HOW I RESEARCH, PLAN & WRITE ESSAYS IN 3 DAYS • 1ST CLASS/2.1 UNI ESSAY HELP • OXFORD UNIVERSITY

good morning guys welcome back to my channel [Music] today it is a Tuesday and it is like half past nine right now and I am going to make a start on my next essay which is due on Friday at 5 p.m. quite a few people have requested that I do a video documenting my essay writing process from like right at the beginning in the planning stages to finishing writing it obviously this is gonna be filmed over a few days sort of gonna be vlog stels sort of gonna be just be me chatting to the camera because there is an informative video as opposed to like a fun one basically right now I'm gonna show you how I initially approach a question what I do immediately how I sort out the reading and what I'm gonna read next and in what order etc if you're wondering yes this is updated aged merchandise I really need the motivation right now so this is my like comfy tea I'm sorry about the background noise the Scout is hoovering someone's room but I'm sure in my question this week is pairs how I can stable isotopes help identify a person's origins and how well does this evidence stand up and these are my readings this module has actually got pretty short reading lists as you can see so normally we'd probably have double this and in like anthropology modules but yeah these quick shots their scientific so the ones that I've highlighted in blue are like key texts which I definitely need to read or at least like get to grips of the conclusions and abstracts and the yellow ones are ones that like extra ones which I think will be pretty interesting and case study detail filled so yeah that's that's what I've done so far so after I've got my title and kind of just had a quick look through the reading identified which one's like interesting to me and which one's the tutor he said were the most important it was like a little asterisk I will break down the question into little sections and just see what sort of information I need to pull out of the text so that my reading is efficient as possible but as this question is about stable isotopes I know that I need to define stable isotopes picked out what they are different ones and how they can be [Music] the next key bit of information in the question is persons origins so if I'm looking into how isotopes identify people's origins I need to discuss what is meant by origins so I would define the word origins in the text I'd look for like a scientific definition of origins and if I can't find one then in the actual writing I would kind of come up with one myself and just say this is my definition all the people may say different and the last part of the question is how well does this evidence stand up and this is why you would bring in your case studies so for this essentially it is just saying how can in theory stable isotopes identify people's origins and what case study evidence have we got to back this up and does it go with the hypotheses I can feel from the reading list that we definitely have a case study on than the oolitic however that one is the only one which looks specific so for now I will just write a Neolithic case study in like my thing to look out for but also we had a lecture and Stonehenge was discussed as was US UK war victims from the 1800s and also veterans of the Vietnam War so I will look back over my lecture notes and then if those case studies aren't any of these readings then I will go on to Google Scholar and essentially try and find my own texts that aren't on the reading list switch back up the case studies which I know I want to use I'm gonna have some breakfast now because I still haven't yet but then I've got about two and a half hours to start doing some readings so ideally I can get two done in that time depends on like how much information is in at how dentist they are but normally actually these articles are a lot shorter than once I'd read for the subjects like this so much or only four to ten pages so yeah I could probably get two of those done in two hours but the long ones are gonna take me longer but that's fine it's not a quick process and if your outing an essay like from start to finish in a day then you've either left it too late or you're rushing it either way it's not gonna be your best work and I know that from my own personal experience having started the reading several times on the day that the essay is due in not a good strategy what really ills that back here but I'm not I'm gonna start reading now so I've decided to read the Neolithic case study first purely because I'm trying to okay this is not purely because I'm trying to get as much done as I can in the amount of time that I've got this morning so I'd rather not start one of the big articles and then not quite get my head around it come back and have no idea what's going on enough to start again so I'd rather do one of these so this one is only ten pages I'll do is I'll write out the reference so for example this is and I will put my notes underneath this I was a highlighter because it's easier to see and then hopefully by the end of it I'll have quite a lot of notes that I can put into a plant when you're looking at articles the best place to start is the abstract don't skip over the abstract I used to in my first year when I didn't really know what I was doing but the abstract practically sums up the whole argument and the findings in a paragraph so if you really have no time then the abstract is the best place to go obviously I would recommend not just reading the abstract at least the abstract and the conclusion and maybe even the discussion as well if it is a scientific article but the abstract is definitely a place to start because it also tends to explain things better than the actual thing which might be a bit wishy-washy and also don't note everything only note things that you think are going to help your question which is why I did the breakdown of the question which I showed you because now I can only take why because now I can focus myself on taking bits of information that would fit into one of these three sections which is why I like planning your research is stuff [Music] I've now finished noting that first article yeah so I've done like how many words 1408 four and now I'm gonna read this next one which has a star next to it so I knew I needed to read it but also it was quoted in the article I just read so I thought yeah I should probably read that so I know the context I'm currently still on track like I've actually only got half an hour so I have to go because I have a classic quote patter 12 but it's on the 8 pages so I think it'll be fine and you know what's done that then I've done like my target for this morning and I can carry on later I'll show you where I've got up to but I'm just gonna basically read it exactly the same again going for information based on the way I've split up the question I've just finished that article it actually only took me 20 minutes that is because I've developed a new technique of taking notes so basically instead of going through like the whole article and typing out my own notes and then not really knowing whether it's the right thing to write down which is one of the hardest things about like actually taking notes from research instead what I've started doing is just like copying and pasting whole sentences which somehow answer my question in some way so for example for part of my question I need to talk about the type of stable isotopes and so I've copy and pasted a whole quote which tells you about the beginnings of isotope archaeology and then from that when I make my plan I will Whittle it down further so essentially I've just turned a whole article into two pages of key bit to information but where I actually want to keep it as a quote I've made it italics and like left the page number so like here for example I've written about it but then this one I actually want to keep the quote so like here for example I've written about it but then this one I actually want to keep the the quote so I've basically taken these notes these are also copy and pastes but I'm not going to write them in those exact words so it doesn't matter but this one if I actually want to take even just a part of that as a quote I need to know the word the word the page number so yeah it just makes it a lot quicker and also a lot more efficient in that I've got a lot of words now which I can condense and I know all of this isn't gonna go in but like I've skipped whole pages that I skimmed through and didn't particularly think would fit my question as such because these articles have so much information and most of the skill is actually being able to identify what information is worth noting down and one of the tips I would give for like choosing which information to note down is that you're probably best reading the whole thing without like wanting to in depth note it first so which is why I am copying and pasting these quotes because essentially what I'm doing by doing this is highlighting bits that I think are important and then when I do my plan I'll go back through process the information and turn it into like my actual interpretation of the text I am back is the afternoon now like I've just had lunch and I'm currently reading this article I'm more amused by the fact that he wrote this at 3 a.m. there anything else you do you Henry I just thought that I never really showed you how I kind of find the readings so I know I mentioned that I find ones that aren't on the reading list on Google Scholar but the Uni of Oxford has like a really good database has a really good database which we look onto the solo but to be honest I only use solo if I can't find it by googling the reference which I normally can manage particularly when there scientific articles start really niche and then you have to troll through the more scholarly pages but yeah normally you can just google the Rif google the reference and it's fine my hair right now is exactly as I had it in my like Harvard interview video so this is just tribute to that if you've seen it you'll know [Music] if you haven't watch that you should go and watch it because it's the cringes thing ever and to be honest interviews are coming out soon you might want to watch someone's blog on it you never know guy stayed up quite late last night like not too late like probably until just gone midnight um in order to get this reading finished so I have indeed finished the reading about 6200 words terms of how much of the reading list I've actually done the ones in purple I have read it and then the other ones I'm just gonna have open while I'm writing or writing my plan and then I can weave them in like that because I don't want to carry the reading on any longer than this because I've got another essay due Sunday and then one again G to Friday so I just don't have time to do any more I'd rather get this planned and written on Thursday so I've got longer to do the Sunday essay but Leo half an hour this morning because I'm going to Warwick to film rugby league team play their match and when I'm on the bus I'm going to start the reading for the next essay and or at least on the way back so I might carry on with this on the way there if it's like fresh in my mind but yeah I'll just try and explain how I'm going about doing plan but I'm going to refer back to these points at the start so I've got my three separate bits of the question which means in my intro I need to have the definitions and the basic are collateral use [Music] I've got these basic framework written down then I go through my notes I control f and I'll find a definition for each day [Music] good morning everyone today is Thursday and I have finished my planned now so I stayed up until about Hoppus twelve last night trying to finish my plan because I didn't get as much done on my journeys as I wanted to but also had accounted for that to be honest so yeah I now the plan I will go through the plan ready now and then I'm gonna spend the rest of today trying to get this whole essay written so that I can have it in on time and spend all day tomorrow and the weekend trying to see my next essay okay so here is my finished plan I kind of discussed how I was gonna do the intro before but here is kind of the amount is how I've got so I've got all of the basic definitions of ISO tips along with who said it that's really important because you need to have the citations in there for it to be stronger in terms of your arguments will be like backed by scientific articles as opposed to you just kind of making it up in an exam it's also good to remember these not the page numbers so much but if you can reference a person in an exam then it looks like you know your stuff more basically haven't really gone into these much originally my plan said that I was going to talk about the positives and negatives of each but that would just made my plan far too long and also unnecessary considering I've got different sections where I'm going to explain that anyway I will discuss how you get each isotope but only in like a couple of sentences and then also discuss what origins means why it might be useful to look at someone's past etc I decided to then split my work into two main sections so I've got dietary isotopes and isotopes and this is purely because we had a lecture on the start of the week and they were split like that in the lecture if I hadn't had that lecture I would just stick to these subtitles that I have so I would have those in purple instead and it would essentially follow the same structure but without those two main headings and instead of discussing what my dietary isotope is in a little paragraph before I introduce the subheadings I'd do it probably under each one yeah I've got my next title which is carbon isotopes on my plan I basically put everything that I'm gonna write in notes it just makes it so much easier to then write an essay from it because you've got all of the information there and all you need to do in the actual essay is then come up with like connectives and make them into real sentences so I've talked about the differences between c4 and c5 plants how they then transfer into the different carbon values why that's good for finding people's origins and then because half of the question is how well does this evidence stand or I have introduced a case study near the source the better if possible particularly go for sources from the 2000s I've done this essentially the same thing for nitrogen isotopes a little bit of an introduction bring you know a citation and then go into a case study my next section is permanent isotope I haven't written a little introduction here but I will so before I like talk about isotopes I'll talk about to talk about what these are basically then discuss oxygen now these ones are more relevant to the question so I just say I've done a lot more notes in my plan on those because provenance isotopes are much better for identifying a person's origins and so this section is basically maybe me chatting about how yeah we can use the other isotopes but actually these ones can be better particularly when used in conjunction with the other ones so yeah again this is just introduction of what it is how it works and then here is a few basic criticisms and two case studies which is a good amount I if the word limit seems to be too low for two then I'll just do one same with strontium again this is a big section so again I have a pretty pretty new case study from 2018 which is about Stonehenge which is super cool would absolutely recommend you go and read that whether you're interested in this or not this is an interesting case study I promise then the conclusion so that's the question just because I don't wanna keep scrolling up I'll discuss some main use and limitation of each which will answer how can I identify person's origins and then how well does it stand up I essentially just answer the question by discussing why I've just said which is when tested and other variables each one tends to stand up a conclusion you don't want to bring in any new information because conclusion is swimming up your ideas that you've discussed already so that wouldn't that wouldn't work so that's my plan I hope it made sense although it makes sense to me and I'm the one writing the essay so that's off it really matters I'm now on 933 words is about 20 past two so to be honest I could have definitely worked faster but I stopped for like an hour to cook and eat and also hit a bit of a rock when I'd got all of the stuff in my plan but we're still sure I didn't get it good morning it is actually Friday now and also the afternoon I finished my se last night about like 7:00 um and I'm just gonna proofread it now so I'll essentially just now show you what I've got and then how I proofread it and then send it off and that it's the essay process done oh here is my finished as they have my introduction dietary isotopes introduction Carbon section missed that nitrogen section privilege those tips oxygen strontium inclusion and my references and all of that comes to 3110 words which is too many words but well the thing with Oxford essays is they're just kind of something to revise from and for the tutor to see that you've got it so it doesn't matter too much that it's not like - the word count [Music] and I'm done my essays submitted it is in for the deadline and I hope this video has helped break down how we are do manage to get in essays in like three days and also I hope if anyone it's writing an essay this will perhaps help you to do it particularly if you've left it until the last minute which I guess most people do as I also do and to be honest the only reason this is in on time is because I've got things that I'm looking forward to and making sure I've done everything before they happen so yeah I hope this was helpful and I will see you in my next video bye [Music] you

Channel: Rosie Crawford

Views: 49,037

Keywords: vegan, vegan food, oxford, Cambridge, studytube, study, revision, essay, student, university, life style, vlog, daily vlog, weekly vlog, how to, essay writing, how to plan, essay plan, study with me, oxford university, archaeology, isotopes, isotope essay, motivated, unjadedjade, university life, a levels, GCSEs

Id: V3YInp__JZc

Length: 24min 54sec (1494 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 21 2018