Authoring a college paper is a beautiful process that exemplifies an understanding of the topic at hand. Using appropriate references and knowledge passed down from the professor, a student has the opportunity to mold powerful arguments with his or her words. As an engineer, I rarely get to use "words" and "sentences," so over the past semester I've made it a personal goal of mine to learn as much about the writing process as possible. I present my findings below.
I now appreciate that the foremost perk of being an engineer is that you never have to write papers. Ever. You have to write the occasional lab report, but those can be filled with preexisting data and equations, and you can easily get an "A" even if you exclusively use one-syllable words. I don't think that the engineering professors even read the words. Take this excerpt from a lab report that I turned in a few weeks ago as an example:
The Reynolds number is a very important concept in the field of fluid dynamics. Where would we be without fluids? I don't know, but this one time, I was walking down the street with no pants on and this stop sign started punching me in the face. I got so angry that I screamed out:
Re = ?µd/h = µd/v
I don't think I can explain the Reynolds number any better than this, so here are some lyrics to Eiffel 65's "Blue": I'm blue da ba dee da bu dye, da ba de, da bu dye...
Nu = Hd/k(T - t) = (Ra/Rac)1/3
In the above equation, I like it when H stands for happiness and T for friendship, even though I know that friendship doesn't begin with the letter T! In summary, both the Reynolds number and the Nusselt number are essential tools to describe any fluid system. Old McDonald had a farm, EIEIO.
This passes for a fine piece of work in the School of Engineering. Judging by the teacher's comments ("A++, Nice Equations!"), I am well on my way to discovering a new theory of relativity.
My unfamiliarity with "writing" and "communicating" is the reason why I find it so intriguing when my friends in the school of Liberal Arts have actual papers due. My interest in the field of "paperology" has led to the following discoveries. First, all papers are 10 pages long. That makes sense - there are 12 inches in a foot, and 10 pages in a paper. Moving on.
Second, I've noticed that I always get the same response when I make the following inquiry:
ME: "How's that [10-page] paper coming along?"
PERPETUALLY REPEATED RESPONSE: "Eh, not bad. I've got five or six pages, I'll just bullshit the rest."
Clearly, bullshitting is an underappreciated art form in college culture. According to my measurements, approximately 44 percent of the material in college papers is "BS." Everyone has been guilty of this practice at least once in his or her college career, and most practice it on every assignment. But do professors know about this? Is the following scenario possible?
PROFESSOR (commenting at the end of a paper): "Jeff, your paper is a collection of irrelevant ideas and contains nothing that even marginally resembles a thesis statement. Your only citations reference an imaginary conversation between you and Zambam the Zebra. That being said, your BSing is far superior to that of the rest of the class, A++. P.S. Thanks for including the lyrics to Eiffel 65's "Blue" in the appendix."
This is why I propose that I teach an ExCollege class next year entitled, "From the Cattle's Ass to the College Paper: Proper Bullshitting Technique." The class will be divided up into three phases, with each phase focusing on different techniques you can use to fill those last three or four pages of your report.
The first phase will sharpen students' essay-lengthening skills. Discussed in this section are topics such as the intricacies of the Courier New font; triple, quadruple, and quintuple spacing; subtle margin widening; extra-long headers;and the legendary gradual font size increase.
The second phase focuses on proper quote usage in your paper. Contrary to popular belief, using short, relevant quotes that precede in-depth, accurate analysis is flawed technique. The correct method involves using paragraph-long quotes that are entirely unrelated to your topic. This way, you will easily fill the remaining two or three pages as you scramble to explain how your quote describing the consistency of cream cheese relates to international business ethics.
In the final phase of the class, I will teach my students how to survive when they have nothing written for a paper due in less than an hour. One method revolves around the phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words."
Great! At 100 words per page (using 14pt Courier New with triple spacing of course), I only need to hand in one picture to satisfy the length requirement! You can then stroll confidently up to the professor and exclaim: "I feel that this crayon drawing of me boxing an octopus on the rings of Saturn explains perfectly my feelings about the socio-economic contributions of Benjamin Franklin."
I am expecting this class to be high-demand, so email me ASAP if you want to enroll. Cheers.
Jeff Volinski is a senior majoring in mechanical engineering. He can be reached at Jeffrey.Volinski@tufts.edu.
