Help Writing a University Essay

Getting help writing a university essay.

I want to focus on two key points to remember when you’re working on a college essay or university essay, be it a thesis or a simple 5-10 page paper. These points were foremost in my mind last weekend when I was helping a local university student edit and re-vamp her thesis. She had a great topic, with an interesting argument, and most of the elements she needed for a successful paper, but she hadn’t been able to get her professor to sign off on it, and she contacted me to help her out.

After reading it, I was able to identify what the problems were. The argument had gotten off track, and the strong philosophical foundation she had set up at the beginning of the paper wasn’t connected effectively with her conclusions. Furthermore, some of the nuances of the theoretical points had gotten lost along the way, and the argument had been weakened as a result. She also needed to separate some of her subjective opinions from the overall objective content and then return to them in the conclusion. In any case, in one two hour session, I managed to help her sort the problems out.

Based on this, I wanted to share the following notions:

1) Put yourself in your reader’s shoes.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that you are a lot more familiar with your ideas than your reader is. You’ve spent weeks, maybe months or longer with the topic. You know all the ins and outs and are probably so familiar with your argument that you could recite it in your sleep. It’s obvious to you what you’re trying to say. Your reader, on the other hand, might be coming to it for the first time. If you don’t lay things out clearly and logically and develop the ideas in a coherent manner, the reader’s not going to get it.

Which brings me to point #2.

2) Get someone to read your essay who is objective and has an academic background.

It’s nice to have a friend or family member look over your paper, but they’re probably not going to be able to give you the objective feedback that you need. They might not have enough academic training or background to judge accurately if your argument is working or not, and if it’s not working, what the problem is. It’s best to hire an academic tutor who can quickly identify the issues and give you good suggestions on how to resolve them.