Academic writing - essay time

It's time to deliver the first draft of my essay, which happens to be the most daunting task of this support group – possibly the entire course. Essays are never easy to write, not in Finnish and not in English, even if both are languages I've been using for years (well, one being my Native tongue).

Essays take time. For me, planning, doing research and writing this specific essay took at least five hours. I think it was even harder than usually because we weren't given anything to base the essay from; instead, we had to pick our own subject. It's good practice for future, but I'm quite indecisive and pulling out a compelling subject out of nowhere was definitely one of the harder parts of this task. I decided to write about Geography – how surprising – and how it should be studied more broadly across the globe. In the essay, I focus on three key factors: Geography's flexibility, globalization and technological advancements.

Looking for fitting sources was the next hardest thing. What can I use to back up my claims? And it wasn't only about finding reliable sources but skimming and reading through them too – it's very time consuming. I'm actually surprised by how little time I put into that.

The actual writing part was both easy and difficult at times. I guess the most difficult thing was putting my thoughts into words in a way that made sense and wasn't completely informal. Sometimes, I had moments when the text just flowed out and sometimes, I had to ponder on a single sentence for a ridiculous long while.

Overall, this writing experience was fun but also very tiring. I enjoyed writing about my chosen subject and I'm quite satisfied with the first draft. At the same time, it took a lot out of me and with so much to do, in and outside of this course, I feel like I've barely had any time to let my thoughts rest.

Now my task is to read two other essays by my fellow students and on Thursday (10.10.2024) we'll be meeting up for another peer review session. Since it's impossible for me to perfect, I imagine that I will be returning from the session with good ways to better my essay. Looking forward to that!

I have included my the first draft of essay in this post, in case you also want to consider studying Geography.