Here are tips to keep essay and grades-related stress at bay, so you can focus on important matters.
Write that Essay
What’s worse – writing an essay or anticipating that you will have to write an essay? If you are like most students, you will answer that worrying about an essay that you will write in a day or two. So, bypass the phase of thinking about the task. Start doing the task.
You don’t have to give it a proper format or outline at the initial stage. Remember, you are only writing at this point because you want to get your feet wet. Take it slow and comfortable. If the essay title is the only thing your mind can think of right now, pen that thought down. Once your pen is put on the paper, the process will become immensely smooth.
Note Down Important Points
Research is an essential step of essay writing & editing. The problem arises when people start treating this step as the whole process and don’t want to proceed beyond it to start actual writing. Crossing the border between the research and writing steps often appears intimidating. So, how do you overcome the fear of this transition? Simply, blur the border.
Write down, summarize, and cite every piece that you deem interesting enough to be included in your essay. This way, you would already have completed a major part of writing even before officially entering into recording your opinion.
Pen Your Thoughts
Besides research, you should also note down what you deduce from analyzing those studies. You can do so using columns where you document the research you have considered on one side and your conclusion from this study on the other side. If making two columns seems too difficult to you, jot down your thoughts directly under the study you have noted.
At this point, also note down your answer to the essay question in simple words. Again, ditch the pattern or correctness of grammatical tools. Your only goal here is to put as much relevant information on paper as you can.
Make an Outline
Many people outline immediately after noting down their research findings and skip the answering step. That sequence also works fine, but only those people benefit from it who don’t deal with excessive stress or overthinking about the essay.
For anxious students, writing down their thoughts before outline-making is the only way to go.
Start Writing
Does it seem intimidating now? You are not staring at a blank sheet of paper. Instead, now you have a pattern to fill. Complete each heading or paragraph separately without thinking about the flow of the essay or the connection among the paragraphs.
Here, the only requirement you need to keep in mind is relevance. The information you put on the paper should be relevant to the essay question.
First Draft is the Rough Draft
Anxiety is often a by-product of perfectionism. When you want to score big, you overthink every tiny detail that leads to that achievement. So, if you want to overcome your anxiety, one way to do this is to fight the urge to do everything perfectly.
The essay writing process is meant to be rough and error-ridden. The only error-free essay one can write is the one that one copies. Innovation can never be error-free. So, accept errors as part of learning and building your creative muscle.
Whenever your mind tries to criticize you for a spelling mistake or a grammatical error, remind it that you are only working on a rough draft. Don’t go back to correct the error. Don’t rewrite the whole sentence to get the error right. The more you practice not giving in to your mind’s demands for perfectionism, the calmer it will become.
Save Criticism for Later
Being a perfectionist, it will be your favorite pastime to criticize yourself. The problem is that this hobby resurfaces on busy occasions as well. So you will find yourself criticizing your work during the writing phase and beyond.
This continuous nagging of your brain will drain your energy, forcing you to procrastinate approaching the essay whenever its scheduled time arrives. If your internal critic is preventing you from working on your essay, tell it to wait for some time until you finish your first draft. Schedule sometime only for this criticism session but only after completing the writing step.
Pay Someone to Write for You
Getting your assignment done by a third party is not an ideal solution to any problem that may arise during the writing or planning phase. However, our minds often play weird games. If any such game has left to physically unable to tackle your essay, you should resort to seeking essay help as a last recourse.
Make sure that you only outsource the writing part and other steps of researching and analyzing the information should be conducted by you to decrease the strain of this outsourcing on your learning progress.
Seek Professional Essay Editing Services
Don’t let your inner critic keep you from revisiting your assignment for error correction and improvement. Seek professional editing services to assure yourself of the reasonable quality of your work. These services will allow you to showcase your understanding of the concept without jeopardizing your marks.
Wrapping Up
Essay writing is a regular part of life as a college student. You will get multiple essay writers or assignment writers for every subject in every semester. Student life will not be easy for you if you are used to getting too stressed out about these tasks and their impact on your score. So, take these tasks lightly and deal with one essay at a time to prevent burnout. Use this blog post to efficiently approach the writing process without getting stressed.
