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There’s no doubt about it: scholarship essays are a tricky matter to approach. Scholarship competitions often arrive at your doorstep during the last half of the school year, by far the most hectic time in the academic year when students are already bogged down with extracurriculars, final exams, looming end-of-year grades, not to mention stress-inducing standardized tests. More often than not, high-schoolers focus on their “real schoolwork” and procrastinate on the “optional schoolwork” of scholarship applications, to the point where they end up scrambling, up to the final hours, to turn in shoddy, half-hearted applications, essays, and personal statements to a host of scholarship competitions they actually would have had a good chance of winning, had they simply believed in themselves more and taken more time to do a job well done. Read the rest of this entry »

So you need to pull an all-nighter because you’ve played video games all week instead of writing your term paper, plus you have four tests tomorrow (none of which you’ve studied for), and it’s now 8PM and you’re in a daze, freaking out, and feeling like you’re going to have a heart attack because you have no idea how to tackle the intense studying and writing that await your attention the night ahead and you have no idea how to get out of it alive?
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Writing persuasively is not easy. At times, persuasive writing can even feel a bit manipulative. Really, isn’t writing persuasively merely an attempt to coerce a hopefully impartial audience into trusting your arguments, judgments, and proclamations? Why should any audience trust what you have to say?

But, if you think about it, all writing is inherently pursuasive. A novel requires that a writer persuade the reader into accepting the book’s picture of the universe, be it Middle Earth, Holland in the 1600s, or in a galaxy far, far away — we have to accept that the world of the book is an actual world and suspend our disbelief in things like hobbits and aliens if we are to enjoy the story. Similarly, writing that makes no bones about being blatantly persuasive, like op-ed articles, legal briefs, and persuasive essays, also has to operate in such a way that the audience trusts the word of the writer and opens up their mind to accept, or at the very least consider, the writer’s position.

Writing persuasively is difficult, but there are things you can do to make your arguments more cogent and appealing to readers.

5. Earn your reader’s trust.

The best way to earn a reader’s trust is to come across as an intelligent writer. If you make grammatical errors, give misconstrued facts, or appear as if you aren’t an expert on your topic, you automatically undermine yourself as an intelligent writer, thereby weakening the sanctity of your argument. Writing well is the simplest way to come across as an intelligent writer. People are swayed by an eloquent writer: just look at the eloquent speeches of compelling orators like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi,  who were able to start entire movements on the power of their words.

4. Back your writing up with facts.

A well-stated opinion is all good and well, but the real meat of an argument comes from strong factual evidence. Lawyers don’t win cases based on arguments alone. Lawyers win cases based on who has the most compelling evidence that backs up the arguments they make. If you write a persuasive essay, make sure that each of your paragraphs has as least one powerful fact that backs up your position. If you are writing a persuasive essay on a piece of literature, for instance, facts can be theoretical ‘proof’ from a literary theorist (writing a Freudian interpretation of “Othello” would obviously require that you quote Sigmund Freud himself) or a quote from a published paper in a literary journal or a strong quote from the literature itself.

3. Explain, and then argue, a contrary point of view.

Every great debater knows in order to win a debate, you have to premeditate the opposition and then disprove it. The same goes for writing a persuasive essay. Having an idea of strong points of opposition is not only crucial in order to construct a solid argument, but it’s also simply good practice in critical thinking. If you know some oppositions that might arise in your reader’s mind while reading your essay, think of responses to that opposition and embed the responses in your writing. That way, you advance your argument and counterpoint your reader’s contention in one fell stroke.

2. Be passionate about what you are writing.

Even if you don’t believe in your own argument — as in, you were assigned a topic to argue from your teacher and you have no choice but to argue it in your paper — you have to write as if you do believe. Passionate writing comes from using strong, specific language. The more specific your language is, the more precisely you can carve your argument, the stronger and better your argument will seem. Passionate writing also requires reinforcement. Don’t repeat your ideas, but keep the central argument in your mind while writing your paper and think of every sub-argument, every piece of constructing evidence, as a way to reinforce or strengthen the central position.

1. Be interesting.

The best way to not persuade a reader is to bore them. If I can’t make it to the end of an op-ed piece, there is no way I’m going to believe or be persuaded by what the writer is saying. Good writing is inherently interesting. Use your oratorical fireworks to wow your readers so that every next line, every following word, is something the reader wants to arrive at. Don’t make them trudge through your writing. If you aren’t sure of how to make your writing interesting, ask yourself what you would be interested in if you were an impartial reader who was faced with your paper. Would it be something you would want to read? If yes, great! If no, then work your way through the problem until you arrive at a satisfactory place.

You’ve all heard it before. Everyone needs to get more sleep. Every few months or so, a new sleep study is published and hits the media circuit, and we’re told that a lack of sleep affects our memory, job performance, brain functioning, mood, proneness to accidents, stress levels, among much else. For teens, who the National Sleep Foundation states need 9.25 hours of sleep each night, proper sleep is particularly important. We all know WHY we need to get more sleep, but for some of us, the question isn’t of why but of how. How does one, a stressed out student with papers to write on deadline and a series of tests to take for five different classes, get more sleep when they can barely calm down enough to eat a proper meal?

It may seem difficult to squeeze in a good night’s sleep when you’re so busy with everything else, but what is daunting is not impossible with the right attitude and these 5 tips on how to get more sleep.

5. Want to get enough sleep.

Like all things, you need to make sleep a priority if you are going to get enough of it! If you plan your day around getting enough sleep, you’re more likely to do so. And why wouldn’t you plan your day around sleeping? Sleep is, by the way, nearly half of your life. All in all, it’s probably the most bioloically important thing for you to do all day. So plan around it.

4. Don’t OD on caffeine.

Not only can caffeine be harmful for you, but drinking coffee or Red Bull close to your bed time can severely throw your whole schedule off balance. Instead of drinking a soda while doing late night homework, stick to water or a non-caffeinated drink.

3. Establish a sleep schedule.

Bedtime isn’t just for elementary school. Most adults I know try to set a bedtime and stick with it. Not merely helpful for getting enough sleep, a set bedtime is also an effective way to set structure into your day. Knowing you should be in bed by a certain time makes it more likely you will try extra hard to get everything you need to get done during the day, done.

2. Nap away.

Napping isn’t bad for sleep as long as you don’t sleep too much. Power napping can actually increase productivity. Have you ever dozed off briefly and woken up feeling refreshed, renewed, reenergized? Conversely, have you ever taken a four hour nap only to awaken into a sluggish fuge? 20 minutes is the time to aim for during your power nap. Studies have shown that this amazing 20 minute siesta is more effective in brightening up that cognitive state than 20 more minutes of sleep any given morning.

1. Lists, Lists, Lists.

Make a to-do list that structures your day. Writing down things you need to do will make it easier for you to remember your tasks – so you don’t forget anything or leave things to the last minute. Take things one step at a time. Instead of focusing on the length of your list and scaring yourself out with the gargantuan nature of everything you have to do, do one thing at a time and cross things off as you go. Focus on each individual leg of the race, not on the race itself. Doing so will diminish your stress, as well as make your day more productive so that you can go to sleep at night with an easy conscience.

And one more, for good measure…

You can actually trick your body into going to sleep at night. One thing I like to do when I go to sleep is focus on my breathing, like in yoga, with deep inhales and exhales. Then I pretend that every little part of my body is falling asleep one bit at a time. “My feet are asleep,” I think, then focus on the feeling that I’m losing sensation in my toes, that they’re falling asleep. By the time I get to my head, I’m usually already asleep.

If that doesn’t work, you can always count sheep. It’s a tried and true remedy, because it works!

Writing, Reading and Arithmetic. The three “R’s” of education. Eduify is focused on the first one: Writing. Writing is a critically important skill to succeeding in life. Yet, writing is often under-taught and forgotten in rhetoric. We, like the National Commission on Writing, think writing is truly the neglected “R.”

The state of writing in the US is worse than most realize. Here are some interesting statistics that bring it into perspective:

4 out of 5 Students are NOT Proficient Writers
Three times since 1998 the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) / National Center for Educational Progress has administered a writing assessment to students around the US. In fact, they just finished administering the 2009 report. While students have improved their writing slightly over time, the country as a whole still has a long way to go. The data in the report is phrased and graphically shown in a way that’s a little difficult to understand. The NCW interprets it clearly: “About one student in five produces completely unsatisfactory prose, about 50 percent meet “basic” requirements, and only one in five can be called “proficient.”

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