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Tips for success on first drafts and first dates

March 12, 2010

by Marley Badolati

During my struggle to find something worth writing about this week, I realized that as students we have to come up with interesting and insightful paper topics for class on a fairly regular basis. Professors will not always give you a question to answer, and many of us have tragically found out that it is immensely more difficult to propose and answer your own questions than someone else’s. Most of us have also come to realize how horribly first dates can go. And yes: There is a metaphor about to happen right now.

In order to help those who find themselves in situations similar to mine – desperately reaching for something to say – I’ve prepared a few simple steps for success in writing a paper and having a good first date:

1) Start playfully. Before you sit down in front of your Macbook and pound out some blabber of a thesis statement, try some no-pressure freewriting. Just write down some things that you’ve found interesting or confusing in the text until you have something to work from. The worst thing to do is to keep a conclusion waiting in the back of your mind. The paper will feel forced and narrowly confined in a corset of expectation that is both unnatural and uninteresting.

The same goes for embarking on a first date: If you worry yourself about how the date will end, the conversation will not develop naturally and inevitably you’ll leave the date without knowing anything of substance about the other person. You might end up treating it as a question and answer session instead of a date – providing the conversation only with what you think will make you look good in the end. This style of interaction comes off as insincere and somewhat nauseating; it’s best if you avoid thinking about conclusions all together at first. When you do start to write, keep in mind that…

2) You don’t have to start with a thesis statement. Oh, Thesis Statement, such trickery is hidden in thee! You tell us to summarize our argument in one sentence at the end of the intro paragraph. Oh, Intro Paragraph, you ask us to summarize the contents of the paper within the first few sentences! I say to thou, NO! Why refute the almighty introduction? Because it’s just not a great place to start.
You don’t want trap yourself early on by saying, “I’m a vegan and I only like three things: vintage, green tea, and puppies. Let me tell you why.” Now, what if you want to talk about other things that you like? You can’t, you’ve already said everything we need to know. Even if you want to change your mind, it’s too late – everything that diverges from that original statement will just be a lie.
So now you’re stuck elaborating about things your date probably doesn’t even care about; you can see that he or she is getting visibly bored. But why? Well, it’s because you summarized everything already. They don’t feel the need for you to explain yourself. Lesson: Essays aren’t fun to read when you say everything in the first paragraph. Essays also aren’t fun to read when you sound like an idiot. How do you not sound like an idiot? Well…

3) Do NOT make assumptions. Yes, assumptions really do make an “ass “of “u” and “me.” Please, please, please, avoid them in your papers and on dates. Even if you have a great understanding of a particular author or subculture, you don’t definitively know an author’s intent. If you read “The Garden Party,” discover the incestuous undertones, and write a paper about how this obviously points to Katherine Mansfield’s lust for sexual relationships with her relatives, you’re probably going to fail. A lot.

The same thing happens when you make definitive judgments about someone’s personality based off of their clothing or major. You fail. Imagine you’re on a date and someone says, “Oh, you’re a math major. You’re probably super uptight and nerdy, right?” Now that person follows up with, “So, I see you like wearing cowboy boots. You must be a hipster.”
If you find yourself making statements like these, either in your papers or while on dates, you might want to stop for the sake of humanity. But how can one avoid this? I mean, shoot, you were probably just trying to make conversation. Well, the best way to get to know someone or write a good paper is to …

4) Let things develop naturally. Do I really need to explain this one? Don’t force conversation or sentences. If you do, the stuff you come up with will sound like filler and read like filler. And no one likes mindless blabber. But what if you just have nothing to say about the subject? Well…

5) Sometimes you’ve just got to get through it. This is what happens when you’re too far into a date or paper to safely back out. Sometimes it’s not even your fault: You tried to make conversation and to understand your date’s interests, but sometimes you just really don’t care. You’ve listened to them talk about Frisbee golf or their My Little Pony collection for the last three hours without finding anything of interest or relevance to your life.

So what do you do? Push through. You need to save face at your friend’s party that night – you’ve already said that you’re bringing a sweet date and, well, it’s better to have something than nothing at all. You might not be in love with your date, or what you’ve written, but it’s better to hand something in than look like a total loser. All right, I’m almost done. There is just one last thing to remember before I let you go –

6) Papers and dates require REVISION. Going out with someone only once probably won’t give your date an accurate picture of who you are. You might have slipped in a misogynistic or racist joke somewhere and now you need a second date to redeem yourself. The same is true of writing papers – you might have left out some punctuation, or an entire paragraph might just suck really badly. The revision process lets you take those embarrassing moments out and fix them. But what if you don’t have time? Well, that happens on occasion and it’s all right; but unless you’re going out with some low-expectation floozy, you won’t get laid. And you won’t get an A on your paper either.