Picking Your Topic

This may sound very basic, but many students who are given the opportunity to choose their paper topic but don’t put any effort into choosing their topic, and end up resenting the paper as they write it. This can be avoided! All you have to do is take 15 minutes to look up a topic that interests you. Writing a paper on something you are interested in makes it easier to do the research, and it can make actually writing the paper exciting.

If you think that there is nothing you could be interested in, you’re probably not making enough of an effort. While it can be fun to write about something you already know a lot about, don’t be scared to write about something new, or something you don’t know much about. Also, consider how you approach a topic. Most professors appreciate when students try to present a topic in a way that it hasn’t been looked at in the past. One of the best ways to find your topic is to choose a broad topic and narrow it down. Look for the silences in a subject: what has been left out of the historiography?

Make your paper something that will improve the historiography on your topic. When there is significant meaning to your essay, it becomes easy to get excited about it. Maybe you’ll never love writing essays, but writing about a topic that interests you will at least make the process less painful. As you advance your studies, you will be given more choice in your essay topic. That’s when it becomes even more important to take time in choosing what you are going to write about. You need to be writing about something you care about in order to enjoy the process.