This is the question. You can either pick an arbitrary word from this and pontificate wildly about it or you can read up on it and cry when you realise everyone has already got the books from the library that focus on the subject.

The first paragraph is vital. Not only is it murder to start but once you actually get it down in black and white it suddenly seems ludicrous and will instantly cripple your chances of maintaining people’s interest for longer than it takes to read past the next full stop.

[Check word count]

Your house is spotless, it’s raining outside, there’s nothing good on telly, your radio has no batteries, your mates are all ill and so you come to the conclusion that there’s nothing left to do but the essay, returning after a bowel-crushingly relaxing four-week hiatus to start the next paragraph. If you’re lucky you may undergo a second wind here, your hands flying insanely across the keyboard so that you actually write a decent piece of work which miraculously deals with the topic in hand, as opposed to something which can be misconstrued as the ramblings of a lunatic. [Check word count] Now you’re worried again. You’ve still only written as many words as there are in the question. You’ve learnt by now that this is really not the way to go. You don’t want the tutor sending you e-mails wondering where the rest of it is. [Check word count]

Round about here is the time to panic because you haven’t included any quotations/theories/ideas by anyone else. Unsupported by experts who know more than you, your essay descends into the equivalent of a taxi driver’s rant. [Check word count] After deciding that the Internet is not the place to get quotes and that your tutor would probably prefer it if you handed in a bucket of cat entrails you decide to flick through that one book you were able to get from the library and find a quote.

“This is the quote. Not only does it contain confoundingly grandiloquent words that sound inconsequentially ostentatious but it more-or-less fits into some kind of sphere of human knowledge. There will be plenty of time to decide on its actual relevance when you’re living in a dumpster.”

Professor Edward T. Loser: Some Big Long Pretentious Book Title- Does Anybody Check This Publishing Ltd, London, 1982 (it’s also important to note that whatever year your book is written in, it will invariably be exactly one year before a cataclysmic new theory revolutionised everything and made this chump’s idea look about as outdated as the crinoline)

[Check word count] [Wish you'd picked a longer quotation]

This is the moment when nausea really sets in. The deadline is minutes away. Things are desperate. Sentence structure breaks down. You lose the ability to type so spieling gos ale oeuvre Th place and punctuation/ appears ‘# out 0f ? no-Where.

[Check word count]

Can you get to the recommended average word count? Ha! Yeah right

Can you get to the absolute minimum word count? No chance

Can you get to the absolute minimum tutor-toleration-level-stretching word count? Hm there’s an outside chance. Go for that one then. Now inwardly rejoice and cram on the standard ending which you use for everything you’ve ever had to write.

And so in conclusion the text shows us a great deal about the subject in question, ensuring that it remains important [check word count] to [check word count] contemporary [check word count] audiences.

Badder Bing Badder Boom

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