The Curse of the waffle :S

[Rachel]

I'm currently writing up a practical, and i'm once again reminded as to how much i waffle!

It's one of the many banes of my existance (along with indecisiveness and a love for chocolate). My essays are always over the word limit, and i'm nearly always writing up until the last minute in an exam.

Does anyone else suffer from the curse of the waffle???!

[atomicblonde]

Kinda disappointed... thought this post was about the food.

I actually have the complete opposite problem unfortunately. I finish very quickly, and my papers are far under the length they're supposed to be. I say what needs said, I'm just far too concise.

[Rachel]

i'm sorry you were dissapointed about the content of this topic!

I wish i was consise. the only essay i've written at uni that was under the word limit was a really stupid one we had to do last year for infection. It was a really stupid title and all i managed to write was an incredibly sarcastic essay. The title of the essay was:

Using appropriate examples, identify the key strategies employed by bacteria in pathogenesis of disease

And all i could focus on was the fact that bacteria don't employ strategies to cause disease! all they do is go along living their life, and if they cause disease it's generally a mistake, coz it doesnt make sence to cause harm to your host (like us on the earth, we don't MEAN to harm the earth, we just do accidentally because of our lifestyles). So yeah, i ended up writing an incredibly sarcastic essay entitled "Which strategy is best for you?", and then removing the sarcastic bits for the essay i handed in.

[Mr. Darkside]

Kinda disappointed... thought this post was about the food.

Yeah, me too. I thought this was about some cursed waffle someone is selling
over Ebay or something...

I have that problem sometimes in tests. I first write the answer, then I explain it, then I think I must explain some more, and well, you get the idea. It just keeps going and going and going.

[Hunter Lupe]

You made me want waffles.

Regarding the waffles... (er, writing)... it happens. I've the same consideration now that we get "max word count" rather than "min word count" on our essay assignments. It's mainly a problem in choosing the appropriate level of for the particular assignment. With any luck, you'll learn how to be concise or extremely articulate on demand.

[Rachel]

i can waffle fine, which is useful when i'm trying to pretend i know stuff when i dont in the answer in an exam question. it's a pain otherwise tho.

does anyone have any tips on being succinct?

[xjox]

The only advice I can offer is to think things through before you write them down. I find that I tend to waffle when I start writing without actually thinking about what I need to write. Sometimes it helps to use a seperate piece of paper and jot down the key notes you want to mention in your essay, then try and stick to them and only allow a paragraph (or whatever you think necessary) for each point.

[Christopher]

You need an equal balance of Waffle and Fact for every essay, usually 50/50 for something like History, 60/40 for general English, and so forth.

Waffling if well developed will save your life

[DiscordantNote]

I notice that I tend to take too much time to ponder my next point, but that's my only major problem. Sometimes it'll feel like I'm rambling when writing an essay, but according to the grades I recieve I'm not, which is good.

I suggest writing a short outline of your eassay before hand if possible, so you'll have something to organize your thoughts. Have people review the outline to give you suggestions.

[Ammer]

For me, it depends on the class. For instance, in English, I waffle a lot. I explain to much and I get really into the essay. In French, I'm the exact opposite.

For English, I had to learn how to write in a short period of time. I write until the very last minute and even a few minutes over the bell, it's very difficult sometimes. But the best thing to do is simply don't re-state anything and don't write or re-tell anything. Simply get to the point and explain it. No need to babble on and on.

Hopefully, you'll grow better at it.

I suggest writing a short outline of your eassay before hand if possible, so you'll have something to organize your thoughts. Have people review the outline to give you suggestions.

I brought an outline (Technically, I wrote the whole essay the night before) for an in-class essay and I barely finished copying it onto the essay sheet. It's very difficult. Cutting things out is my problem.

[Rachel]

guess what! i was under my word limit for the summary! i only wrote 165 words, and the word limit was 200. yay!!! i did write an awful lot for the rest of the writeup, but then there wasnt a word limit for that, so its ok (and by an awful lot i mean over 5,000 words - a proper wedge of paper, especially considering i have to hand in 2 copies, i ran out of paper when printing it :S)

[_jaye_]

Kinda disappointed... thought this post was about the food.

It's 6:30 in the morning and I'm hungry XD

Um, well, what I tend to do is write one paragraph and then ask myself, "how does this link to the topic?" If I write some statement down, I would ask, "so what? What has that got to do with the original topic?" You can just ask youself questions related to the topic and review how much of your content is related to the topic. Hope that helped.

[Rachiroo]

Is it worst to waffle and indecisive or to be rash and decisive? Hmmmm, I can't decide ( ).

[Maureen]

I do that a lot too. Once we had a persuasive essay and the word limit was 300 min and 500 max , I think. I ended up with about 800, and I was only halfway through. When I got to that point, I started cutting things out wherever I saw fit. My final was only 465 words!

[Squinchy]

You have every right to waffle on your rough draft, that is, if you have plenty of time to revise. I tend to ramble most on lab reports/conclusions and personal essays and least on expository and persuasive essays. Unfortunately, I'm verbose on nearly everything (including posts on PPT, if you haven't noticed ).