I just finished editing my buddy Stefan Knapen’s free ebook he’s giving away. For a guy who learned English from watching ‘Friends’ episodes I’m thoroughly impressed that he runs a completely English blog on study hacks. As I was editing I thought I’d quickly share with you the fundamentals of editing college papers or any paper for that matter.

1: Before you start:

Before you even start, make sure you know what you’re writing about or editing. I can edit a social science paper in less than 5 minutes (correcting thousands of undergrads papers will give you superhuman editing skills!).  Editing a paper on mathematics or chemistry on the other hand is a much slower process. I’m not saying that you couldn’t edit a paper on a subject you’re not familiar with but it is much easier/faster if you do know the content. This brings me to my second point; make sure you have enough time to do the job. Many students don’t give themselves enough time at the end of the day to properly edit before they have to submit their paper. Editing is the most overlooked step in paper writing but crucial to secure a top grade.

2: Decide what kind of edits you’re going to do:

Whenever I edit a paper for a student I decide before I start what level of editing I’m going to be doing. Am I looking at spelling, grammar, sentence structure, flow? Am I going to go deeper and look at the logical connections between subjects, ideas? Looking at all aspects of a paper can take 10 minutes a page for amateur editors. If it’s your own paper I’d suggest you include all the preceding subjects in your editing. If you’re editing for somebody else, simply state what level of editing you were using when you return the paper to them so that they know exactly what you’ve done.

3: Scan for the main idea/thesis/subject and write it down:

As a general rule of thumb, before I even start correcting a students paper I’ll immediately scan for the main thesis and supporting points (if they aren’t on the first page then they’re usually in trouble) and underline it. I’ll write a small note defining the core of the thesis and then compare every supporting point to that main thesis.

Here are couple questions I usually ask:

• How does this piece of information relate to the main thesis?
• Is this relevant or redundant (has this already been stated earlier in the paper)?
• Are there clear connections back to the main thesis or do I have to think about how this information relates?
• Can this information be clearer, if so how?
• Are there any presumptions the author is taking without accounting for them?

4: Don’t be afraid to edit ‘truthfully’:

If you’re editing for somebody else, don’t be afraid to tell them that a particular line sucks! I’m very upfront with this as I believe telling somebody the truth may be painful, but is much more helpful for their long term writing. I’ll often write a note for a particular paragraph or sentence “Awkward sentence consider revising”. Flow is incredibly important to the overall understanding of a document. Just because something is technically correct shouldn’t mean that you should not give your opinion towards the flow and tone of the paper.

5: Use track changes:

This is a biggie! Most desktop publishers have the ability to ‘track the changes’ on a document. In Microsoft word this is found under the tools menu – track changes. This enables all your edits to be shown in red text so that the recipient can choose to ignore or accept each change individually, it also gives you the ability to write notes for your recipient so you can suggest flow and sentence structure changes.

Editing Is A Crucial Step In the Paper Process Give It the Time It Deservers!

Editing is a crucial step within the paper writing process. If you don’t give yourself adequate time to edit you’re leaving serious marks on the table. I highly suggest you edit your own papers and encourage others to look your papers over. You can often miss crucial edits in your work (I know I do) that will lose you marks.

P.S. I have 6 mistakes in this paper, a shiny nickel to the person who can find them all.

Hello everybody, I’ll make this really short. The video above explains what the offer is about. More or less you click on the link above, I give you a half hour of tutoring no strings attached. This gives me enough time to set up an A+ study schedule for a paper, exam or a reading schedule for a single class.

This offer is gone once I fill up my 50 spots. I have 50 tutoring spots, not 500, not 5000… 50! So I’d highly suggest you click on the link and sign up now. If you don’t like it I’ll just send you you’re buck back.

EDIT: I just put this up and 10 spots just went in like an hour, soooo I’d suggest you click on it right now.

Hello Fellow Students

Today I’d like to talk about how to write persuasively in assignments and papers.  Most of you probably believe that if you simply invest the time in your paper that your professor or TA will automatically be persuaded into giving you an A, nothing could be farther from the truth.  Many students have talked to me as a tutor in the vta method or when I was a teaching assistant and asked me why their papers weren’t getting their desired marks.  If the writing was good, the form was good, the research was good, but the paper was boring, you’re doomed to failure.

Persuasive paper writing is somewhat counterintuitive in the university setting as less is usually more.  Let me explain.  Let’s say you want to start writing a persuasive research paper.  If you get all your research together, do all your analysis, get a good outline together and write a technically correct paper you will ‘technically’ have an A+ paper on your hands.  However, persuasive paper writing has nothing to do with the paper being write and much more to do with the paper convincing the reader that it is right.  Here are some quick tips on how to make your paper more persuasive.

Persuade your reader with a story

I usually try to throw a story in at the beginning of a paper.  It’s really important to set the mood and also to begin to suck your reader into your world.  If you go directly into your thesis statement and your supporting evidence, your reader will get bored.

Write your paper for a 12 year old

Even though your professor and/or TA have many years of education and experience behind them, they like an easy to read paper just as much as you.  Write something that anyone can understand, even from a theoretical standpoint.  This brings me to my next point.

Persuade your readers with examples!

Provide many examples, usually ones that will make a complex idea simple and easy to understand.  As an example I was recently reading an article on ‘pagerank’ which is how google ranks each page in your website.  The article made sense when the author included a simple example and harkened each page on your website to a bucket full of water.  If you were to link from that page you’d be drilling a hole in the bucket and pouring the water (pagerank) into another bucket.  Being easy to read and intuitive is your goal.

Edit for persuasion

Don’t try to make your paper sound more academic, if anything try to make your paper seem less complex.  Put yourself in the shoes of your marker and ask yourself how you can make this paper easier to understand.

I hope this is useful to you all, if you’d like more information on writing a persuasive paper, go check out my main online study mentorship program.

I think quite a lot of you have this problem as it’s a major trend with my students; lack of focus in paper writing.  I’m not talking about procrastination; I’m talking about writing a paper and not having the focus to see the paper in your minds eye from beginning to end.

For anyone who has been able to accomplish this clear foresight, you’ll agree it’s incredibly useful to produce both a high quality and efficiently written paper. Once I get into a focused paper writing mode I can usually write 10 pages an hour without much difficulty and revisions.  There are 5 important keys that I teach to my students in my online tutoring program and I’d like to pass on a simple overview of those 5 keys for you now.

Research foresight

If you’ve read some of my articles you’d know that I am a true believer in the ‘paper pre-launch check list.’  Not only will this give you the proper focus for your paper but it will also allow you to lay everything out in a single place and enable you to take a snapshot of your paper in its entirety.  Instead of going through the entire launch process here, you can sign up for my newsletter on academic study skills and get the full course component automatically emailed to you.

Review your paper pre-launch check list with others

This is a crucial and usually overlooked key of the paper writing process.  You MUST have somebody else look over what you are about to write before you write it.  This is crucially important because if your research is bad, you’ll have wasted time producing a paper that you won’t have a chance in hell of actually doing well on.  You can hire a tutor or get a study buddy to look it over for you.  Ask for a straight up critical analysis and constructive criticism and be ready to make revisions.

Prepare your writing environment

Where do you write the best?  I personally love writing at 24 hour coffee shops as they have nice background noise and I usually do some of my best writing after midnight.  Find a writing environment and make sure not to poison the space with socializing.  This can be disastrous to your paper focus.

Have a concrete outline

Once you’ve put together an adequate paper pre-launch sequence you should have a good paper outline ready to use.  Go through each step and make sure you don’t get distracted by what I’ll call ’secondary thoughts.’  In essence, don’t make revisions, that’s for later, right now you should just be getting your initial vision on to the page.  Revisions can always be done later.

Revise and optimize

Review what you have written and think critically about your paper.  Where are the holes?  What assumptions am I making?  Have I covered all the relevant points?  If you take the time to run through your paper with the same focus you had in writing it you should only have to go through it once before it’s A worthy.

If you’d like to know more about paper writing or are interested in picking up a tutor that can do all the research for you, go check out my tutoring program.

Michelle as a teenager

Hello Fellow Students

I recently watched the Ted Talk with Michelle Obama who was speaking about the future of education for women.  The part of the speech that impacted me the most which I believe transcends sex is her description of her study habits.

She quote “never cut class” and “liked getting A’s” and thought that “being smart was cooler than anything in the world.”  What an interesting concept!

Now even though my book is called “Study 30 Minutes A Day and Get A 4.0 GPA” I’m still a proponent of Michelle’s standpoint of education.  I get a LOT of flack from people who don’t agree with the title of the book.  But, once I explain to them that I teach students learning techniques rather than studying techniques and that I suggest to my students to take a class they might fail to expand their learning, they usually understand.

Learning and effective study skills is in my opinion the most important skill you can teach students, unfortunately many of the students I encounter lack the basic study skills necessary to think critically, or even think regularly lol.

So for all those that are interesested, please take a look at Ms Obama’s speech with the following question in your mind.  Do you think the philosophy of education Michelle is espousing is possible in our current society?  Or do you think we have to coax our students into this kind of thought process by buying them off with flashy titles like study 30 minutes a day and get a 4.0 GPA?

Liam McIvor martin

I came across a wonderful little website ‘flashpapers,’ I would link to it in the post but I don’t want to be connected with them in any way.  This website claims it will give you a fully customized paper just in time for finals!

I’m sure this is an expanding market, where teams of highly educated outsourced third world employee’s labour away to give Johnny or Lucy a paper just in time for finals.  But, the risk of being charged with plagiarism or academic fraud far outweighs the gains.  I’ve been offered extravagant amounts of money to write papers and pass students as a teaching assistant and lecturer.  In my college tutoring business I’ve also been offered money from my own students to just ’solve their paper problem’.  Each time I’ve refused, first because it is fundamentally wrong and second because of the possible ramifications.

What happens when you are caught cheating

Although I’m sure most university students all get that flyer at the beginning of the semester outlining what plagiarism is and why it’s wrong, the majority of students don’t actually know what happens to you if you are caught plagiarizing.  I’ll start by defining how plagiarism is confirmed.  Other than using software which can scan papers for plagiarized content which is illegal in some schools, there are three steps.

Step 1: Your professor or TA suspect’s plagiarism while marking your paper and throws the suspected content into the search engines (google scholar, journal databases etc) to find if the content is directly copied.

Step 2:  If the content is not found online but plagiarism is still suspected, the paper is given to a second reader (usually a TA) who is told to look over the paper for inaccuracies.

Step 3: If the 2^nd reader comes to the same conclusion then the paper is officially suspected of plagiarism and the best punishment is decided.

There are three possible outcomes once plagiarism is suspected and confirmed.

Outcome 1: The student is confronted, if he/she confesses then the matter is dealt with unofficially with either the student taking a failing grade on the paper or even the entire course but not permanent mark is left on the final transcript.

Outcome 2: The student confesses but it is not his/her first offence.  In that case formal charges may be brought against the student where the student can be suspended for the semester and in most cases a permanent record of plagiarism is placed on the student’s transcript.  (Just as a side note, if this happens to you, grad schools won’t accept you, you won’t be able to get a government job and you’re all around screwed, so don’t do it)

Outcome 3: The student says they are innocent, a formal investigation is levied and a tribunal of professors and sometimes student representatives is formed to investigate the accusation.  If the student is found guilty (I haven’t heard of many cases that have found the student innocent) they usually have the year or degree completely taken away from them.  The lesson here is to confess, you’ll get off much easier if you do.

Why it’s better to fail then to plagiarize

With companies like ‘flashpapers’ who can create custom papers for you, it is becoming increasing easy to cheat and many of you might think of trying this as an alternative to failing your paper.  You may even think that this is a victimless crime, as nobody will know you cheated, and unfortunately you’d be right.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned but I believe university isn’t a place to just to get a mark but to actually learn.  Remember that education, much as life is about the journey not the destination and taken a short cut is not only wrong but I guarantee you’ll regret it eventually.

For those companies that are selling these papers.

Shame on you and get an honest job.

Liam McIvor Martin

For those that want to hire honest academic help go check out my online tutoring program.

Hello Fellow Students!

I just got a case of Gaba Tea drink from the Jones Soda company.  They wanted me to test out their drink supplement for students and I’ve performed my own experiment with amazing results.

Gaba Research

Gaba is a “naturally produced amino acid and is one of the key neurotransmitters in the regulation of proper brain functionality; it helps to increase the production of alpha brain waves, known to enhance focus + clarity.  At the same time it decreases beta brain waves, which are linked to nervousness and scattered thoughts.” (Jones Gaba).

Now I’m usually quite skeptical about new supplements for increased brain power as usually 90% of them are simply packed with sugar (cough red bull) and get you so hopped up on sugar that you feel amazing regardless of what else is in there.  From my research on gaba however, I’ve found quite a bit of research that both refutes and confirms gaba as a study tool.  In my search to see documented proof of the advantages of Gaba the people at Jones Gaba sent me some research data that for me is still in my opinion only exploratory but I’ll let you guys be the judge.

Gaba Research Data

So based on the research I was given, two studies popped out for me.  The first study was performed on school children being dosed with 100mg of Gaba which tried to find out if Gaba would improve students learning and test taking skills.  An N of 54 was used for each experiment with a P value of < 0.10. (see results below)

The Second Study was on Gaba and improved video game scores.  This study had an N of 10 and a P value of 0.06.  Each of these studies do not appear to have much academic rigor and would not be accepted in any kind of academic journal due to their low level of significance and their incredibly low number of subjects (any university student knows you can’t perform a study on 10 ppl and expect significant results).

gaba learning study

Gaba study on video games

Does Jones Gaba Work?

Unconvinced from the supposedly ‘academic’ data I decided to try Gaba myself and dose myself.  I worked on the included Sudoku puzzles, solving one puzzle then dosing myself and trying the second puzzle.  I put the entire thing together in a video which you can watch here:

Amazingly I saw an improvement of over 10 minutes!  Now there are some obvious problems with my little experiment; warming up with a few sudoku’s before starting the experiment being a perfect example.  However, for all my skepticism I would definitely suggest you run out and buy yourself a couple bottles and try it yourself.  You might be amazed by the results.

My Only Suggestions To Jones Gaba

Cut as much sugar as possible:  Sugar is bad for your general and academic health.  Try to cut some more out and we will be golden.

Get some more studies done:  Get some studies that have significant P values and have N’s of over 100!  If you want to win over college kids, you must run large scale studies, students aren’t stupid and can smell bullshit.

Final Thoughts on the Gaba Supplement

As an online tutor and blogger, it is really important that I prescribe sound advice.  Although the product does have some problems, I would suggest students give this product a try, as a test during a low lying period in their semester.  If they feel confident about using the supplement only then should you try to use it before writing a paper or an exam.

Here is the Jones Gaba main site if you’d like to check it out for yourself.

Liam McIvor Martin

D,oh, sometimes I'm so concerned with advanced methods, I forget the basics

I’ve unfortunately committed one of the cardinal sins of critical thinking….

I can’t believe I haven’t addressed this earlier but unfortunately I sometimes don’t see the forest for the trees.

I got an email from a student today, she asked me for some ‘general tips for academic success’. I was just about to throw her an email saying “well, uhh… why don’t you just check out the ENTIRE BLOG, WEBSITE and BOOK!

But I then took a look around the blog and realized I haven’t actually given any of you the basic tips for academic success! I suppose I’ve always just thought that anyone who wanted that info should just check out the VTA Method and consult an online tutor. But I want this blog to be a resource for any student, not just ones that have bought my program (although it’s awesome).

So with that in mind I’m going to start a recurring series of the general tips for academic success. Here is what I’m planning on talking about:

General college study tips

Exam study tips

How to study for finals

Study tips for different types of learners

How to write an A paper

How to create a study schedule

Health tips that will improve study habits

Advanced study tips

I’d like to ask everyone to tell me what I should add to the list, or what I should not talk about. I want it to be a 10 part series so I may rip out one or two and replace them if you have some good ideas. Comment away!

As always, if anybody is interested in online tutoring go check out our VTA Method University Mentorship Program.

Online Tutoring Program

Hello Fellow Students.

I Kinda Like the "Popeye Breakfast" but Meh

I got called out for my breakfast choices so I decided today to show you exactly what I eat for breakfast.  It’s good tasting and good for you.  For all you naysayers who think that you don’t have time for breakfast before class, this should shut you all up.  It took me 4 minutes to cook my breakfast on the video and I can usually do it in three.  So I suggest you all try this as an experiment at least for a week and see what kind of chances you see in your mind, body and mood.

The Components of the Superman Breakfast

- Approximately half a dozen egg whites with one full egg for flavor

- Fresh Baby Spinach, prewashed.

- Salsa or Tabbouleh.  Both excellent options.  The Tabbouleh has more nutrients but is higher in fat, the Salsa is lower in nutrients but higher in fat so go your own way with this one

- Crap loads of water

Cost of the Superman Breakfast

The egg whites cost me 3.29 per liter which works out to approximately .65 with the whole egg

The Spinach lasts me all week and I usually have it twice a day.  At 3.69 per bag that works out to .30 per meal

The salsa costs me approximately .10 per dose

That works out to a grand total of 1.05 for all that food.  

Advantages of the Superman Breakfast

Very little fat, high in minerals and nutrients and incredibly high in protein (18 – 24 grams) which will make you smarter, stronger, faster and will keep your body fat percentage below 10% if you follow that same nutritional theory for every meal.  (Lean protein and lots of veggies)

Here is the Full Video:

So anybody have anything else they’d like to add?  Comment away!