IA's - efficiency

[robotmonkeyhill]

i feel like i am not efficient at all when it comes to writing my history IA and EE, or even when writing any assessment, i overthink alot and so i have a difficult time trying to finish things, it will take me a long time, but i am not being efficient or productive😫 does anyone have any tips on how to be efficient w time and just get stuff done

[robotmonkeyhill]

if any historians know how to structure research and writing, i feel like im just too messy! lmk!! pls

[IB_taking_over]

I'm not super familiar with the structure of the history IA (May 2016 was a different format), but I am familiar with writing history papers. With that said, my suggestions are more about general history writing.

The biggest piece of advice I have is to start writing. It doesn't matter how disorganized/messy it is, just get something down. Once you have something written it's fairly easy to go back and clean it up and fill in the gaps. People often suggest to write the introduction last so you know what your paper is about and so that the introduction matches the rest of the paper. Personally, I prefer to write the introduction first even if I go back and make changes at the end. 

Organizing research: I don't think there's a wrong way to do it. I normally take notes in a notebook, with the page numbers in the margins. I also try to include some of my own thoughts and analysis as I go to help make the writing process go faster.

Organizing writing: The general rule of thumb is one idea per paragraph and start with a topic sentence. That is, let the reader know where the paragraph is going before they read it.

 

[robotmonkeyhill]

On 3/1/2022 at 5:16 PM, IB_taking_over said:

I'm not super familiar with the structure of the history IA (May 2016 was a different format), but I am familiar with writing history papers. With that said, my suggestions are more about general history writing.

The biggest piece of advice I have is to start writing. It doesn't matter how disorganized/messy it is, just get something down. Once you have something written it's fairly easy to go back and clean it up and fill in the gaps. People often suggest to write the introduction last so you know what your paper is about and so that the introduction matches the rest of the paper. Personally, I prefer to write the introduction first even if I go back and make changes at the end. 

Organizing research: I don't think there's a wrong way to do it. I normally take notes in a notebook, with the page numbers in the margins. I also try to include some of my own thoughts and analysis as I go to help make the writing process go faster.

Organizing writing: The general rule of thumb is one idea per paragraph and start with a topic sentence. That is, let the reader know where the paragraph is going before they read it.

 

thankyou!