Warning: Satire ahead. If you need help, find someone who can really help you.

Writing an essay for a class is usually a no-brainer. Many students will stress over it, dread it, put it off, even drop a class if they think they have to write too many for it. The same goes for research papers. A research paper, to a professor, is nothing more than an expanded essay that you've documented better.

In fact, go drink. That essay will still be there when you recover.

My simplistic approach isn't brain surgery either.

  • You collect sources that may or may not have any relevance to your subject. Yes, some people will argue that a trip to the library or Internet isn't necessary, but stick with me here.
  • Pretend to study them. Perhaps leave it open on the table so you can glance in its general direction every now and then.
  • Wait until the last minute. Go drink.
  • After two aspirin and a cold shower, sit down at your trusty computer.
  • Please pick up your head off the keyboard. Last I checked, "TYASUDIFALHEFLIWEHFA;E URHA;O IHFA;OHD F'AODHSFLJ" wasn't part of your sources.
  • Write an opinionated piece based on the prompts. If you don't know enough to at least talk about it, you might want to crack the books to at least get a few names to drop in there.
  • After you've written two or three lines past the minimum, go back through and start looking for spots that could use a little backbone to it. You can't claim that the Ottoman Empire conquered the Grateful Dead without some sort of proof. Use the book titles for inspiration.
  • Drop it off in the professors mai box. You probably won't feel well enough to go to class. Be prepared, however, for the deadline to have been extended because somebody ... um ... we'll just say they "asked very nicely."

My philosophy is that any essay in nothing more than an opinion piece propped up with facts. If you write as if though you were trying to hold a conversation with the professor, you'll go far. Just don't be so retarded in the subject to not be able to hold such a "conversation." The facts are in there to give proof that you took the effort to at least consider getting real sources.

Now, on to this history paper, and thanking my lucky stars that my professor doesn't read my blog regularly if at all. At least not before he grades this paper.