Why are you doing this?

Metrobank Foundation recognized Teacher of the Year - Dr. Allan De Guzman has a principle that "when the why is clear, the how is easy." 

It's important to remember when navigating the academic wilderness, especially when you have already entered the writing phase - be it a term paper or your opus of a thesis or dissertation.

Papers for one. These come in many forms: term paper, weekly paper, weekly response, and issue paper. They are often used as major grading outputs. Hence, hitting the mark when writing something like this is crucial. Again - know why you are here, and as a corollary, why are you writing this.

Several students fail or get low grades on a paper simply because the professor has already laid out the goals for that writing assignment, and the student just writes anything on that topic. Sloppy.

For today, let's put the perspective of writing a thesis or a dissertation and go through some general points to answer the question Why are you doing this?

To graduate

You may not graduate if this is your only purpose. Of course, all students intend to graduate. But for now, we are at a phase of writing your great work/accomplishment, which serves as proof that you do merit (not I did not say deserve) to graduate. This is one of the reasons why a certain school task can be tedious, boring, irritating, or simply difficult to do. It;s because the student may have entered a perspective that divorces the task from the goal of graduation. The next two are better general perspectives.

To advocate

Particularly within the social sciences and humanities, advocacy is part of life. Something that we fight for. When you write to advocate, the data you produce can help push forward the advocacy. Take, for example, me; I advocate for the environment and for the welfare and rights of LGBT. 

An essential caution is that advocacy can be biased, preachy, or both. In addressing this, first, resolve if your paper is intended to be normative or scientific. Scientific papers require freedom from biases, though they can get preachy. 

Also, make sure you detail any steps you take in your methods to make your data as unbiased as possible. 

And, of course, tone down the preaching. Get off the high horse, get off the podium/pedestal, and talk to your reader instead of giving them a sermon.

To argue

Of course, we argue when we advocate. Still, I distinguish this from the previous section by pointing out that in this perspective, we argue because we are trying to establish newly discovered information or fact and prove its veracity.

For example, St. Thomas argued that there is a God. This saint also argued that theft is sometimes allowable. Charles Darwin argued that living beings evolved and were not created in the way the Bible says. Galileo and his peers also argued that the Earth revolves around the sun as opposed to the reverse argument.

Remembering that you are trying to prove undiscovered or unrecognized information will structure your thinking and research attitude to sequence, organize, and logically prove your argument. Instead of simply wanting to graduate, you may pick convenient methods and data that are not the right ones to fit the job.

Below is a simple quote from today's Magic: The Gathering card. Tune in next week when we further talk about perspectives in writing.

(Image Source: https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=595142)