Now that all of your Gen Eds have been absolutely crushed by your awesomeness, only one stands between you and your degree: the Senior Capstone. This is noted as one of your biggest Liberal Art Requirement projects within your undergraduate career, your magnum opus, the big daddy of all your works! Okay, maybe I shouldn’t call it that — it’s kinda weird.
Anyway, whether you’re ahead of the game in terms of degree progress or finishing up this class in your last year, these tips I’m about to provide with you can help you in the capstone project development process that helped me out! Even if you’re not here because you’re taking the course and just wanted to read this post, worry not. In fact, some of these tips may be applicable to various forms of writing!
Develop a Topic that Interests You
When developing your capstone topic, you want to make sure that this is a topic that genuinely interests you. After all, you’re going to be stuck with it for the next eight weeks or so! Engage in a bit of introspection: think about what you would like to explore more and research that you weren’t able to earlier in your studies! This type of course allows for you to garner all your knowledge within the field and condense it into a paper that pertains to something that resonates with you the most!
Also, it doesn’t hurt to have a back-up plan. Unfortunately, your professor might ask you to pick a new topic and if not, interests shift. Sometimes your topic may not have enough literature or perhaps it isn’t heading in the direction you were hoping it would. I myself had to revise my topic well into week 3 of the course, so you’re not alone!
That blank page could seem daunting, but remember: the hardest step is starting your topic!
Outline Your Paper
When organizing your paper, it can seem overwhelming initially due to how much information you need to include while condensing it into one page! One way to tackle this is to use your working topic sentence/thesis as a starting point and dissecting it into tiny pieces. What are you setting out to show in your research? What are the components that you must discuss in order for the thesis to flourish and make sense? Moreover, include and define any preexisting concepts/theories that tie into your topic into your outline.
Also, feel free to come back to your outline and whichever step of the writing process you may be in. Whether you want to revise your thesis or your body paragraphs, don’t be afraid to revisit your outline and make tweaks if necessary! After all, the outline is there to help you set a clear course for your paper because of how it helps you visualize a complete and full figure with ease!
Find Some Sources
Don’t restrict yourself to the first page of the search results: keep clicking next — you never know what you’ll find!
Probably will find a source that not only fits your topic but it also leads you into new ideas and directions: used an analysis piece on 1950s cookbooks to tie into women in psych
Don’t be afraid to rid yourselves of the initial piece you had found; if you feel like it’s not fitting into your paper and that you’ll have to shoehorn it in for the sake of citation, then toss it. May be daunting but it’s just for the best
Gain that “aha!” moment
Writing the Final Product
Write in pieces, namely, gave your intro in one doc, along with each section in other docs. It’ll help you later on when moving around paragraphs and helping them fit into one another; don’t get too hung up on formulating perfect and beautiful sentences.
In taking these steps to write and bring your paper together, you’ll find that your draft is coming together more easily than before and editing proves to be less stressful now that you have a bulk of the work done.
Be on your way friends and dominate that paper!