Are you someone who finds doing term papers to be a chore? I know how you feel because I have been in your shoes. It always took me a long time to do this as a college student because I was inefficient and did things the hard way. I wish I could get that time back in order to do things differently; alas, all I can do is pass on what I learned. You will learn how to write a research paper in minimal time.
Know Yourself and Your Tools
If your assignment must have a particular amount of words, you should not let it take you an eternity to count how many words you have written. I used to go through the papers I typed in Microsoft Word counting all of the words by hand. Do you want to know what I would do if I had it to do all over again? I would click “Tools” then click “Word count” to see the tally. You may not even have to do this, especially if you have a new version of Word that automatically reveals the number of words your document has.
You will do yourself wonders by becoming an efficient typist. You can achieve this by using a computer almost every day, becoming familiar with the keyboard and using the right fingers to hit the various keys. Because I did not do any of these things, I was a hunt-and-peck typist who did his papers extremely slowly while typing about ten to fifteen words a minute.
Resources and Documents
You should make an attempt to get all of the valid and approved sources you need for your research online. Before I graduated from college, I did not know anything about using the Internet and it took me a while to look for my books on the shelves in the campus library.
While you type your documents, you must save your work to the computer or a portable device such as a flash drive or compact disc. If you do not, you will only be able to fix a particular section of your rough draft by typing an individual page all over again.
It is important to not wait until the last minute to get started. If you do, you run the risk of doing your work frantically while having too little time to do your work thoroughly, fix your flaws and get as much help as you need.
Time Management is the Key
You should not let it take you too long to delete words. Instead of deleting each word in a paragraph one by one like I did, you should highlight the whole paragraph and hit “Delete”.
It is helpful to pick a topic you are familiar with to write about. The less familiar you are with a topic, the more time you are likely to spend trying to come up with ideas to work with.
If you are stuck or have trouble understanding something about your paper, you should seek help. It does not make sense to waste a lot of time trying to figure out something that is too complicated for you on your own.
Use these tips to write a research paper in minimal time!