The fall semester at the University of Memphis is winding down and students on campus are in the driver's seat to finish the semester on a good note.
With deadlines for final papers looming, students often panic at the last minute when they realize they don't know how to start a paper or cite sources. However, there are resources on campus that can help students with their paper-related dilemmas.
The first step to a quality paper is to do the proper research.
Barbara Thomas, who works in McWherter Library as an instructional services assistant, said students who are having problems with finding resources can come to her desk for help.
"So, if you are fairly familiar with how to use the databases or if you are fairly tech savvy, then we can just pull up your topic or look to see what we have in the catalog," Thomas said. "We can show you how to access resources."
Not only individual students can get help, but there are times when a professor sends the entire class to the library to learn how to research specific sources.
"If the instructor requests it, then they will bring their entire class over, and we will set up in one of our instructional classrooms and one of the instruction librarians will teach the whole class," Thomas said. "We've got a hands-on lab that teaches the whole class to do that sort of research."
There have been times when students weren't able to get information from the main library on campus and had to look elsewhere for that particular source.
"Come here to the research desk, and we will help you find it," Thomas said.
Once students have gathered their research materials, they can head to the English Learning Center in Patterson Hall room 225 to get help writing a paper.
The ELC tutors help students with structuring and formatting papers, writing thesis statements and citing sources. Scott, 29, is one of the tutors at the learning center who teaches students about writing papers. Even though he never used to outline papers, he now understands the importance of the process.
"When I started working here, it really helped me see the importance of actually starting early," he said. "Writing is an actual process. It takes many revisions to get a final product."
Scott said it is vital to start early when writing a paper, because doing it last minute doesn't produce a good product. Students often come in right before the paper is due - some even wait until 30 minutes before the deadline to get the help they need.
"Generally, they have written something, and it may not be what they have supposed to have written on," he said. "They missed the topic or something like that."
Rachel Townsend, a freshman psychology major, was in the learning center Thursday writing a paper for a biology class that was due after Thanksgiving Break. She came to the learning center because she was having difficulty structuring her paper.
"My subject is depression, and it's a lot of sources on it," Townsend said. "It's hard to weave through it."
She tends to take no breaks when writing a paper and wants to work through it and get finished. Last semester, she didn't get any sleep during the last month of classes, and this week she admitted to only sleeping two hours a day.
"I have to get it out of the way because I have other papers to do, too," Townsend said. "I want to do well but I don't want to rush it."
Chloe Hawes, a senior political science major, has three 10-page papers due after Thanksgiving and has not started on any of them.
"One of my papers that I have to write is on political parties. I got the books for it. I have done an outline. The other one is literature, and we have different options, but I don't know which one I am going to do yet," Hawes said.
She admitted to having problems with citations when it comes to writing a paper.
"I really don't remember how to do them exactly, so I just kind of wing it."
Hawes has never been to the learning center in Patterson Hall, but she plans on going for one of her papers.
"I think I am going to do it actually this week. I am going for one of my other papers. I had to use APA citation for my last paper and I had no idea of what I was doing."
