A Literature Term Paper is just a Glorified Book Report
January 11th, 2010
A Literature Term Paper is just a Glorified Book Report
I have been an English tutor every since I was a freshman in college. Now as a junior I was getting really tired of it. But I needed the money. My father had lost his job and I had maxed out my credit cards to pay for my school books. I didn’t think I could make my tuition payments without this job. I continued to tutor students week after week about the silliest issues. Marking up a term paper with red ink just wasn’t as satisfying as it use to be. I often ended up being a counselor to freshman who just couldn’t handle their newly found workload. They would come into my office crying about their first D or tell me how much their parents would kill them if they failed English. They often made it seem that if I didn’t help them they were just going to give up. I sympathized, at times. It was hard not to but often I had to laugh at just how seriously English class was taken. Writing in particular comes very easy to me. So when I had a freshman girl named Amy walk into my office complaining about how hard her literature term paper was I told her to think of it as a glorified book report.
A literature term paper is quite easy to write. I tried to explain this to Amy but she just wouldn’t calm down. My first question to her was if she read the book the paper was on. When she said no I realized she was a lost cause. I than explained to Amy in great detail the finer points of writing a literature term paper.
1. Read the book you are writing about,
2. Pick at least three main ideas that are prevalent throughout the book and introduce them in the first paragraph.
3. Create a main thesis statement that ties all three ideas together and weave it into every paragraph
4. Make sure you quote the book using the APA citation method. It will also help with page count.
5. Make sure you have a very strong conclusion.
I told Amy I would be more than willing to help her edit her literature term paper when completed. She then proceeded to tell me how busy she was. How she was not ready for all the critical analysis research college had brought and she just didn’t have the time to keep up with all the work. Amy then told me she thought she may be getting an ulcer. The next thing I knew she was asked if I knew of a place where she could buy research papers. She said she would be willing to pay any amount of money.
Soon Amy, or perhaps her trust fund, was single handily funding my college education as I wrote the majority of her term papers during her freshman year. She paid very well and kept both of our secrets. The following year Amy’s sister Angela started at the University as a freshman. When she walked into my office I proceeded to tell her that a literature term paper was nothing more than a glorified book report. Shortly after our conversation ended I knew I could call my dad and tell him not worry about my senior year tuition either.
