Читать книгу How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays - Paul Dickerson - Страница 48

In the two examples above, the imaginary student was faced with an essay that they did not fully understand but they sketched out some ideas without delay. These ideas gave a potential shape that their final essay might take, highlighting the possible debate(s) that their essays might develop and showing an awareness of how one idea, perspective or empirical study might be used to evaluate the essay target (Piaget’s stage theory and the deindividuation approach to aggressive behaviour). From an unpromising start – with lots of knowledge gaps – a useful plan was developed and more clarity about what needed to be found out was achieved.

If our imaginary students had gone to a search engine to fill in those gaps before they started, (1) the gaps would not be as clearly specified and (2) there would be a real risk of missing the wave – or letting the momentum slip past. How easy it is to transition from a Google Scholar search for information about deindividuation, for example, to distracting YouTube videos about 12 things you can do with an orange that’s past its use-by date.

Reflecting on the chapter: Writing an essay is not like assembling IKEA furniture

Lots of things we do, whether assembling furniture, replacing a phone battery, following a recipe or even watching a film, have a sequential preference – there is (usually) a correct order in which to do these things. Essays are a bit deceptive: they have an order with an introduction, a main body and a conclusion; they should usually be read in that order, but they are not necessarily written in that order. Essay writing is less programmatic than following a recipe. We start wherever we start and from that we form the substance out of which we will create our work. Forming an essay is a little like being a potter – we will work and rework our words, like the potter shaping their clay. We pull form and beauty out of the mass of words and ideas that we have to work with. The main thing is that we do not delay in starting to write something – from that first step all of the others are possible.