Yes we desperately need to flatten the damn coronavirus curve again, but EssaySnark is not going to go down that rabbit hole. You (hopefully!) are keeping on top of the news, and you (hopefully!) are wearing a mask every single time you have to venture out, and you (hopefully!) are not falling prey to those conspiracy theories that are running rampant all over social media, and you are (hopefully!) living a life of kindness and compassion for all, which means you are (hopefully!) paying attention to SCIENCE and rational minds in how to navigate this absolutely awful and totally avoidable tragedy that we are all living in where people are actually dying and it didn’t have to happen this way.
Phew.
No, we’re sticking to essay-writing advice. You can get staying-healthy advice from any reputable provider of science-based news. (Not sure if your preferred source of the news is biased, or how? )
We got a great question from a BSer recently asking what the best approach should be to engaging EssaySnark on services to help with MBA essays.
They asked, should they make their first drafts absolutely perfect before sending them in to be decimated? Or should they get their ideas down as best they can in those first drafts, and get input from the ‘Snark earlier in the process?
The main thing to keep in mind is that everyone’s first drafts pretty much always suck – and the point of writing first drafts is to move through that mandatory first stage as efficiently as possible, knowing that there will be more revisions.
If someone rushes through just to get words on the page, then their second drafts also will suck. But at least they’ll be feeling some accomplishment of having made progress!
One trick in the process of getting your apps together: Find a way to build in some dopamine rewards. One of the hardest parts about procrastination is when you let it snow you under. One of the best ways to combat procrastination is baby steps. Find a way to have a win today and it’ll be easier to continue working on the hard task again tomorrow. If you don’t even try anything right now, then the task ahead of you tomorrow will be even more daunting, and that cycle can overwhelm you until you are staring at the deadline with literally no time left, and all you can do is work off of panic and adrenaline.
Much much more powerful is letting dopamine work in your favor. How do you get dopamine? By accomplishing something — anything. By crossing a task off the to-do list. By putting one foot in front of the other, and letting that create some forward momentum. It’s that first step that is so difficult for most of us.
It’s like that advice when you are sitting there, not wanting to work out, dreading the workout, feeling lazy and not caring, but knowing you really need to work out: Put on your running shoes.
Once the shoes are on, the run is going to happen. The hardest part is putting on the shoes.
This is sort of like that. If you’re someone who knows is a procrastinator, then enlisting the help of the ‘Snark earlier on may be useful because it forces you to take action sooner. However, if you’re someone who tends to be really sensitive to getting any sorts of feedback, where it feels like a personal attack when someone makes a suggestion to you about how your work could be improved, then the feedback from the ‘Snark may send you backwards, if it takes you off track and demotivates you.
So it’s a balancing act: You’ll want to have done enough thinking and studying upfront that you feel like maybe your first drafts aren’t that bad — but you need to be prepared for the high likelihood that we’ll come back and tell you that you need to start over anyway.
That’s what happens with first drafts: They are the stepping stone to the better drafts, but it’s highly likely that those first drafts may need to be thrown away.
If the first drafts suck so bad that all we can do is point out the obvious suckiness, then you’ll be missing the opportunity for next-level feedback. When we review people’s revised drafts in the second step of the Essay Decimator, they are usually improved to the point where our feedback can be much more strategic. But, sometimes drafts don’t evolve sufficiently between the two revision steps and we’re stuck with repeating more standard or basic-level feedback again.
If you’re already doing the legwork required to make your first drafts maybe not suck completely 🙂 then that means you should focus on that — write your heart out in getting the first drafts to be as dog-gone good as you can get them, to the best of your ability, and then get them decimated, and you’ll be maximizing the learning process.
Also recognize that the longer you wait, the higher the likelihood that a) our prices will go up again, which they do the busier we get, which happens when deadlines come close, and b) the less time you’ll have to digest the feedback, to regroup and prepare your next attempt at a strategy, through the revision cycle. The best essays come out of having time to reflect, so you’ll want to ideally budget at least a couple days to process what we say in returning the first-draft review, before deciding what direction to take things from there.
And, it helps to know thyself:
Sometimes people get so bummed by all the “nope this ain’t it” feedback from the first draft review process that it puts them back on their heels and makes them dread the rewrite, and then they get caught in an emotional loop that they can’t get out of. Procrastination takes over, in the form of a fear of failure, or a paralysis around not being able to face the changes that need to be made.
Getting ideas reviewed before they commit to full drafts could help for this personality type.
Other people are able to weather the emotions of the first draft critique just fine and have an attitude of “Bring it! I know I have to get through this so let’s get dirty and do it!” First drafts are pretty much always difficult to get through, so this is gonna be about knowing your own style, and where you might get tripped up, and navigating around that.
And oh yeah: WEAR A MASK!! And that means wearing it OVER YOUR NOSE too. Sheesh people we toldja back in March to wear a mask. If only everyone had stuck with it from then, we’da been out of this mess long ago. 🙁
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