Every student tries to take shortcuts, but some of these “shortcuts” actually waste tons of time. Let’s not waste any more time and look at the Top 4 Most Obvious Mistakes students make:
4) Skimming the reading — Are you doing this right now? If so, that’s okay. Most articles on the Internet are prime skimming-material. But can you skim Shakespeare? Thoreau? Your boring-as-dirt American History textbook? Heck no! If you don’t take notes on the material, when it comes time to prepare for your tests and papers, you’re going to have to re-read everything you “read”. Basically, you wind up reading the same thing TWICE! That’s a total waste of time! Okay, now that we got your attention, please go back and read any parts of this article you skimmed.
3) Checking the grades, not the comments — Bad news: you got your paper back and you got a “C”. Â Your teacher wrote a bunch of comments in the margins, but you just want to forget this ever happened, so you stuff the paper in your bag and head off to the cafeteria for some fried food therapy. Dumb move! When you read the comments, you can find out exactly what your teacher wants you to do. It’s kind of like your dream boy/girl telling you exactly what they want for Valentine’s Day. If your dream date wants to be kissed at midnight, give your date a kiss at midnight, and if your teacher wants a clearer thesis, rewrite your thesis (Just don’t kiss your teacher because that would take “kissing-up” to a whole new level… a weird level). Remember: your goal is to impress your teacher, so when they tell you what they want, listen! Sometimes the fix might be so simple, you’ll be able to rewrite your “C” paper into an “A”. Seriously.
2) Writing without an outline – Would you drive cross-country without a map? Walk on a trapeze without a net? Writing a paper without an outline is like doing all that with your eyes closed. The driver follows signs, the trapeze artist follows a straight line, but the outline-less student has no guide whatsoever. Teachers assign papers to see how well you can organize your thoughts. If you’re bouncing all over the place, you’re missing the point of the assignment. Many students skip the outline stage so they can just start “working on the paper”. Outlining IS “working on the paper”. This is why educators are now using methods like POWER and PROWL to help students visualize the importance of the outline. We highly recommend those techniques. They’ll help you get from Point A to Z faster, without having to go from A to G to Q back to F then to K then to O-HHHHHHH CR**!!!.
1) Failure to follow instructions — This shouldn’t have to be on this list, right? This is just too obvious that it doesn’t need to mentioned, right? Well, unfortunately, it’s such a common mistake that is was our clear numero uno. Let’s just break down exactly what level of dysfunction happens here: You’re so eager to get the assignment done that you just start BEFORE reading all the instructions, and so you stay up ALL NIGHT working at it, and then finally turn it in the next morning, and after all that stress and worry, you get a big fat “F”. Why? Because your teacher gave you specific instructions and you didn’t follow them. DUMB, DUMB, DUMB! It’s one thing not to do an assignment, but to put in all that work for nothing is the dumbest move you can make.
We know some of these are obvious, but if you want to guarantee that you’ll avoid all these mistake, check out our page of helpful writing strategies. They offer some, er, not-so-obvious advice.
Get Write On It. 