So you have survived the last few semesters or the last year of college? It’s time to start fresh again. What you did or how you did in spring is behind you. Now you have to focus on what’s ahead. It’s still the start of the semester and you can gather your thoughts and focus on being motivated for coming back to the campus again. There are a few things you should consider and keep in mind while starting the semester in fall.

Don’t Fall behind in Class

It’s the start of the semester so it’s a good thing to stay on track and complete each assignment on time. If you submit all the assignments and projects on time, there would be no reason for you to fall behind in class. None of us want to spend the holidays catching up on missed work or buried in textbooks.  So, make sure that you don’t fall behind in class because you don’t want to regret it when all your friends are having fun and you are busy with college work.  Organize and plan everything. Try to get most of the things done in your syllabus and ace the midterms to make sure the finals go great.

Cold Weather

We know how annoying it is to get out of bed when it’s really cold and chilly outside. But, it happens every year. You can’t just roll up in bed with Starbucks and expect to go through the semester without any struggle. Waking up in cold mornings and encountering freezing temperatures is indeed difficult. Grab a hot cup of coffee on your way to class and out on some warm clothes is the only way to deal with it. If you don’t pay attention now, things will really get warmer near the exam week and you will start to feel the chill. Also, you are not the only one who has to get up in the morning. If you really have a hard time getting up in the morning then exercise for a while before getting ready. It will help your muscles relax a bit.

Don’t miss classes

Absences happen but you have to be cautious about it. There are days when you are so bummed out and stressed that you want to relax and take a day off. However you are only allowed to have a few absences, before the teacher starts to notice your absence and drop a letter. There would be some days that will be really cold or you may have to take a day off due to some illness, then what? Save your absences foe the right time and the best time to make the most of them is in the end of the semester.

Harder Courses and Classes

If you are enrolled in a fall semester that can mean two things: either you are a freshman or you have been in college for a year or so. If you are new then things are quite different as compared to high school. There would be countless assignments, quizzes, projects and finally exams. It’s a lot to take in at once. If you are an old student, then you must be aware that courses get tough and you are required to invest more time in college work.

Either way you have to work hard to get through the semester with flying colors. Professors don’t always play around in college to cut you some slack. Set your priorities and focus on studies too.

End of the Semester

When the semester will come to an end, it will be around the holidays and you can’t just help but fall the victim of the festivities around you. At the same time, you are piled with hundreds of work and projects before the final exams. You may think that you will be able to manage but things get quite rough and it’s difficult to manage studies at that time. Don’t you want to spend time at home with family or close friends? So, just chill and relax! Make a proper plan to work things out so that you can enjoy the festival season.

These are some of the basic tips and ways that you should follow in order to maintain your grades and finish the semester like a pro!

Don’t lose hope on the amount of information out there on your topic. Literature research may seem like a lot of information that will make you drown in quicksand. Getting through this chunk of information is indeed a huge task but if you plan it, you can get rid of that problem, one bit at a time.

To help you get through all that information in small sizes, we have compiled an easy plan for you to follow.

Step 1: What do you want to find out?

Do you have a research question ready or are you looking for information to make your research question strong? Before you start reading all the relevant information, make up your mind about what you are researching for. If you are at the stage of exploring a topic or a subject, then state the purpose of your research as “understanding the basic ideas of topic ABC”. If you are looking for opposing theories on the effect of event A on event B, then write it down clearly.

Having a clear perspective and goal will help you find the right information at this step of the research. You will begin to notice that reading for different goals for your research will help you focus on various aspects of publication.

Step 2: How much time do you have on your hands?

You can spend the whole day or just 20 minutes on the entire paper. If you really want to manage your time in the best possible way, then give you work a structure. Plan the work by giving yourself deadlines.

Once you are aware how much time do you have on your hands, start planning. If you have a month for the entire research, take 1.5 weeks to go through the essentials, 1 week to explore the sidelines of your research and 1 week to write a literature review.

Step 3: Study the essentials

Identify the key publications of your study. A good way to start is to find an authentic and a detailed review paper or a report. Start the topic by chewing on the references on that paper or report.

To understand the basics of the new subject, you need to spend some time on it. Understand the basic equations and principles of that study. All this will require sitting down, noting down important points and slowly working your way through all the relevant material. The process will be similar to a student going through a difficult chapter of a textbook. You may find yourself spending too much time on the some papers. However, they will build the foundation of your research along with further readings.

Step 4: Speed through the Sidelines

Separate all the papers that you find interesting, give additional insights but are not relevant to the field of study. Note that these papers are not of lesser importance, you can’t skip the side information. You have to understand all the concepts spend less time in order to understand all the elements.

The key is to go through everything in a quick manner. It will be like speed-reading through everything. Train the eyes to look at a group of words rather than looking at a single word at a time.

Step 5: Archive what you read

Reading is important but finding that paper and looking for more information is a vital aspect in controlling the large chunk of information over the time.

You can keep a digital archive or archive hard copies. Arrange your document in such a way that you are able to find those papers even after three years.

Step 6: Keep an eye on the outcome

Don’t rely on information and results available when you first researching on a topic. What appeared to be the truth yesterday may not remain the same with today’s results. Develop a strategy to keep your research updated in order to maintain the best outcome. Subscribe to the publication updates of the relevant journals and set up RSS feed on relevant keywords.

Scholarly blogging is usually centered on the need of attracting new audiences through academics. Academic writers are told that they can do a better research and enhance the impact.

Blogs are a strong medium for public engagement. People argue that blogging is a part of academic writing. It is definitely not an add-on. Blogging is the landscape of academic writing. It has the same value as any other form of writing. Here are a few strong points that can improve your academics as well as your writing style.

Blogs help in establishing a strong writing routine

The wisdom of creative and academic writing is helpful for making it a habit. Blogs can be finished in just one sitting as they are small. You can easily draft them in single self-contained pieces. Most book enthusiasts suggest that one should write every day. A blog can be written in a couple of days and gets published. Then comes the feedback and the cycle goes on. This cycle is a great motivation for continuing writing and making it an everyday routine.

Experiment with your writing voice

The academics write blogs in a very casual tone as compared to other publications. The blogs gives you the flexibility to try various approaches in different posts. You can use a different vocabulary, syntax and a different genre each time. The textual experiments will help you determine the kind of voice you want to adopt. It will support you developing a light style of writing to a more complex writing style.

Get to the Point with Blogs

A blog is a small piece of writing, not an essay. It is impossible to include a lot of ideas into one blog post. You can include multiple ideas into as much as 1000 words. A blog is the best platform to talk solely about one thing. Even if you are journal writer, blogging will teach you how to focus on one point only rather than firing up different ideas. Regardless of the fact that the academic writing style is quite professional than blogging, it is still a recipe for success.

Experiment with various writing styles

A blog can have more than one style of writing in every post. Some bloggers maintain the same writing style throughout their blog while others take a varied writing approach. There are no such rules in a blog so you are free to experiment with various forms of writing. A blogger can do anything with the blog, keeping the target audience in mind. You can include a description, instructions or a short review in the blog. It can also take a more literary form of writing such as a letter. You can also include images, slides and videos to make it even more interesting.

For how to write an annotated bibliography in Turabian first thing to do would be to explain that  a bibliography can be defined as the list of works of a specific author that includes critical or explanatory notes and passages.

With the list of authors, books, articles and documents you must also write descriptive and evaluative paragraphs of around 150 words regarding the annotation. This informs the reader of the relevance, accuracy and the quality of the sources that you selected and quoted.

Now select a topic that you can easily handle and select your sources of information. Read the selected information thoroughly, because without acquiring the requisite knowledge or information it can be pretty difficult to write about your topic.  You must arrange the selected entries in an alphabetical order, normally by the name of the authors whose works have been selected for the article.

Next for writing an annotated bibliography in Turabian, when abstracts or descriptive summaries must be written at the beginning of the journal articles in publication in an alphabetical list of topics or indexes, depicting the author’s view on the subject and also explaining these views and his knowledge or authority on the subject.

A source is usually appraised by reading the bibliographic citation for the name of the author, title and publication information. This will help in determining the usefulness of that source for your bibliography in the same way that you can appraise a web site by reading the home page thoroughly.

Publication information is required such as whether this is a first publication as sources may be revised in further publications. Sources may be revised or updated and there might be changes in information and some sources might even have to be omitted. Frequent printing of the work indicates that is reliable and has become a standard source of information.

If the work has been published by a university press, then it there are great possibilities that it is a scholarly work.  For writing an annotated bibliography in Turabian, it is not necessary that if the publisher is reputed then that does not necessarily guarantee quality, it only shows that the publisher has enough regard for the source to publish the work. Consider the type of audience that the author is targeting. Is the audience general or specialized?  Consider also that the work is suitable for your needs, and is not too advanced.

How to do a college essay in MLA format

If you are looking for authentic guidelines to understand MLA format, it is essential to comprehend different formats. Students usually search online how to do a college essay in MLA format to write it correctly. College essay writing becomes easy once you read the whole procedure how to do it and how to format the paper. There are certain points that you need to take into consideration which differentiate the MLA format from others.

You will start a MLA format paper with student name, course name, professor name and date written on the top. From this page you will give the heading of the topic and start writing the details. Do not forget to include the running heading on the top right of student name which will be on every page. According to the subject and topic you choose to write on, give an introduction of the topic before you move on towards writing the facts and figures.

To understand how to do a college essay in MLA format know that there is no need to give an abstract or a synopsis. Students find this paper easy to write as they only have to provide the reader with authentic information on the subject given. On writing the body of paper it is important to give in-text citations, which students usually get stuck on. For them it is difficult to write the references in a pattern and what information they have to include in the text.

How to do a college essay in MLA format does not only include the right pattern to compile the paper but students are more concerned about adding the references rightly. This phase is complicated for every student as every source is different and is quoted in a different manner. The pattern of providing the reference of a book is different from citing a website; this is where students have to be careful.

When you cite a book in a paragraph add author name and page number. On the other hand, while citing an article or a report from the Internet, make sure you write it in a parenthetical manner. In the end, the reference page will have all the references written in an alphabetical order with a hanging indent. Finally, end your paper with an opinionated conclusion in which you do not have to add facts and figures like you did in the body of paper.