End of break, midterm, and now papers:

will the torment never end? A couple of people have asked me about papers so at least some of you are beginning to think about them. Here's a few suggestions to get the early—starters going, other posts to follow once the midterm is behind us. 

      There are a lot of resources available to you for your papers. The syllabus has a list of suggested topics; learn@uw has a section devoted to it, with two highly recommended books on effective academic writing. You'll also find most of the books you'll need on learn@uw. The links are regularly (and mysteriously) broken so please alert me to anything that produces an error message and I'll get it fixed. Finally, the Writing Center and the department have a long and productive friendship. I'd venture a guess that those who make use of the writing center generally receive a full grade higher than those who do not. Another guess informed by years of observation is that every hour spent reading a good guide and especially at the writing center will save you many hours of unnecessary to-ing and fro-ing once you start researching and writing. 

      The question of length frequently comes up, let me repeat the standard infuriating professorial response: as long as it takes. 12-15 pages ought to do it, though students regularly turn in papers of 20-25 pages. You might be able to handle one in 10 pages but it will have to be perfectly organized, missing nothing. A more or less invariable rule is that a ten page paper should be harder to write than a fifteen pager. 

      The same criteria for the midterm apply to the papers: they should have a beginning, a middle, an end, and a point. Each of these is hard to do well, so keep organization on your mind from the beginning. You are free to do the standard thesis-statement sort of paper (of course) if that is what you are most comfortable with. But let me encourage you to try it another way: question at the beginning, answer at the end. I'm repeating the midterm essay advice so just click back two topics for the grand wazoo.