Soooo sick of an assignment

I've spent so much time on it, and still got barely anything done.

It's got 5 parts to it - part a is 200 words about the focus, limits and directive words of the topic, part b is an annotated bibliography - using 5 of your references, write about the arguments in the papers, evidence they use to support those arguments, then write the actual bibliography of the papers. Part C is a concept map - there's a "mud map" you have to fill in about how you plan to write your assignment, part D you have to mark as assignment they give us (which seems such a waste of time), and part E is the assignment itself - it's only 1400 words, but you need to include 19 references - 9 of which they've given you, 10 of which you need to find yourself. I swear the assignment will be nothing but references.

The whole assignment is so ridiculous and seems such a waste of time. I think the whole point is to teach you how to do an assignment, but it's a Politics subject, now a "how to write an assignment" subject. I'm struggling with motivation because it seems sooooo ridiculous.

Rant over.

What do you need help with? I have a subject idea if you need one.

It sounds to me like the assignment is more how to research and document that research, which isn't a bad thing. It makes sure you are thorough and know where you got your info. What class is it?

Originally Posted by calico2222

It sounds to me like the assignment is more how to research and document that research, which isn't a bad thing. It makes sure you are thorough and know where you got your info. What class is it?

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I think you may be right. That's something that I'm going have to learn to do, eventually. I look in the back of some of my history books and I'm amazed at the amount of notes and references and sources that are given. I'm almost finished with one book and it has to have close to a hundred pages of such information.

Originally Posted by Essayons89

What do you need help with? I have a subject idea if you need one.

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I have a topic, and that's part of the problem, it's a hard to research topic - very specific.

Originally Posted by calico2222

It sounds to me like the assignment is more how to research and document that research, which isn't a bad thing. It makes sure you are thorough and know where you got your info. What class is it?

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But it's a Politics subject, and if you don't know how to write assignments, or need help, the university has a Learning Centre which provides free courses in just that.

I understand what they're trying to do, but I don't think it's an appropriate subject for it, and I don't think the methods they are using are particularly useful - particularly since the lecturer said the questions you have to write about for Part A don't really fit for the topic they've given us.

I know the feeling, I had a similar type assignment, only the subject was for body piercing. Man, that was one of the worst assignments I had ever worked on - I could not find a balanced argument.

I feel for you

OMG! I don't even know what you said

My daughter has to write similar papers for her major - and she's in Physical Therapy. They take ten points off for every incorrect citation
On a ten page paper, single spaced, it is possible to have zero points by the end of page two.
It's an ethics lesson and preparing for future publication of articles.

I don't even understand what you're supposed to do!

Originally Posted by Mom of 4

My daughter has to write similar papers for her major - and she's in Physical Therapy. They take ten points off for every incorrect citation

On a ten page paper, single spaced, it is possible to have zero points by the end of page two.
It's an ethics lesson and preparing for future publication of articles.

Click to expand...

In my opinion there is far too much emphasis in University on writing papers and the format for writing papers. IMHO it's an excuse to give the profs something to do other than to stand there and lecture.

I couldn't care less how well a person writes a paper or if they know the "proper" structure of writing a paper etc. All I care about is that they know their stuff and aren't going to kill me in the process of treating me.

Whether you can write a decent paper in the proper format isn't going to do me any good if you don't know the core subject matter of what you are studying IE: physio therapy, medicine, nursing etc.

More emphasis should be put into teaching the actual subject at hand and not making the student spend most of their time writing papers and struggling to get the proper structure of that paper so they don't lose marks on the assignment.

As a nurse with a 2 years Diploma, I am appalled at how little time the 4 year degree students get looking after patients. Most of their time is spent in a classroom getting lectured to and writing paper after paper after paper. Every new degree nurse that I have ever worked with knew about as much about patient care as I did after having only been in the diploma program for 6 months. It's sickening really. I remember one girl didn't even know how to do something as basic as suction a patient or get a specimen from a urinary catheter.... both very basic things that I learned within the first month of entering school. The diploma program is subject and patient care oriented, it's not focused on how well you can write a paper, in fact I didn't have to write a single paper. The only research I needed to do was on my patients and procedures. And that's how things should be, because as a nurse you aren't writing papers for a living. You are looking after sick people who rely and depend on you to know what is wrong with them and to detect improvement or deterioration etc. Your ability to write a properly structured paper has no bearing on that person laying on the bed with their heart stopped with you the only one around that can potentially save them.

You can do it! And now you've inspired me to crack open my correspondance course!

Is the class one of the university's general ed requirement classes? Like, the ones everyone has to take?

A lot of the time classes like that they are forced into doing assignments like yours because the school wants you to, not because the prof does. I've had classes like that too. My first college you had to take a bunch of "writing intensive" classes and there were requirements for the instructors to get the class to qualify and you had to write x number of pages.

If it's something like that, just look at it as, you'd have to do this assignment sometime, might as well be for this class.

I've also noticed that it's a lot harder for non-traditional students to deal with assignments like that when you can't see a purpose for them. People who went to college straight from high school are just more used to "busy work" I suppose. Just remember that even though you know how to research and cite and write an annotated bibliography, most of the other students probably need practice with that. Kinda like in my grammar class, we had to write a resume as an assignment. I thought it was a great assignment, because nobody had ever taught me that. Some of the other people in the class, having done resumes and had real jobs before, thought it was unbelievably dumb.