How do I write the essay?
Jule Wind, a veteran J202 GTF, wrote the following response to a student's asking, "How do I write the essay? From my understanding, we are not supposed to write the actual essay but rather explain how we are going to use our sources. Is this correct?" Her strategy for writing the essay is the best I've seen.
The essay is a curious thing, sort of an almost-article that explains how you will write the finished product. We found that most people taking this class don't have the skills to write an actual article - although a few do - and that it sent people over the edge to try to do so.
Prof. Gleason has explained this in class, and you can go look at the examples in the reading room. He also posted one on the home page.
If I were doing this assignment, I would take my corrected outline and start writing from that. The idea is that you write from your annotations and outline. All the information you want should be in your annotations, so you should not have to look at the sources again.
I would put an article lead on it for the introduction, transit into the thesis statement and then back into the history, or overview or issues or whatever my organization calls for next. Then I would write something like the following example:
"I will then make the point that there are so few redwoods left that we are in a crisis situation requiring extreme solutions. I will quote Smith (#5) who says this and then back him up with my interview with Jones (#33) from the Sierra Club, who says the same thig in more colorful language. I will contrast their statements with Thompson (#18) of the Wise Use Coalition, who says that it doesn't matter how many redwoods are left because they were given to us by God so we could all make redwood decks and coffee tables,and that using the redwoods is the unalienable right of every American living today. Besides, he also said, we already have quite a few trees set aside in several parks. The I will tie up this point by showing the forest service estimates of remaining redwoods (#12), which agree with the 5% estimate.
In this manner, I would write the essay section by section, point by point. I should tell you that some people will hand in an essay that is ready to be published, i.e. properly annotated and beautifully written as an article. If done well, they will get As. But that is not the assignment and it is possible to do a wonderful job of this essay that is a pre-article.
Hope this clears things up for you. Get busy and work hard and it will all be OK. It's almost over now, and when you are done you will forever know how to do intensive research and organization of a big issue.
jule