Introduction:

Today I calculated how many papers I wrote this past school year, and I believe the total comes to 25, ranging from 3 to 15 pages long. My! That is a lot of papers! And if you think about it, that equals well over a hundred papers for each teacher to read for each class - I should know, as a Teaching Assistant I have probably read over 200 papers last year alone. It's a night mare. So sometimes I wonder, in the midst of all of this writing and tree killing, how do I stand out? How can I make my professor remember me above all the others?

Answer: Take risks.

In all of the papers I graded I can only remember one; the author (whose name I've forgotten) made an analogy between China and Rip Van Winkle, that she pushed throughout the entire paper. With that analogy she made me wake up and really pay attention to what she was saying. Sure, it seemed a bit hokey, and I don't recommend doing such things beyond GE classes, but it does demonstrate how risks help papers.

What kind of risks should I take?
Well, I am still exploring that field, but here is one I used a bit in a Brit Lit class that served me well:
Images. That's right, using images is a gold mine of "LOOK AT ME"s in a paper. An image can be tastefully integrated into a paper so that it adds a new perspective on the work and/or theme you're discussing. It gives you, the author, a chance to show that you're horizons expand beyond the English/History field you write in and into a whole new realm.
But there are rules to using images: Don't stick them in the middle of the text, put it as a in-text reference in the back of the paper. And don't talk about an image but then not include it anywhere -- that just confuses the audience.

Okay, so why am I talking about this? Look to the next post for your answer!