Since my second entry in the Ethnography Notes, I have had an influx of writing assignments, particularly manifesting in essays and analyses of other people’s writing. By now, I have quite a lot of practice in writing essays, but the fact that I have been working on three in quick succession gave me time to reflect on how I write them. Normally, I start with a rough outline at the top of the page, which I highlight in a bright color so I don’t forget to delete it when I’m done with the paper. The outline for longer essays can take up a page in itself, since it has several subcategories and tangents under each heading. From then on, I start with the introduction, and highlight my working thesis so I can remember to change it to something that fits the topic better if I think about it. I tend to write the paragraphs in the order in which they appear. However, for one particular class I had, in which a series of four essays were the only assignments and grades given out, I changed this strategy by adding a special paragraph just after the introduction which I finished writing after every other paragraph, which included all of my sources and relevant criticism from experts in the field. Aside from that, the manner in which I write essays is not substantially different from the way I wrote them in middle school or high school: it’s just that the stakes are higher now.
