University assignments have deadlines, which means you, as the student, have a set amount of time to get them finished and submitted. That means you should have a plan. And for a lot of people, that plan is simply to start writing as early as possible.

That seems like a good idea, right? The earlier you start, the more time you have to finish. But this might not always be the case. Here’s why.

Is starting your writing early a good thing?

I totally agree that, in general, starting assignments early is a good thing. Even if for basic university time management reasons, being prepared and getting on the front foot seems like a very reasonable strategy.

But my issue comes down specifically to the writing part. My view is that trying to write too early is often inefficient at best, and counter-productive at worst. Why? Because good writing requires good planning.

Good writing requires good planning

This is a philosophy I’ve developed over several years of university studies. I found that, in earlier years, I’d rush my process, and try to start writing neat and complete paragraphs right away. That seems like a good idea on paper, but it resulted in confused writing, confused direction, and a confused author. It ultimately resulted in spending longer than necessary writing (and re-writing).

In my view, there are some things that need to be done before the actual writing process begins. These things will vary from faculty to faculty, of course, but might include things like:

• Truly understanding the assessment instructions and criteria.

• Getting through readings and course materials relevant to the assessment.

• Planning the structure of your writing.

Let’s explore each of those in a little more detail.

Assessment instructions and criteria

Being clear about what you actually need to do is so important. You’d be surprised how many students complete a full draft of an assessment without having consulted the marking rubric a single time.

Instructions and criteria give you a structure to work toward. They basically act as a checklist of things you need to include or demonstrate in your work (as an aside, you should always triple check the rubric before submitting your assignment to ensure you’ve satisfied everything).

If there’s conflict between the marking rubric and what you’ve been told to do in class, that’s something that needs clarification. But to give yourself sufficient time to check with your tutor (and avoid having to re-write sections you thought you’d completed), you need to be on top of the marking criteria early on.

Take some time to read through the assessment and marking criteria carefully as early as reasonable. Highlight the most important parts. Make notes. This is really foundational knowledge - not of subject content, but of the assessment task itself - that will give you a good chance of success.

Readings and course materials

If your assessment is based on course materials, or if you need to reference things like readings and/or lectures, it logically follows that understanding those course materials will benefit your writing. In something like an essay, there are really two ways of approaching it:

Option 1:

You write down all of your ideas first, then do your readings and watch your lectures, then try to retroactively fit references to what you’re already contending.

That’s probably a pretty familiar process for a lot of people, but is it the most efficient? I contend probably not.

Option 2:

The alternative is the inverse of that - so you do your readings and watch your lectures, and then base your essay on knowledge you’ve gained. In my eyes, there are some big benefits here:

• Because you’re across the course material, your arguments are likely to be stronger, (they’re more contextualised).

• You don’t need to retroactively find sources, because your sources are actually influencing your ideas in the first place - you’ve already found your references.

• Your writing will probably be more cohesive. In some cases, Option 1 will result in slightly modifying parts of your arguments, which leads to inconsistency or confusion - and that’s definitely something to avoid.

Planning structure of writing

The other thing I recommend doing before actually writing is planning out the structure of your work. This doesn’t have to be anything super groundbreaking, but I find that having some sort of guidance is really helpful when starting to write properly.

Everybody works differently (and different assessments will require different approaches), but here is my general process:

• When doing readings or watching lectures, take general notes for anything that might be relevant for assignments.

• When first thinking about the assignment, look at the instructions and marking rubric carefully.

• Open a blank Word doc, and start thinking about general structure of the end product. For example, is there an introduction? How many sections? What are they?

• Open your subject notes, and copy across any relevant notes or quotes into the appropriate sections. Make sure you keep track of what came from where so that you can appropriately cite!

• Gradually build each section. Work around the quotes or references, and do further research to support your arguments.

Eventually, you might find that each portion of the assessment has a bit more structure, and you have more to work with. After that foundational work, the actual writing process becomes a lot easier - it’s actually more a process of fluently putting everything together!

Remember, of course, that each assessment is different. And as mentioned earlier, different people work in different ways. But I hope you take something from this article (even if it’s a strategy you definitely don’t want to employ!), and I wish you the best of luck for your future assessments.