A smart tip before you write an essay for a teacher (Blog Entry 1)

There seems to be an invisible border between the Universities and the job market in Canada and now with the increasing population of students with part time jobs, the line between the two is getting smaller and smaller. It was difficult in the beginning to write essays for teachers because I worked overnight and couldn’t polish my essay to their standards.

There are billions of websites that will teach you how to write a good essay. Kimberley Chapman’s no nonsense advice on essay writing is the best one I found (http://kimberlychapman.com/essay/essay.html) because she’s thorough and gets her point across without having to be overly nice about it. The one thing that helped me write was how I re-framed the problem. Here’s the idea that helped me re-frame my problem.

Your teacher is like a boss…sort of.

Once I realized this, I was much better off in university. I don’t mean boss in a negative sense. It also means that the teacher can be your client. Since I am interesting in writing professionally, I see to it that my paying clients are happy with my work. This payment, a capitalist derived method obviously, is in form of grades. And the teachers who pay me in good grades, usually but not always, means that they liked my work. When I reframed my problem with certain *special* teachers, I was able to write what they wanted while subtlety getting my purpose for the essay across. Business writing and courses really drive this advice home with students, but university level essay tipsters rarely mention that your teacher is part of that audience. Figure out what your teacher expects from you, read between the lines of the syllabus they hand you at the beginning of the semester.

If the public eye is fickle then by extension, so is your teacher. If you find an Aladdin, that precious diamond in the rough, take as many courses as you can with them, and learn from them. As for the rest, ride the wave and get as much help from your peers and the occasional vodka bottle! ;)