How to BS a Term Paper

Just remember, if you choose to BS your term paper, you may not really learn anything except for how to BS your way through life. This is very useful in some occupations, and quite detrimental in others. Think long-term.

1. Use Courier instead of Times New Roman for your font. Unless the syllabus for your course specifically defines a font to use on your papers, your professors will usually accept a monospaced font as well as a variable-width font. Courier is bigger. It can make a 13 page paper into a 15 page paper.

2. Be redundant without being obvious. In the tip above, the phrase "on your papers" was completely unneccessary. But it added three words, and if your paper has to be x amount of words, three here and three there will add up.

3. Skim. If you don't have the time to read all of your primary source and all the secondary sources, skim the research to find quotes that could support your thesis. Write them down. Use them. Do not overload your paper with quotes, but it shows that you used your sources (in the cheapest sense of the word "use") and each sentence that someone else wrote is one less sentence of your own original thought. Parenthetical documentation also takes up more space than footnotes. In fact, it is now recommended in the MLA handbook that parenthetical documentation be used. Good for you.

4. Do your research first. Can't think of a thesis to write about? Check out some books in the library and see what everyone else had to say first. Instead of having your research support your thesis, have your thesis support your research. Get some quotes from some critics that are interesting that, when combined with one another, can form a thesis for you, or a focus on your paper, such as the role of machismo in Latin American literature, or what Jean-Jacques Rousseau thought of the idea of democracy.

We had to write a paper that was three measley pages long. Unfortunately, this was before the days of word processors in every living room (1977, to be exact). My english teacher was always pushing for me to write about better items than comic books and (ugh!) science fiction. I decided to go for science and fiction at the same time.

My paper was about the effects of the solar atmosphere on lyman alpha radiation waves. My sources were some technical astronomy papers and some 1960's Sky and Telescope magazines. I fit so much technical jargon into it (and some jargon I made up on the spot), that she couldn't read it at all. She couldn't even find 40% of the words I used (only time I used the archaic term whilom in a paper).

She took the paper over to the science teacher, but he said that he heard of some of the terms before, but it was way over his head. She gave me a 99 on it because she thought I mis-spelled Ignoxigatiative wrong. I challenged her to prove that, and she couldn't because I made it up. It was the only 100% paper she gave out that year ("because there is no such thing as a perfect paper").

The moral of this story? Screw morals, if you can't beat them, baffle them with bullshit. She made sure to give us a topic after that fiasco, but I was good at misconstruing her ideas. Writing a comparative analysis of Gilgamesh became how Gilgamesh was like Spider-Man.

She retired at the end of that school year.