College essay tips: you should avoid emotionalism
What makes for a professional essay?
While you are in college, you should treat your classes and coursework as your primary job. That means you should bring the same level of professionalism and drive to your courses and grades that you would to a job on your desired career track. You will be evaluated by the quality of your work, as well as your work ethic. By comporting yourself professionally in the academic sphere, you will earn high grades, make lasting impressions on your professors, and pave the way for your future career or graduate pursuits.
One of the ways of proving that you are a professional, mature student is by writing your essays professionally. A professionally written essay demonstrates superb control of language, and appropriateness of content. Such essays meet the required guidelines exactly, including word count, and respond sufficiently to the prompt. You should edit your essays thoroughly and provide correct citations for all data and sources utilized in your paper. Finally, a professional essay strikes the proper tone: it is informative and not overly casual, yet easy to read.
Why should you avoid emotionalism?
Some college undergraduates mistakenly think that adding personal details and emotionalism to their essays will infuse the work with human interest. After all, we are all taught in English classes to insert personal anecdotes into our essays, and to use ourselves as literary inspiration. However, mining your own life for writing fodder does not give off a professional impression. Your readers may sense that you are overly interested in yourself, or perhaps lack emotional maturity.
An overly emotional essay is also one that lacks objective, persuasive thought. Even if you are writing about an issue you feel passionately about, you should try to put your fuming emotions to the side and write in a fairly cool, clinical manner.
How to avoid emotionalism?
In a persuasive essay or informative essay, you should let the facts speak for themselves. If your research is well done and your conclusions compelling, emotionality will not be necessary to sway the reader. If you are writing a research paper, you should avoid emotionalism by sticking to falsifiable scientific phenomena, and not delve at all into things that are based on values or subjectivity.
While you may be tempted to use personal anecdotes or emotional appeals to open up your essays or drive persuasive points home, avoid doing so. A poorly made emotional plea will just make your readers roll their eyes and feel manipulated.
Published on 27.12.2016