all these beautiful annotations and notes and are not quite sure what to do with them. There are, however, a few things you can do. My personal favorite would be outlines. Multiple. I do outlines of my paper, and outlines of my outlines. I think outlines are God’s gift to the writing world since you can write outlines as broad as you want and then just write more that get more and more detailed as you continue to organize your information and research (ie. your evidence or the “meat” of your paper).
So, there it is, my fellow Sagehens. My secret to doing papers with my amazing work ethic is really just 3 main tactics: Research in the most comfortable way possible, outline like crazy, and then handwrite my papers (with the writing of my paper preferably happening in one day, although the research should go on for several days beforehand). Happy writing!