I am now only one week from graduating. In the past two years I have written at least one major paper per month...a few classes required two papers! In those years I have become more comfortable with MLA documentation over APA. I don't know why...most professors accepted either format. I guess I must have started with MLA and just kept it throughout each class. I believe formatting and documenting academic papers give the paper the credibility needed at this level as well as makes reading the paper standardized. Being a History major I believe I will be using the APA format going forward so reacquainting myself it will be good. Documentation is vital to research papers because there is no way to validate and duplicate the findings without the reader being able to study and test the same evidence the writer used.
I have less than a week and a half and I haven't began writing my paper. I don't even have an outline. One positive is that I have plenty of research under my belt and believe the paper should come together pretty easy.
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Danyelle:
ReplyDeleteI always found that the research was the hard part; once I had all my information, I was able to quite easily put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). I know exactly how you feel.
Most high school teachers teach MLA, because you really only write papers in Humanities classes (English, history, etc). High school science and math classes tend not to have written term papers (although some do), and use testing instead. This might be another reason why you are more comfortable with MLA; you've probably been using it longer.
Congratulations on your impending graduation!