I know this is a bit niche and frankly incredibly nerdy of me but I felt a strange urge to document my university essay writing process. Having written two 5000 word essays this Christmas break I am highly fed up with essay writing at the moment but I'm also conscious that 2019 is going to be my last ever year in education so I suppose I'm feeling a bit nostalgic and kind of wanted to have a record of how I do it. Also it might be able to help someone because although you might get some pointers for how to deal with the transition from school to university when it comes to essays, I think they take for granted that you have an understanding of the basic process behind it. Just to be clear, this is only how I do it from the perspective of a geography/politics/international relations student and of course everyone will have slightly different approaches, but mine works for me and might work for you too. 

Think about and analyse the question. Assuming you are either assigned a question or get to pick from a list (and don't have to invent your own), the first step is to sit down and really think about the question. Underline the operative words which tell you what to do (e.g. analyse, compare, discuss, evaluate) and the terms mentioned in the question which you will have to define in your essay (e.g. politics, culture, violence). It's also a good idea to make a list of sub-questions which break the main question down further as this can help you focus on what it's actually asking you to do. It's a good idea to do this as early on as you can as it will be ticking over in the back of your mind while you subconsciously process it over the next few days. Be sure to note down any ideas or prompts which come to you during that time.

Refresh your memory. Before you dive into the essay research, it's good to go back to the lecture notes or other course material that relates to the topic and contextualise it in relation to the expectations of the course. This is important because even though you might have your own ideas which spring to mind, they may not align exactly with the way concepts have been used and understood in the specific context of the course. If the module is an elective outside your usual discipline this is even more important! For instance, anthropology might have a particular understanding of 'culture' which might differ from philosophy. By going through lecture notes you might also give yourself some inspiration for where to start, especially if you've made any helpful notes from comments the lecturer may have made about the assignment.

Start gathering resources. The next step is to start making yourself a reading list. To do this I always start from required readings for the lecture/seminar relating to the question, and then look at the recommended reading which is usually a more extensive list. Then put these references into a document (alphabetical order is helpful) and voila, you have the beginnings of a reading list. It's important to note that your reading list is a living document which will evolve over the course of the process as you discover more potentially helpful readings and realise that some which you thought were relevant actually aren't.

Start reading. The golden rule is to start with the readings which are most likely to be relevant, usually those which have been assigned or suggested by the lecturer. These will form the basis for your essay and after that it's about finding your own resources to suit your (eventual) argument which will shape the essay into something more original.

Make a basic plan. Once you've analysed the question and got a decent grasp on the topic, it's time to make a loose plan. I do this when I've read enough to get a sense of the main debates around the subject and formulate my own ideas, which is usually after reading about 4-5 articles or chapters. When I say basic I really mean basic - I don't try to pin down an argument or anything too precise, just make a sketch of the bare bones of the essay based on the information I have.

Read more widely. Having consolidated the base of your knowledge, now is the time to start branching out into other readings connected to the topic which will allow you to develop your ideas. To find those extra resources you can use a number of methods. You can try simply typing key words into your online library catalogue and seeing what comes up, or use Google Scholar. I like to scan the bibliographies of the core readings and copy and paste any interesting-looking citations into my reading list as I go.

Take notes. I have a whole post on how I organise my university notes in OneNote, to see that click here. But it goes without saying that there's no point reading unless you're taking notes, because even if you think you'll be able to remember things after 10 or so articles you're bound to start mixing things up. The key thing is to take notes with the essay question in mind - so if a passage is fascinating in and of itself but completely irrelevant to your plan, don't take notes on it.

Keep updating your reading list as you go. As I said, your reading list will evolve throughout the process as you narrow down your ideas so it's important to keep reviewing it and delete citations that turn out not to be relevant while adding in new finds. Also, tick off which ones you've read.

Keep updating your plan as you go. As you read more and more you'll inevitably be struck by new ideas, concepts and examples which will add to your basic plan. Review this plan when you finish a reading to see how what you've just read fits into what you've already got, but don't worry if you can't see where it will go just yet. Start referencing even at this stage by including the author's name when you add ideas into the plan. At this point I start to plan out individual paragraphs and organise my ideas more precisely, thinking about the connections between them. 

Transfer notes into a Word document. Once I've got to a point where I feel like I've read enough to have a solid idea and a rough argument and I want to start getting things down on paper, I like to open a fresh Word document and paste my plan into it. Then (and this is the time consuming part, as it can take a day or two depending on how much you've read) I meticulously go through all my notes from my reading and copy and paste relevant parts into different sections. Don't worry about being super precise about where you put things as you can always move it around later, but just start to fill the document up. My top tip for this step is to choose a different font colour for each reading, or at least the main texts, as this will help you remember which ideas and phrases belong to which reference later on. I tend to use darker colours as this makes it easier to read, like different shades of navy, green, dark red, brown, orange and purple. Also, I start building my final bibliography at this stage, either in a separate document or at the end of the essay - when I paste the relevant notes from a reading into the main document, at the same time I paste the full citation into the bibliography so I do the reference list as I go along.

Review and assess what you've got. Once I've transferred all the relevant information across, I take some time to review the document and begin piecing things together. At this stage the total word count can be way over what you're actually aiming for (mine is usually double or more) but don't panic! There will be a lot of stuff you just delete straight away or further down the line. This is the stage where you have to hold the whole essay plan in your brain and make changes and adjustments accordingly. It's also a good time to start adding in any key ideas that come to you as you read, or notes to yourself, which I usually do in italics - things like: 'do I really need this section?' and 'make sure to emphasise this properly' and 'kind of contradicts paragraph 4?'.

Reduce, revise and write. It's kind of tricky to put into words my thought process for this step because it's so instinctive and specific to the essay in question, but I basically just go through each paragraph in chronological order and make use of the ideas and direct quotes in the notes I have for that section to put together a paragraph of prose. The idea is that rather than starting from a blank page, I copy, paste, manipulate, rephrase and move around what I already have and combine it with my own words until it resembles a paragraph. I don't have a strict rule but I try to make sure each paragraph has a couple of references in it, or 'is colourful enough', so that I'm not relying on one author too much. I also tend to start with the introduction, as this is where you have to identify the problem, state your thesis/argument and explain how the essay will be structured - so if you have this written out to start with it can be helpful to refer back to as you progress to ensure you don't lose sight of what you're aiming for. On that note, keep referring back to the essay question subquestions you identified to check you're answering them fully.

And that's essentially it, as once you've repeated the last step ad infinitum you should have a fully referenced essay with bibliography. In a way I see the essay-writing process as a jigsaw puzzle because it involves piecing something together, except usually you have to choose your overall picture and create the pieces yourself. I realise this has been mega long but it was a little more difficult to explain my process than I expected, I guess because a lot of is instinctive. Anyway I hope this has helped someone, or at least will be interesting for me to read in a couple of years time when academia is a distant memory.

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