Whether you’re conducting experiments in a lab because it’s a required course for your degree or because you hope to become the next Marie Curie, one fact remains the same: you need to write a lab report after conducting your ground-breaking experiment. The idea of a science lab report might be new to you, but …
You think you’ve lucked out because you’ve just been assigned to write a paper about a movie. Finally, a topic you can get into. Besides, how hard can it be to write about a movie, right? You’ve been watching movies forever, and you can certainly tell whether they’re good or not. You’ve got this one …
Great essays can make you feel like you’re on a journey—while others are more like a bad road trip. What makes the difference? Often it’s as simple as the directions you’re given along the way. To steer your readers through the curves and straightaways of your essay, it helps to give them signposts along the …
Edward Lorenz was a mathematician and meteorologist at MIT who created a complex mathematical model nearly 60 years ago to study weather and air patterns. His hope was that the research would lead to accurate long-term weather forecasts. However, in 1961, the idea of a predictable universe fell into chaos. Lorenz entered some previously used …
Have you ever read one of those DIY websites and tried to make the perfect flower arrangement or wooden tool box by reading only the directions? It seems almost impossible, doesn’t it? Why? Because you need a visual to guide you. You need to see each step and see a finished product before you can …
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is one of those books that has the power to really captivate readers. Even if you don’t like the promiscuity or John’s undoing, you have to admit that there’s something really enthralling about the whole thing. Unfortunately, being enthralled in a story doesn’t make you prepared to write an essay …
Let’s face it, most of us are used to writing essays and research papers. We’ve written them throughout our entire academic careers. The abstract, on the other hand, is likely a relatively new endeavor. Without a lot of practice and experience writing abstracts, it can be pretty daunting. Heck, it’s enough to leave your fingers …
When you were kid, I bet you were asked (and more than once), “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I’ll also bet that, by the time you were a junior or senior in high school, you were asked (and again, more than once), “What do you want to do when you …
Every year millions of high school students apply for college. And every year, at least one of those colleges requires a leadership essay. While you may have never served as a manager, fought against injustice, or led a rebellion, you have at least some inklings of leadership inside you. After all, one of the greatest fictional …
“Wow! That stinks!” If you’re walking by a smelly factory, this might be an appropriate response. If you’re walking by a farm on a sweltering summer afternoon, this might be exactly what you’d expect to hear. This is not, however, what you want to hear from your prof when she reads your essay. So if …
While you may not have written many summaries, I bet you’ve actually composed a lot of summaries in your day. Think about it: every time you tell a friend what happened in a movie or what you did on vacation, you’re summarizing. You’re even summarizing when you tell your friend about the professor’s history lecture …
Do you remember when Brangelina first happened? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were both pretty good on their own, but when they got together, they became an instant Hollywood power couple. In the world of literature and essay-writing, the Brangelina of essays is the summary analysis. t By now, you’ve probably written more analysis essays …
Let’s say you and your pals have just watched the latest superhero movie, and one of your friends asks, “So what did ya think?” Your response might be something like, “It was awesome! I loved the fight scenes and the CGI!” Or you might respond, “Man, that sucked! The story didn’t even make sense!” Now …
Are you the type of person to passively read your assigned text only because you have to? Or do you dive right into it and react with the same intensity any self-proclaimed Star Wars nerd would react to this climactic scene? No matter which category you fall into, knowing how to write a reaction paper …
SURPRISE! You have to write another essay. You were hoping for a surprise party, weren’t you? Sorry, I can’t help you there. But if you think writing a comparative essay is one heck of a good time, then this party is for you! Okay, the fact that you have to write another essay isn’t really …
Do you remember the fable The Ant and the Grasshopper? The ants work all summer long preparing for winter and storing food. The grasshopper laughs at the ants, and he plays all summer because he has plenty of food (for now). When winter comes, the grasshopper is starving, begging for food because he didn’t prepare …
What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word “interpretive”? For me, a couple things come to mind—interpretive dance, language interpretation, and fortune telling. Hear me out on the last one for a second. Think about Professor Trelawney’s class—what was one of the first things they did? Read tea leaves. Those young …
Compare the feeling you get when you earn an A on a paper to how you feel when you get a D on a paper. There’s really no comparison, is there? My goal in writing this post is for you learn more about compare and contrast essays, so you can skip that wretched feeling of …
All throughout your English, literature, and history classes, you’ve been learning the importance of analyzing over summarizing. But there’s a time and a place for everything—and for summarizing, that’s right here, right now. Learning how to summarize an article is important. It’s a skill you can use in basically any class and even in many …
Travel. Adventure. Exploration. There’s so much to learn out there for those who go looking for it. André Gide once wrote: “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Of course, nowadays it’s a little less romantic. We “lose sight of the shore” after putting our seat …
You’ve been reading Macbeth very closely and have gotten pulled into the drama of it all. And let’s face it—the fact that it’s Shakespeare’s shortest tragic play certainly doesn’t hurt. But just because it’s shorter than the rest doesn’t mean it’s not packed with betrayal, murder, symbolism, foreshadowing, and a lot of other goodies to …