/lit/ - Literature

>>12206948
you tell the prof what they want to hear, it helps to become familiar with what theyve written themselves

>>12206948
By writing a good essay lol. You just can't do it.

>>12206948
bee urself ;)

>>12206951

I've also noticed that white guys gave me better grades than african american females. If you're english prof is an african american female you'd better drop the class or else you'll become the next seung hui cho. So many would have lived had his professor been male.

God college is such a fucking joke.

The best you can do is find some old school scholar in the department and learn everything you can from him/her personally.

>>12206970
All white professors, I study in Northern UK. Sometimes I'm the only male in the seminar, rest are basic white girls. Actually it's given me serious depression over the past 3 years as I can't relate or engage with a peer group. Sad really.

>>12206948
Leftist talking points and buzzwords

>>12207144
this. Shakespeare's plays are now deep commentaries on gender roles.

>>12206984
>women
>peers
just fuck some of them and be done with it

also be black or female to win more points by default.

I went to a Christian private school growing up, and I always did well. Thing is, I've never really been a Christian. Just throw out what they want to hear. One time I wrote an essay in high school that was just me patting the Christian god on the back, and I got like a 90 something.

>>12206948
I always get 80s or 90s on writing assignments and I've never even thought of myself as a good writer.

If you dont get an A on every single paper in your undergrad youre a failure as a student.

t. got a B- once and descended into alcoholism and self loathing

i've found with the exception of the highest levels of courses, you have to actively try not to get an A in english classes. just being able to read and write puts you ahead of your fellow mouthbreathers, even at the college level

>>12207180
>>12207174
>>12207168
>t. amerifriend

>>12206948
Have a thesis. State it. Argue for it, and offer rebuttals for the most obvious arguments against it. Once you've presented your case, expand on the consequences of your thesis. Given the truth of your thesis, what should readers think or do?

It's really just a matter of being persuasive. I've gotten high marks on papers that had obvious holes, solely on the basis of strong rhetoric.

If you want some reading to help out, hit up Aristotle's Rhetoric (for redpilled scholars) or "They Say, I Say" (for normie college kids).

>>12206948
Speaking as a prof with stacks of marking all around me:
Look at your papers. Did you use at least a half-dozen scholarly sources? Did you use them well? Did you cite properly?
Did you have a clear arguable thesis, neither self-evident, nor simple-minded, nor subjective opinion? It doesn't have to be wholly original, but it should be decently expressed and followed.
Did you keep yourself out of the paper? (no "In my opinion" or "I think" waffling). Did you air your annoying and possibly moronic personal views on gender, philosophy, sociology, morality, religion, etc., all over the page? Did you pretend you know something about a period, genre, etc., when you don't?
Did you read the primary text carefully and understand it? Are you one of those hopeless lads who resists any notion of symbolism, metaphor, or multiple levels of a text?
Can you actually write? Can you use the language gracefully?
If all else fails, ask your prof. Marks in the 80s are rarely difficult to obtain in an undergraduate literature course.

>>12207189
>>12207201
Cheers for the real advice.

>>12206948
You're probably stupid.

>>12206948
Make good art (i.e. write what the prof likes because they're retarded and define good art as whatever they like because art is subjective and if you study art you're a retard)

It's formulaic. Literally, just write the most dry, strictly informative paper you can. You aren't writing an essay for a grade to enjoy writing. Just slog through it. I expected better standards and more engagement here and was sorely dissapointed.

>>12207275
>Its formulaic
At Dartmouth? Here at community college were allowes to being paintings instead of essays. I cant paint, but you can't write, so maybe you'd be curious.
>I expected better
Wait I thought you were an oldfag.
>more engagement
No we like being as dry as possible here.
>and was sorely dissapointed
So leave, sweetie!

>following me
>can't read for shit
You're either actually drunk or really, really stupid.

>>12206948
>not seeing your professor at their office and asking what you can do to improve
this is why you fail

>>12207302
Both. I am drunk and "really, really" stupid. (Always use really twice when lacking a really, really good adverb to drive the point home. Thats what we learned in community college.)

not only will this actually help you write in the way the professor wants, but you will also be remembered as the driven, eager student who comes to office hours

>>12206948

Caring about your grades is absurd.

>>12206948
1. Write a good essay. Do the research. Situate your work within the broader scholarship. No substitute for doing this properly.

2. Understand your audience. You need to go and submit drafts and talk to your professor about the topic. People think they are "bothering" these academics by doing this, but it's actually flattering to be asked for help. Asking for help, opinion, advice - is a way of showing respect. Do it.

3. Make every effort to appear professional and academic. Make sure you put all the academic formatting bells and whistles on your work. Cover page, page numbers, indenting, double spacing, etc. Anything that adds something. Then get it printed into an actual small book and submit it physically if this option is available. When I did this, my essays went from B to A. Appearances are everything, even among academics.

>>12206948
>>12207207
1/2

I've graded hundreds of UK papers in the humanities as a TA and got plenty of high Firsts as an undergrad (why am I still on this board?). Here are some tips.

Make sure you read several secondary sources even if they aren't in your bibliography. Your (lack of) knowledge of the intellectual terrain will come across - we will notice, both ways. I would say 10 sources for a summative 2,500 word paper is due diligence. However, reading the paper through once or twice and dismissing it as useless is fine and counts - so long as you have good reason. I'd expect to seriously engage with 2-3 sources in the end as you realise papers aren’t useful to you right now (or fundamentally good, the 80/20 rule applies even to texts that make reading lists).
If an unpadded bibliography scares you, cite the texts you dismissed in an offhand reference. Something like "... although we now see that this interpretation of Gawain's tale is incorrect, it is not unpopular - see also X Y Z" will be sufficient. Again, any switched on grader probably won't care either way but it's worth it in case they do.

How do you read papers? Print them out, I’m serious, print them out and take notes in a notebook or on paper. You want to do as little work as possible on a machine that also has social media, email, anything that can give you a notification or provide games/video/boards to skim and shitpost if you get bored.

My technique is to borderline skim the sources once and then go back for taking notes. Read the paper through, put question marks in the borders, underline things you think might be significant, things like that. Then come back and make notes on the page by page level, trying to condense down the points and evidence the author gives as the paper progresses. write out, in full, particularly relevant quotes or snatches of text. Some people like having different colour pens for different points/ classes of notes/ summary vs direct quote vs rewrite of general theme. This will be slow. If you do this fast you are either doing it wrong or the paper you are looking at is of little merit.

By the end you should be able to confidently identify the main argument of the paper and how the argument is made. The process of trying to compress the paper forces you to identify what’s most relevant to you and finding quotes to use should now be easy. It should also be obvious as you take those notes and really try to pick the papers apart which ones are worth your time. Talk to your peers about what they are reading. Argue with them about the issues and the readings you have. Identify people who have informed ideas and try to get in discussions with them, but make sure you have something to offer too. By the end of this process you should have a distilled down set of ideas you genuinely think are worth engaging with, really very few, and which you can engage with in detail. Quality of discussion over number of points should be your watchword.

>>12208018

This process will result in you reading lots of things you never cite (or only cite to show you read them/stuff a bibliography because the course demands 10 sources per paper or something). This is fine, do not panic, it’s normal. The process of intelligently throwing away the chaff is immensely useful and the effort you put in will shine through in the quality of the paper you eventually produce.

RE writing, your introduction should tell the grader where your argument is going and broadly how you will do it. “In this paper I will argue / we will see (depending on your grader’s preferences with first person essay writing) that Hope Mirlees was more significant to the development of fantasy as a true genre than Mary Shelley. This is because Frankenstein … whereas Lud-in-the-Mist …”. Then go on to give a clear definition of what you mean by your terms. “I will define literary fiction as X and fantasy, in its contemporary meaning, as Y. It is also helpful to consider old English faerie stories which I will define as Z…”

Clarity is king. Clarity is 90% of the battle. If you yourself, and a fresher off the boat, would find your paper useful for understanding the subject, you’re doing it right. Do not try to make something “academic” right off the bat. Your intended audience or an undergrad paper is the laziest member of the year below you which includes a sixthformer if you’re a fresher. For all you know, there’s a lecturer/TA grading this at 3 in the morning subsisting entirely on caffeine and red wine. Briefly summarise points before moving subject completely. Signpost what you are doing next; your conclusion should really be an abstract. “We saw that X is true through Y evidence, and that Z counterpoint is incorrect because 123”. If someone in a terrible mood because it’s 3am, their husband is pissed at them for not coming home at midnight, and they have just got through 120 papers with rambling bad arguments, you want to be the paper that makes them think “oh thank fuck, maybe I will sleep tonight if the rest are like this”.

Talk to your TAs/lecturers, finding out if there’s anything the particularly insist on in paper structure, but stick to substantive issues and asking for good literature recs in the main. They will likely tell you how they expect papers to be written or you will find out via the grapevine if you engage with your class. These days they should offer online essay writing advice for structure and there are lots of other resources on that online. Against what other posters said, I wouldn’t ask them about essay plans directly but instead about general lines of argument. Honestly, it is possible to write a fantastic looking plan or a broadly correct one and sill write a bad essay because you’ve put bad meat on a good skeleton.

Also see

>>12207201

>annoying and possibly moronic personal views on gender, philosophy, sociology, morality, religion, etc.

Don't do this.

>>12206970

>Going to universities which hire nigger "profs"

Anon, you've made a mistake..

>>12206948

Nope they are not. I have been grading students for more than 15 years now and I can tell you this: most of you are the epitome of mediocrity. I am not by all means a genius, but I have met a couple and I can recognize them when I see them,and I am thankful everyday to whatever extra-mundane entity is out there to make the existence of exceptional people possible, for this means that at least some of us are not complete and utter waste.
And here is the bitter truth, seen from above when you mark 20 or more essays from the same class. 14 of them will follow a very similar train of thought, with problems in structure and articulation. 4 of them will do the same, but 2 will be so badly articulated you'll have to fail them, and 2 slightly better than the rest, so you'll have to give them a 70. If you are lucky, but this happens more or less once every 6/7 batches of shit to mark, 1 of them will be bad in an entertaining way, so at least you'll be laughing while making cyborg work, and 1 of them will be surprisingly good. Let me be clear: by surprisingly I mean that he will be able to follow the train of thought of others with such clarity and in such a structured way that he'll reach a 75 for having done good what everyone else did mediocrely.
But I assure you, from the perspective of the grader most of the time there is no discernible talent, not anywhere to be seen. And the eerie thing is that you guys walk around wearing weird stuff, trying to be original in any way, while put in front of a simple question to answer in 3000 words or less you are incapable for the life of god of producing an original thought. Seriously, from a lecturer's perspective you look like an army of clones. When I cannot see your faces, but only your thoughts, you are less recognizable than a 4chan anonymous post for me.
My only hope is that in the loneliness of your soul you harvest something special to you which makes you different from others, because I swear, it makes me utterly desperate when I see how similarly you all think and how incapable you are of producing anything original and worthwhile.

>>12208018
>not reading so much that you are already an expert on every topic compared to your retarded classmates even after doing research
kek gen eds are a joke, glad I'm an engineer and never had to take serious classes that required lots of writing, this would stop working very quick

>>12208053
this is what I assume every professor who has to read through essays thinks. Part of it is likely a lack of effort (see above) and part is the fact that we have real life idiots going to uni these days because college is so accessible. If this weren't the case I'd have a whole lot of Fs because I couldn't look good by comparison

>>12208176

What is your point exactly? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about, only the desire to look down on humanities/arts students. I guarantee you now you would produce something worse than the students >>12208053
is based solely on the naivety of your post about research and writing in the humanities.

>>12208268

it talking about*, fuck.

>>12206948
Who is she? She's like Savannah but beautiful

>>12206984
What uni?
t. Leeds

isn't a 90 like publishable quality in england

1. Be non-white
2. Be non-straight

>>12208053
If you think about it for a few seconds it stands to reason that a bunch of kids who got through the same education system and where taught to approach essays with the same general outlook and the same particular tools would produce the same kinds of work.

Just think for instance about the argumentation form yourrself must have taught them, and compare it to the original signification of "essay" as a literary genre.

Unis in Britain have an unspoken agreement to rate your essays low (65% average even for good essays) in the first and second years, and then to ramp them up in your third year so you feel motivated to finish the course and cough up all your fees.

>>12206984
Same anon same same

>>12207159
Well, they were. Just not the way academics want them to be interpreted now.

>>12208511
70% is a first, (1:1) which is the highest level in the UK

>>12206948
Use relevant textual evidence (and depending on professor a large amount of academic critique) ive had profs eho prefer just the text and others who want contextualized research. Know what they want but lots of good evidence is key.

The MOST important thing is to develop a conplex claim in your opening. Eg: "The Wasteland's change in narrative and perspectives (a demonstrable fact) CREATES a paratactic viewpoint for the audience (its direct effect in text) WHICH IS HOW Eliot conveys the sense of isolating, confusion of 20th century society to the reader (something youre trying to prove from extrapolation)."

Choose something interesting to write about that may or not be "correct" but you can strongly argue.

>>12206970
Idk about that. Im a white male and I got an A in my native american lit class even though I posed contradictory opinions to the professor (a native American woman)

>>12207174
A bit extreme but true to a degree. Its not hard to get an A.

>>12207189
>>12207201
>>12208018
>>12208026
>>12208053
This is good advice.
The people saying "muh diversity," "be formulaic," and "appeal to prof" are pseuds who are either too dumb to understand their own short comings or have never been in a real academic setting.

Good luck anon.

>>12210016
>Idk about that. Im a white male and I got an A in my native american lit class even though I posed contradictory opinions to the professor (a native American woman)

this shit is super subjective and varies based on the professor dude, congrats ur professor is intelligent

graduated 0.4% off a first in september, don't fuck up and give yourself more than one night to write the essays and you'll be fine, good luck

also to secure a first you need to use clear independant thought in your analysis

>>12208511
Just write what your professor wants to hear. Most of them are 115 IQ progressive extremists who aren't particularly interested in doing their jobs (teaching the material they're paid teach), especially at the lower levels. They are extremely susceptible to manipulation and signalling

>>12207850
>even among academics.
Why are you saying this like academics are not fundamentally shallow people? Academics, especially humanities academics, are bar none the most superficial people on the face of the planet. Nobody (NOBODY) cares more about the ranking of your university, your race, your socioeconomic status, who your parents are, where you completed your secondary education, more than humanities academics. They are people who have gotten through life by collecting gold stars and petty prizes while twisting themselves into knots to win the approval of their peers and authority figures

In STEM if you discover a breakthrough, you discover a breakthrough, and everybody can't help but follow your discovery because it's simply the truth. You can be at Podunk State and win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. It's happened, many times.

In the humanities you attend Harvard and immediately proceed to tell everybody else that this is a breakthrough because you went Harvard and are thus smart. Journals publish you because you went to Harvard, and eventually this trickles down into community colleges and the third world.

Honestly at this point humanities education is a scam for 90% of people and a minor luxury for modern day aristocrats. Everybody is playing a game of musical chairs, and if you can't hear the music then you've already lost

>>12208268
I would be lying if I said I didn't look down on people majoring in the humanities but my post was about how low standards are in gen ed courses involving writing and how poorly my approach would go in upper-division undergrad and graduate classes. I don't know what gave you the impression that I thought I could write better than someone about to wrap up their creative writing major, kek. I don't know what in my post could have upset you so

>>12206948
I could never get past 70 because I did every essay the night before having, at best, only skim read the book or, at worst, skim read the Sparknotes page. The fact that I got a 2:1 at all should be taken as an overwhelming condemnation of English Literature courses in modern academia (went to a pretty good uni too as well).

I read more now I've graduated than I ever did at Uni. I wasted my time there in both an academic and social sense. I'd give anything to go back and change my ways.