You're in your first year of school, and the thought of writing your first college assignment may fill you with dread, even though you aced the essays you wrote in senior high school. University students are held to higher standards, and in the end, knowing what to avoid can be helpful. Here are a few of the more common mistakes university students make with term papers. Avoid these, and you will likely succeed.
Mistake 1: Never talking with your professor. Professors are human, and they enjoy it when students show interest, even if their interest is primarily in getting a good grade and moving forward. If you ask questions about things you don't understand, you will save yourself a lot of time wondering about them and show your teacher that you are invested in their class.
Mistake 2: Not striving to understand the material. If you want to earn a decent grade in a class you don't have much interest in, that's okay. There's such a thing as learning "well enough." But that's different from blowing off assignments, missing class, and not making any effort at all.
Mistake 3: Not giving yourself a chance. You've been given your term paper topic, and while it may not be something you're familiar with, it's not completely alien either. What terrible thing would happen if you wrote up a plan based on what you think you know about the topic? You might find that you actually do know something about it or that you have an interesting perspective on it.
Mistake 4: Not using a spell/grammar checker. Almost every word processing program has them, and if yours doesn't, they are available online for free. There's simply no excuse for poor spelling and glaringly bad grammar. Closely related is the foolish move of not saving your paper on a flash drive, data card, or online storage (or a combination of these).
Mistake 5: Waiting until the last minute. Sure, everyone will have the occasional day when they don't get anything done, or when all their study plans fall apart. But pacing yourself throughout the term is key to getting things done with minimal overall stress. Plus, waiting until the last minute often results in stupid mistakes that you could easily have avoided by starting earlier (like putting references in the wrong format).
Mistake 6: Passing off someone else’s work as your own. Cite your sources, and don't plagiarize. Professors know how to use the internet too, and if they find you've lifted your content, you'll probably automatically fail the course. If you had written the assignment yourself, you most likely would have passed, even if it wasn't your best effort.
Mistake 7: Missing the deadline. Most professors will deduct at least one letter grade for each day a project is late. This is a very costly day off. Most of the things you should avoid when writing a college term paper are based on laziness, so simply by not slacking off, you can probably get a passing grade, maybe even better. Your professor isn't asking for the impossible. Just tackle it a little at a time and ask for help when you need it, and you'll do fine.
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