Graduate Student Writing Timeline and Revision Tips
Decades after 4th grade, I can still remember my teacher walking us through the revision process of writing. We wrote our assignments (in erasable ink after Christmas Break!) and spread out across the room to literally cut paper to discard or tape pieces back together to learn about revision.
I am very grateful for modern word processing, but I’m also grateful for that messy 4th grade experience because I never forgot the value of cutting, copying, pasting, and deleting!
An interesting part of grad school teaching is realizing that many students do not have a plan in place for writing. As a planner myself, that makes me anxious. But as the professor in charge of grading their writing? Well, that also makes me anxious!
I encourage planning as part of the process, starting with the MBA orientation videos meant to help acclimate students to writing at this level. I think each student ultimately has to base their process on their priorities, available time, skills, and concern with outcomes. I provide this timeline as a baseline/template students can use to start the writing and revision journey.
First, I advise students to move through a timeline like this in order to submit the highest quality work.
Review guidelines early (and repeatedly).
If you have read what is expected before you start the work, your brain will do some work in the background for you, allowing you to think on ideas while doing other stuff!
Reading guidelines repeatedly matters for accuracy, especially in the busy world of grad school where many students are delicately balancing work, life, and school.
Outline your work! Is it an extra step that sometimes feels like a pain? Yep. Will it help your work improve? Also, yep. Outlines help organize and balance our writing. Start with the required components of the paper and bookend them with an intro and conclusion.
Research to support the outline. Alongside of outlining is researching for scholarly support. Popping in quotes, paraphrases, notes, and citations will help you pull your work together more effectively.
Draft your work and revise it. Never assume the first draft is ready to submit. All work needs revision, editing, proofreading, and careful consideration before submitting. (This is why allowing yourself time in the process is so crucial!)
Take a break! This is perhaps my very best advice – after you draft and do an initial revision, walk away from your work, clear your head a bit, and then return to editing. Even 15 minutes of disconnection can help you come back with fresh ideas and a better chance of identifying mistakes.
Repeat the revision process and take another break if you can and then return to your work and read it out loud. Yes, out loud. Print it on actual paper if you can. Reading your work helps you catch errors, confusion, and sloppiness that you won’t catch when scrolling through it quickly on the screen.
Give your work a final edit and then submit on time (preferably early enough you’re not risking the clock!). For students submitting online, the game of “clock chicken” for last minute submissions is risky. Your personal computer is unlikely to perfectly match the server running your school’s online course shells!
More advice for grad students and graduate-level writing can be found here.