How to Become a Straight-A Student

by Cal Newport

  Mindy’s Art History professor has office hours on Friday afternoons. This is a perfect opportunity for Mindy to seek a second opinion on her thesis idea. The problem, however, is that she doesn’t yet have a fully formed idea. For now, she is stuck with only an intriguing topic. With this in mind, she sets aside an hour in the morning to read through her personal copy of the source she found in the library earlier in the week. Her hope is to develop some interesting ideas before office hours that afternoon.

  This careful review gives Mindy a better understanding of the author’s argument. Fortunately, it’s focused. The author looks at a painting by each artist, and he then gives a concise and specific philosophical rationale for both. This focus is fortunate because it leaves a lot of room for Mindy to extend the argument—even though she’s not yet sure what this extension will entail. She recognizes that making a well-considered but constrained addition to an already established argument is great way to develop a meaningful but manageable research paper thesis.

  During lulls in class that day, Mindy continues to mull over her topic, trying to find a good direction for her thesis. Finally, as the bell rings, an insight hits her. The source she found had explained a shared philosophy between Allston and Friedrich. But it did nothing to explain why they both followed this philosophy. If Mindy can find a common source for the artists’ shared philosophical interests, then that could make for a fascinating argument!

  Arriving at office hours later that afternoon, Mindy explains her thesis idea to her professor. The keyword here is “idea.” She does not yet know if this direction will bear fruit. It’s possible that her research would turn up no information that helps explain the shared philosophical interests between the two artists, so there is, as is often the case with an engaging thesis idea, an element of risk at this early stage. By meeting with her professor, however, Mindy can greatly reduce this risk. That’s a major reason why this step is so important. A professor can draw from his deep pool of knowledge and experience with a topic and generate a reasonable hunch as to whether or not a specific idea seems promising—potentially preventing a frustrating dead end. Fortunately for Mindy, her professor likes the thesis. To him, it seems likely that Mindy can find some evidence for a connection, and he points her toward some well-known Allston and Friedrich monographs that might help her investigation.

  Sunday—Three Weeks and One Day to the Due Date

  Mindy makes another journey to the library, armed with the book suggestions she received from her professor. Using a well-stocked iPod to abate her boredom, she seeks out two of these books, one for each artist, and makes personal copies of the relevant chapters of each. This takes a good hour to complete, but the work is mindless, so it’s not that bad.

  Later that evening, Mindy takes these newly acquired personal copies to one of her favorite isolated study spots. She begins to skim through and annotate each. She’s not exactly sure what she’s looking for, but she knows the more information she has found, copied, and labeled, the better off she will be.

  Over time she begins to notice a name that keeps popping up in her Allston book: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a young European writer and thinker who seemed to have a big impact on Allston.

  Mindy hopes to find a mention of Coleridge in the Friedrich material, but she comes up empty-handed. This doesn’t dissuade her, however; Friedrich, as it turns out, was hanging around several European philosophical circles at the time. It would not be surprising if there were some sort of connection to Coleridge through one of them.

  Her interest piqued, Mindy fires up the library Web page. In class the professor had shown them a journal database that allows you to search for journal articles relating to Art History. Mindy navigates to this page and begins searching, using queries that include both Friedrich and Coleridge. After some sifting through the results, she finds what she is looking for: an article about Friedrich and a group of artists he worked with in Germany. In the abstract for this article, it’s mentioned that Coleridge was among the philosophers whose work inspired the group.

  A connection has been found! Mindy prints the article and records on the first page all the information she needs to later cite it.

  Monday to Sunday—Three Weeks to the Due Date

  Excited by her find, Mindy e-mails her professor to explain her newly developed “Coleridge as the missing link” thesis. He loves it and gives her some advice on what sort of additional evidence would help make the case compelling.

  With an approved thesis in hand, and a good idea of what additional sources she’ll need to form a strong argument, Mindy can now lay out a rough schedule for the steps that follow. Over the next week she will continue to research. Then she will spend the following week crafting her story, building an outline, and getting some final feedback on the argument. This will leave her exactly one week to turn a detailed topic outline into a few dozen pages of coherent writing. The schedule is reasonable in that it doesn’t require work every day, and it rarely requires more than a couple hours on any given day—thus the construction of her paper can be easily woven into her already busy schedule.

  Following the straight-A approach, Mindy’s week of research proceeds mechanically. At each trip to library, on average, Mindy spends one or two hours, during which she finds two or three sources. Each source gets copied, labeled, and annotated. She makes these trips three times during the week and once on Sunday, leaving her with a significant stack of annotated material. Remember, at this point very little thinking has been dedicated to how all of these pieces will fit together into the final paper. That’s for the next step.

  Monday to Sunday—Two Weeks to the Due Date

  Now comes the fun part. In one hand, Mindy has a compelling thesis. In the other hand, she has a stack of annotated personal copies of sources relating to the thesis. Now she has to figure out how to combine the two into a believable story.

  There is no mechanical solution to this problem; it requires some serious thinking. And this is exactly what Mindy does. Over the course of this week she takes a lot of walks around campus to consider her argument. She imagines explaining her thesis to an enthralled audience. She revisits her source material often to refresh her memory on what information is available and to stoke the flames of her intellectual curiosity. On a couple of occasions, she even shoehorns her poor roommates into listening to her talk through the current state of her paper idea. By the time Friday rolls around, she has a pretty good idea of how she will present this story. She will start with explaining the philosophical connection between Allston and Friedrich’s work (as outlined in that original source she found during her thesis-hunting expedition), explain how this philosophy matches Coleridge’s philosophy, and then provide a compelling connection between Coleridge and each of the two artists.

  That afternoon, Mindy organizes the personal copies of her sources into three piles, one for each of these three major pieces of her story. She also attends office hours once again. This time she is able to explain to her professor the specifics of her argument and provide examples of the sources she is using to support the argument. He still seems excited about the thesis, and provides some good advice on how to make the argument slightly stronger.

  Armed with this knowledge, Mindy spends the weekend constructing her topic-level outline. This takes time, since she has to copy many quotes from her sources and into her outline document. However, she basically did no hard work during the preceding week, other than thinking about her argument whenever she had a free moment, so a little effort over the weekend is not an unreasonable demand.

  By Sunday afternoon, Mindy has constructed a thoughtful outline, full of quotes from her sources. She has already discussed her argument with her professor, but before she begins to write, she wants some more opinions. That afternoon, she sets up meetings with two of her classmates to discuss their paper ideas. During both meetings, Mindy is surprised by how little work has been accomplishe
d by her peers—most of them are just starting their search for a thesis—but she does get good feedback on her own argument. Mindy integrates this feedback into her outline, and can now go to sleep confident that the structure of her paper is solid.

  Monday to Sunday—Last Week Before Due Date

  Mindy’s plan is to write a little bit each day of the week, with the goal of using the weekend only to edit. Writing, however, takes time. And Mindy’s week is busy. Not surprisingly, she doesn’t quite meet her goal of finishing an entire rough draft by Friday, but she comes close (when you have a detailed topic-level outline, writing moves much quicker than when you have to continually search through your sources).

  That said, this weekend will definitely be a busy one if Mindy is going to get this paper finished and edited in time. Understanding the urgency of the looming deadline, Mindy goes into crisis writing mode on Saturday. Starting early in the morning, Mindy holes herself up in a quiet medical library at the outskirts of campus. Armed with energy-boosting snacks and a thermos of coffee, she writes continually, taking short breaks every fifty minutes, until her rough draft is complete. At forty pages long, the paper is both considerable and well thought out.

  Nevertheless, Mindy is worried about leaving all of the editing until the day before, so after a relaxing dinner she begins her Argument Adjustment Pass on her computer screen. She’s tired from a long day of writing, so she makes it through only about a third of the paper before she throws in the towel and goes out to have some fun with her friends for the rest of the night. Getting that little piece of editing done, however, will make her task tomorrow easier to handle.

  Sunday morning, Mindy picks up where she left off. By lunchtime she has finished the Argument Adjustment Pass, and now things are starting to look good. After lunch, she hits the gym for an hour to revive her energy and spends some time with a friend to relax and let her mind recharge. Later that afternoon, she brings a printout of her paper to her dorm room and begins her Out Loud Pass. After a break for dinner, she continues this slow but necessary process. By 9 P.M. she finishes the pass. By 10:30 P.M. she has finished integrating the marked changes into her paper. Time for sleep.

  Monday—The Due Date

  Monday morning, Mindy blocks out one and a half hours to conduct her Sanity Pass. Reading through a printout of the paper rather quickly, she notices a couple of little fixes. More important, however, her confidence in the paper builds. After all the hard work, she is proud of her argument. It’s well considered, well supported, and well written. She is excited for her professor to read this.

  When class time finally rolls around, Mindy hands in her paper with a smile on her face. She is secretly amused to notice the bleary-eyed stagger with which many of her classmates enter the classroom. For many, this paper came together in a one-week frenzied marathon of simultaneous research and writing. Mindy’s work is going to shine compared to these last-minute efforts.

  The Result

  No surprises here. Mindy’s work is a standout. She receives an “A+” and a page full of glowing comments from her professor.

  What’s important is that Mindy did not spend any more time actually writing than her classmates. In fact, her time at the keyboard was probably less than most of her peers because when Mindy sat down in front of the computer, she already knew exactly what to say. Also important, Mindy avoided any painfully long work pushes. Outside of a semi-late night on the day before the due date, and a long day of writing two days before the due date, Mindy avoided ever putting in more than a handful of hours on any given day. Constructing a standout “A” paper hardly interfered with her schedule at all. That’s what’s so amazing with the straight-A strategy. It improves your grade and makes the process seem less time consuming.

  Case Study #2—Chris’s Film Studies Critical Analysis Essay

  After the intense, monthlong effort described in the previous case study, we now move to the opposite end of the paper-writing spectrum. Here we focus on the (comparatively) simple process of writing a short critical analysis essay. Specifically, we consider Chris, whose Film Studies course features a weekly essay assignment. Every Monday, his class watches a film and then is assigned several readings on its merits. The class is then responsible for writing a short (two to five pages) critical analysis essay about the film, describing the student’s opinion and how it compares and contrasts to those outlined in the articles read in class that week. The essay is then due the following Monday.

  Monday—One Week Before the Due Date

  Because these essays are due every week, Chris has discovered, through trial and error, a smart timeline for getting the work done with a minimal impact on his ever-busy schedule. It works as follows: Monday is for choosing a couple of reading assignments from his syllabus to really read carefully, Tuesday through Thursday is for finishing these readings, Saturday is for outlining, and Sunday is for writing and editing.

  On Monday, following his timeline, Chris briefly reviews the syllabus for the week. Usually there are three or four readings assigned, but Christopher has learned that it’s usually sufficient to draw from just two sources in his essay. He likes to choose these two in advance so he knows where to focus his attention. After a quick skim of the introductions, he settles on a pair of readings that seem to come to an opposite conclusion about the movie: One loves it, the other hates it. These sorts of stark oppositions tend to provide a lot of meat for a quick analysis.

  Tuesday—Six Days Before the Due Date

  Chris completes the first reading. It’s a chapter from a book and somewhat complicated. He tries to take careful notes on his laptop using the question/evidence/conclusion format described in Part Two. He runs out of time before dinner and ends up having to return to the library later that evening to get the reading done. No big deal.

  Wednesday—Five Days Before the Due Date

  Chris tackles his second reading. This time he has a good two-hour chunk set aside in the morning, when his energy is high. His progress is steady, and he finishes with time to spare.

  Thursday and Friday—Four to Three Days Before the Due Date

  Chris doesn’t need to think about the essay during these two days. He has more than enough other schoolwork to keep him busy on Thursday. And Friday, as always, is dedicated to burning off a week of built-up social energy with his friends.

  Saturday—Two Days Before the Due Date

  During the afternoon, Chris prints out his reading notes. As is his habit, he rereads the notes in his dorm and then takes the long route to the library, thinking about the structure of his essay along the way. He has already decided that he agrees more with the reading assignment that liked the movie. The argument presented in this reading focused mainly on the technical aspects of the film, discussing how the mixture of stark lighting and fast cuts presented a refreshingly modern take on film noir. Chris agrees with these technical arguments, but he also remembers liking the dialogue. At the time, he noted only that it sounded interesting to his ear, but now, in the light of this particular reading, it dawns on him that what made the dialogue so interesting was its mixture of old-style, film-noir catch-phrases and a fast, slang-rich, modern street diction. This seems like a cool extension to the argument from the reading, and Chris decides to make this the centerpiece of his essay.

  Chris arrives at his favorite study carrel, hidden in a dark corner of the library, pulls out his laptop, and puts together a rough topic outline. He decides to follow a classic format. He will start with a brief summary of the two readings he chose to focus on. He will briefly acknowledge the negative critiques as being, for the most part, true, but then contest that the good qualities of the film outweigh the bad. Here he will flesh out some more details of the positive reading, then add his own extension to this argument by discussing how the dialogue reinforces a similar combination of old and new. A quick conclusion calling the movie an important work will cap the essay nicely. When he’s d
one, the topic skeleton reads as follows:

  • Summary of pro and con readings

  • Acknowledge and dismiss con reading

  • More detailed summary of pro reading

  • My argument on the dialogue as modernizing force

  • Conclusion

  His next step is to copy the relevant quotes from the two assignments into this outline. Because he is dealing with only two sources, each of which he reads carefully, this process doesn’t take long.

  Finally, even though he has other things to do, Chris holds out for another half hour to write a rough draft of his introduction. For whatever reason, he has found that having some writing done (even if it is only a paragraph) makes it easier to start the next day.

  Sunday—One Day Before the Due Date

  After sleeping off the effects of a party the night before, Chris returns to the library. As is always the case, Sunday afternoons are for writing, so he knows exactly what to do. Armed with his topic outline, and an already written introduction, this process takes no more than a couple of hours. He heads to an early dinner with a rough draft of the essay complete.

  Later that night, Chris completes a quick Argument Adjustment Pass and then prints out a copy to do his Out Loud Pass. Because the essay is only a few pages long, these two passes take no more than an hour. After a TV break, Chris spends fifteen minutes doing a Sanity Pass. And that’s it. He’s done. He prints out a final draft and jams it in his bag so he won’t forget it the next morning.

  The Result

  Once again, our straight-A student didn’t spend any more time reading sources and writing than most of his classmates. But this essay, like his others, will get an A. Why? Because he separated the reading from the thinking and the thinking from the writing. This leads to a well-thought-out argument, clearly articulated. By finishing his reading on Wednesday, Chris had two days for the ideas to float around in the background of his mind. By the time he began thinking about his outline on Saturday, this material had been well digested. By completing a topic-level outline, and then waiting a night before starting to write, Chris had even more time to mull (consciously or not) over his argument in this more polished state. By the time he sat down at his computer on Sunday, the key pieces of this essay had been worked and reworked internally over a long period. This extra attention to the argument came through in his assignment, and, not surprisingly, a high grade followed.