Hayden’s Academic Essay Essentials
- Do not refer to yourself in your essay. Using the personal pronouns “I” and “my” and such only undermine the strength of your arguments, and this is frowned upon in academic writing. If you have written a thesis statement or any other part of your paper in which you say things like “I think” or “I noticed,” edit them out immediately…
- Do not refer to your reader in your essay. Using the pronoun “you” to address your reader also undermines the strength of your arguments, and you run the risk of alienating the person reading your work by essentially telling them what to think. If you have written any part of your paper in which you say things like “you get the sense that” or “you will see that,” edit them out immediately…
- Do not attempt to determine the author’s intent. Without being able to interview the author/filmmaker him or herself, you can’t know what she/he meant to do or say or express. All you can comment on is the effect of the choices made. If you have written a thesis statement or any part of your paper in which you say things like “the author meant to show…” or “the writer wanted us to know…” edit them out immediately…
- Do not assume, when writing about a literary work, that the author is the same as the speaker. Artists comment all the time on aspects of human experience, and sometimes they have shared the experiences they write about. Still, a poem, for example, is a work of fiction, and the speaker of the poem is a persona created by the artist in order to explore and represent an element of human experience. If you have written any part of your paper in which you say things like “the poet experiences” or “the poet says,” edit them out immediately…
- Do not presume you are on a first-name basis with the authors of our texts. There are times when you might refer to a character within a text by first name, but the general rule should be that you introduce an author the first time by her/his full name (Hayden Bixby) and then by last name only, without a title designation (Bixby – not Ms. Bixby) for every subsequence reference.
- Do not stray from the requirements of the assignment. Remember that the assignment asks you to express a point of view about a particular theme, using the assigned text(s) – and ONLY the assigned texts – for evidence. If you have written a thesis statement that merely overviews the meaning of the text(s), you haven’t yet achieved the required focus.
- Do not use any source other than those assigned to make your argument. Remember that the assignment asks you only to respond critically to the assigned text(s). This is not a research paper, and you should not be incorporating other sources.
- Do not use rhetorical questions or cliches. These might have been a nice gimmick in high school, but they are worn out by college. Use your own declarative thoughts to express your point of view.
- Do not use any WUSSY WORDS! Remember that I already know that you’re “just” a student and that you “don’t totally know” what the works mean and that what you say they mean is only “your opinion.” And, yet, I actually want to know what you think – and I want it to be BOLD! Be creative, go out on a limb, assert your interpretation more forcefully than even you believe… it’s easier to rein in an idea that’s too big than it is to try to pump up something flat and flavorless. When you write, state your interpretation as FACT, then use the evidence to support that specific interpretation. We know that it might not be the last word on the subject, but we are seeing how it plays out. No apologies.
- Do not offer “meta” commentary or reviews. Don’t say “this essay will” do anything… just do it! Don’t cite the assignment or the class (“the works assigned share a theme” or “comparing these texts it’s clear they relate to each other”), etc. And don’t offer your review of the quality of the text(s) (“in the well-written essay by…”). These kinds of comments distract your readers from the forcefulness of your argument.
- DO follow all MLA formatting guidelines! You can find all the relevant formatting information in a variety of ways: through your textbook, via the EdCC Library website, via the Online Writing Lab, and, of course, through our work together in class. The information is accessible directly from the MLA website, too! Work to understand the formatting rules early in the quarter so that it becomes second nature for all of your future college-level writing work.
