Mastering Graduate Writing and Research
In my return to faculty life, I’m mostly teaching MBA students. As part of my work, I’ve also taken on coordinating the MBA program, which includes running a 0-credit hour orientation every term. I recently rewrote the course to help focus students on getting ready for writing and researching at a graduate level and thought I’d share my best in a brief series here focused on graduate writing and research.
Writing as a graduate student requires advanced research, writing, and comprehension. Writing at the graduate level demands more of you than writing at the undergraduate level did. Whether you just graduated with your bachelor’s degree or have taken a long break since your undergrad days, writing at a higher level will be a challenge. You will be pushed in your courses to research more, write stronger arguments, and demonstrate comprehension by synthesizing sources. You may think of yourself as a strong writer or may have been told how great your writing is – that may all be true! And still we’re going to push you to write, research, and synthesize
your thinking and research to higher levels.
Undergraduate success – no matter how long ago – is a solid foundation, but graduate writing demands higher levels of synthesis, maturity, and research effort. I look for maturity in writing in terms of: (1) tone – formal, academic writing style, (2) synthesis of sources – using 2+ sources to support an argument, paraphrasing more, and quoting less, (3) accuracy and depth of source use for research support, (4) demonstration of effective use of feedback, (5) respect for citation and attempting to format correctly.
Undergraduate studies focus you on a topic but largely teach you to think effectively and critically. Graduate degrees are more narrowly focused, demonstrating expertise in a field. It is not designed to be easy. Your diploma will not be shipped with free two-day shipping. You are earning a degree.
And, yes, the start of grad school feels overwhelming. Also the middle and the end. Over time, you can adjust but it will take effort and priority setting week after week to achieve your goal. There are weeks you will let school slip a bit so you can deal with work and life. And weeks where you cannot hang out with friends or work late because you have to prioritize school. The two years or so it takes to earn this degree will require sacrifice – you cannot do all the things all the time.
Learn to cite in the required format early and memorize the basics. Memorize citing a book, a chapter from an edited work, a journal article, and how to list those on the reference list. Most other stuff you can look up as needed when used more rarely. Commit early in your studies to doing this well and honoring properly citing others’ work. It is harder to course correct if you start with bad habits.
The internet is helpful, try to avoid asking professors how to cite. You are in grad school, part of the journey is using resources. Your school likely has a writing center, a resource website, etc. The Owl at Purdue is the most incredible free resource online for MLA and APA. Google searches for “how do I X in APA” are generally pretty helpful!
Academic writing, citation, and style (APA, MLA, etc.) are required in all work unless specifically indicated otherwise. Telling your professor “you didn’t know” they expected you to write with sources on an assignment is not a great look – assume we want high quality, academic writing for all work.
Self-editing is required (and yes, it’s hard to do!). Graduate writing will demand you improve your skills at self-editing. Thankfully we now do that with modern word processing where deleting, revising, and copying/pasting are done in a flash. Self-editing requires you to really focus on what’s most important to include, to determine if you’ve done that effectively with writing style and use of sources, and to critically proofread and revise. Again, this is a thing that gets much easier with practice and incorporating feedback from your professors!
If you do not know what a scholarly source is at the start, make time to meet with a professor or librarian right away. Research requires scholarly sources – for most business students that looks like peer-reviewed journal articles and academic books. It’s not Forbes (a magazine) and it’s not [input your favorite businessperson here]. People writing from anecdotal experience have valuable things to say – but they are not scholarly writers!
Librarians can change your life. Meeting with a librarian for 30 minutes to learn how to best search the databases in your university will make your life easier. Many schools have tutorials posted, but walking through suggestions and tips for your field of study with a librarian will help as well (bigger universities have librarians dedicated to major fields of study even!). Learning to effectively narrow a search will save you time and frustration and help strengthen your research and writing.
CITE WHILE YOU WRITE. Thinking you will “go back later and add quote marks” or “you’ll remember where you use your words and the authors” is very dangerous. Assuming is not a reliable method of writing , especially with as many demands and distractions as most of us have on our time. Cite as you go. If you need to edit later to get formatting fine-tuned, fine, but do not trust yourself to remember to add citations later.
Quote less, paraphrase more. One thing I look for in graduate level writing is more paraphrasing, less quoting. I should rarely see super large quotes (referred to as block quotes) in a paper, especially shorter papers. Paraphrasing demonstrates comprehension and synthesis in a way quoting does not. When you rely on quotes, they should be really important quotes. Use quoting when it would be hard to make the point without using the author’s exact words.
Quoting and paraphrasing are not the same. The difference between quoting (using the exact words) and paraphrasing is essentially summary. In paraphrasing you’re telling me in your own words what you learned form a single source or stating a general thread you see as true from multiple sources (synthesis).
It is unreasonable to expect all professors to tell you the same thing! Every term I hear “no one else ever said…” Okay, but if no one told you not to touch a hot stove and I did, that’s still good advice? Be willing to hear different voices and different kinds of feedback. Accept that professors are diverse humans – and that learning from a diverse pool of teachers is a gift!
ASK FOR HELP. I did say don’t ask professors how to format something and that advice generally holds. But if you’re stuck, confused, overwhelmed, feel like quitting? Let someone know. Most universities have advising teams, counselors, etc. ready to help – but good professors care about hearing you out and helping you make a path forward. It’s often hard to know (especially for fully online courses) if you’re struggling – but reaching out to start a conversation lets me know students need me and we can strategize together!
Do your best. Is this a lot to remember, manage, and try to get done week after week? 100%, yes. Will you do this perfectly every week? NOPE, perfection is not something I see a lot – but it’s not also something I expect!
The goal is to do your best work – do it honestly and with integrity. Week after week. Also? You will make mistakes. You are human. You may even plagiarize. What will ultimately matter most is how you learn from it and how you choose to move forward. The point of this journey is learning – not checking a degree off your list, though you may also want to do that! Learning will include accepting guidance, feedback, and correction from your professors.
It gets easier with time and practice. I promise!
More advice for grad students and graduate-level writing can be found here.