Don't Be Thwarted by Your Thesis
When I heard about Great Books for the first time, I was delightfully intrigued.
A conversation-based classroom? Perfect for my need to hear difficult concepts talked out and explained!
No tests or quizzes? Perfect for my lacking memory skills!
Rigorous writing nearly every week that will be criticized with painstaking attention to detail?
Oh, no.
While I've been creatively writing since the spry young age of 9, I can't say that I ever picked up a pen and wrote out systematic arguments for fun. As I started Great Books, I couldn't stem the dread that sat in my stomach every week as the essays were discussed. While I was excited for the creative papers that the curriculum assigned, I was less than overjoyed for the frequent interpretive essays.
How could I even start without an essay prompt?
What was I supposed to do with the complicated reading that I barely had time to skim through that week?
How was I supposed to structure my essays?
What were we even reading?
How did you spell, again?
I won't lie to anyone, I spiraled. Hard. It felt like I'd been hit with a ton of academic bricks and left on a roadside to die. I felt lost in the sauce, if you will. The academic sauce. I couldn't understand the basic principles of systematic argumentation, despite attending the Writers Workshop and taking detailed notes. I would inevitably begin rambling as I wrote, and I couldn't figure out how to stop it.
I figured out my problem after learning my lesson the hard way: my theses were weak. The thesis, I discovered, acts as the foundation of the entire essay. If there is no thesis to guide the essay, the essay will inevitably fall to pieces. If there is no topic for the body paragraphs to point back to, the body paragraphs won't be cohesive. Dr. Fullman and Dr. Jacobs both stressed the importance of a thesis during the Writers Workshop, and I cannot stress how right they were. Although their advice wasn't really absorbed during my first Writers Workshop, I certainly took it to heart the second time round.
Slowly but surely, I'm gradually understanding how to build a good thesis and build my paper from there. The stronger the foundation, the stronger the essay. Through many a trial and error, I'm discovering the real significance of the WHAT, HOW, and WHY of the essay. To those struggling to write good papers, I leave you with this: the creation of a good thesis is a painstaking process, but I can guarantee you it's infinitely easier than rewriting the same paper 5 times because all the drafts were full of incoherent rambling.
When you've hit the rock bottom of essay writing, there's nowhere to go but up. Take the time, do it right the first time, and I promise it'll pay off.
I figured out my problem after learning my lesson the hard way: my theses were weak. The thesis, I discovered, acts as the foundation of the entire essay. If there is no thesis to guide the essay, the essay will inevitably fall to pieces. If there is no topic for the body paragraphs to point back to, the body paragraphs won't be cohesive. Dr. Fullman and Dr. Jacobs both stressed the importance of a thesis during the Writers Workshop, and I cannot stress how right they were. Although their advice wasn't really absorbed during my first Writers Workshop, I certainly took it to heart the second time round.
Slowly but surely, I'm gradually understanding how to build a good thesis and build my paper from there. The stronger the foundation, the stronger the essay. Through many a trial and error, I'm discovering the real significance of the WHAT, HOW, and WHY of the essay. To those struggling to write good papers, I leave you with this: the creation of a good thesis is a painstaking process, but I can guarantee you it's infinitely easier than rewriting the same paper 5 times because all the drafts were full of incoherent rambling.
When you've hit the rock bottom of essay writing, there's nowhere to go but up. Take the time, do it right the first time, and I promise it'll pay off.
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