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Writing / Schoolwork

The Effects of Being Indecisive About an Essay Topic

10-08-02
Com. 1
Cause and Effect Essay
589 words

The Effects of Being Indecisive About an Essay Topic

    Imagine for a moment, please, a student in an English class. This student's teacher has just announced a writing assignment in which the students pick their own topic. Sounds great, right? Wrong. There's a catch. The student in question happens to have a terrible time deciding the topics of her papers. As a result of her indecisiveness, she wastes her time, her paper is poor, and she is drained emotionally. What's even worse is the fact that there are thousands of students with the same problem across the world!

    The first thing any person would do when sitting down to write a paper would be to decide on a topic. Some people are able to pop up with a good topic and a matter of minutes. This particular student, however, can't think of anything. Every time she gets an idea, it either seems too general or too specific to result in a good paper, or perhaps she just doesn't like it. She's even asked friends and family members what they think would be a good topic, but she didn't really like their ideas. She's gone through her books, looking for a classic to take a subject from. For a moment, she thinks that maybe she could write a paper on The Awakening. Lord knows she's only written about five essays on that book; she feels like an expert now. After thinking for awhile, she decides that one more paper on The Awakening would be one paper too many; she'd probably go completely insane and rip the book to shreds. All of this thinking has taken place over a period of several hours. She's been staring at the computer monitor for awhile now, and as a result, she has an irritating headache and her eyes are hurting. The essay's deadline is ticking nearer and nearer, and she's wasted a lot of precious time.

    Tired of dwelling on essay topics, the student picks a random subject off the top of her head. It's not the best topic ever, but it will have to do, because now she's put the essay off till the very last minute. It's probably something lame, like "Why Computers are Great." As a result of her lame topic, she has a lame paper. Not only is it lame, it's rushed. She took so much time "hemming and hawing" about her topic that she didn't leave any time to actually write her paper!

    Now that she's finished her paper, the student is emotionally drained. She's relieved that she finished her paper, but she's also frustrated with the fact that it was done poorly. She always fancied herself a good writer, but this paper is just plain bad. This will be one of those papers that she hides in the back of her folder for none to see. She's also feeling a lot of jealousy. Some of her classmates had really cool topics, and thus wrote really cool papers. Not only is she jealous and irritated, she's also a little embarrassed. Her paper was bad enough by itself, but after comparing it to those of her classmates, it seems like it's the worst paper in the history of the entire planet. She feels like a caveman could write a better paper.

    In the end, this particular student has learned a lesson. She should be thinking of potential essay topics at all times, writing them down she she gets a good one, for looming ominously on the horizon is the one terror of indecisive students everywhere: the Term Paper.