How I got a First Class in EVERY Essay at University (Part 1) | The Best Essay Technique
Summary
TLDRIn this informative video, medical student Kenji shares his essay-writing process, from initial research to final drafting. He emphasizes the importance of using up-to-date research from PubMed for accuracy and suggests using RefWorks for citation management. Kenji's method involves creating two Word documents, one for notes and another for the essay itself, ensuring a clear structure and efficient referencing. His approach is designed to avoid plagiarism and streamline the writing process for academic success.
Takeaways
- 📚 Kenji, a third-year medical student at King's College London, shares his essay writing method used for biomedical science and medical school assignments.
- 🖊️ He starts by opening two Microsoft Word documents, one for 'SA Notes' to collect research and another for drafting the 'Essay'.
- 🔍 Kenji emphasizes the importance of dividing the essay into sections: introduction, main body, conclusion, and references.
- 🔑 He uses PubMed as the primary source for research, a database of up-to-date research papers, and recommends starting with review papers for a broad understanding of the topic.
- 🆓 Kenji advises to look for papers with 'Free Full Text' to avoid costs, as students often have limited budgets.
- 📑 He suggests downloading and organizing research papers in a dedicated folder, labeling them numerically for easy reference.
- 🖍️ Kenji highlights the need to rephrase information from research to avoid plagiarism and to integrate it into the essay's introduction, body, and conclusion.
- ✅ He stresses the importance of proper referencing, using a referencing software like RefWorks, which helps in managing citations and generating a reference list.
- 🔄 Kenji demonstrates how to import citations from PubMed into RefWorks and then cite them in the essay using the Vancouver referencing style.
- 📈 The process involves reading, highlighting key points, copying and pasting into 'SA Notes', and then rephrasing into the essay while citing sources.
- 🔍 Lastly, Kenji recommends using both old and new papers to cover the historical context and the latest findings in the field of study.
Q & A
Who is the speaker in the video and what is their educational background?
-The speaker is Kenji, a third-year medical student at King's College London who also holds a degree in Biomedical Science.
What is the primary purpose of the video?
-The primary purpose of the video is to demonstrate Kenji's method for writing essays, which he uses for both his biomedical science degree and medical school assignments.
How many Microsoft Word documents does Kenji open when he starts writing an essay?
-Kenji opens two Microsoft Word documents, one for 'SA Notes' and another for the actual 'Essay'.
What does Kenji use as his main source for research when writing essays?
-Kenji uses PubMed as his main source for research, which is a database of research papers.
Why does Kenji recommend starting with review papers when researching a topic?
-Kenji recommends starting with review papers because they provide a summary of the topic, helping to scope and understand the subject before moving on to more specific primary papers.
What is the difference between review papers and primary papers according to Kenji?
-Review papers are summaries written by someone who did not conduct the research themselves, while primary papers are novel works from individuals who have conducted experiments and research in the lab.
How does Kenji organize the research papers he uses for his essays?
-Kenji organizes his research papers by saving them as PDFs in a folder on his desktop, naming each paper with a number for easy reference.
What method does Kenji use to ensure he does not plagiarize when writing his essays?
-Kenji rephrases the information from his research in his own words and uses a citation manager to properly reference all sources.
Which referencing style does Kenji prefer and why?
-Kenji prefers the Vancouver system because it uses a number for referencing instead of the reference being in the text itself, as in the Harvard system, and it also helps to increase the word count.
What software does Kenji use for managing and citing his references?
-Kenji uses RefWorks as his referencing software to manage and cite his references within Microsoft Word.
How does Kenji handle the process of saving and importing citations from PubMed into RefWorks?
-Kenji sends the desired papers from PubMed to his citation manager in RefWorks by creating a citation file, then imports it into RefWorks, and finally uses the quick cite feature in Microsoft Word to insert the citation.
Outlines
📚 Essay Writing Methodology
Kenji, a third-year medical student at King's College London, introduces his essay writing method, which he also used for his first publication and assignments. He opens two Microsoft Word documents, 'sa notes' for collecting research and 'essay' for writing. He emphasizes dividing the essay into sections: introduction, main body, conclusion, and references. Kenji suggests using PubMed to find up-to-date research papers for essay content, avoiding outdated resources like textbooks and Wikipedia.
🔍 Conducting Research with PubMed
Kenji demonstrates how to use PubMed to search for the most relevant and up-to-date research papers on a given topic. He advises starting with review papers for a broad understanding and then moving on to primary papers for detailed, novel research. He explains the importance of free full-text access for students and the process of downloading and organizing research papers in a dedicated folder on his desktop.
📝 Organizing Research and Writing the Essay
After gathering research papers, Kenji outlines the process of highlighting key points and transferring them into the 'sa notes' document. He discusses the importance of rephrasing information to avoid plagiarism and incorporating it into the essay's structure. Kenji also explains how to reference sources using the Vancouver system and the utility of having a secondary monitor for convenience during writing.
📚 Efficient Referencing with RefWorks
Kenji shares his process for efficient referencing using RefWorks, a citation management tool. He explains creating an account, adding citations from PubMed, and importing them into RefWorks. He demonstrates how to use RefWorks within Microsoft Word to cite sources as the essay is written, ensuring proper formatting and avoiding plagiarism. Kenji emphasizes the time-saving aspect of referencing as you write and the importance of using the correct referencing style as specified by the university.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Medical Student
💡Biomedical Science
💡Essay
💡Microsoft Word
💡PubMed
💡Research Papers
💡Review Papers
💡Primary Papers
💡Clinical Trials
💡References
💡RefWorks
Highlights
Kenji, a third-year medical student at King's College London, shares his essay writing method.
Utilizes two Microsoft Word documents for organization: one for notes and one for the essay itself.
Divides the essay into introduction, main body, conclusion, and references for structured writing.
Uses PubMed as the primary resource for up-to-date research papers.
Advises starting with review papers for a general understanding before diving into primary papers.
Recommends sorting PubMed search results by 'best match' and filtering for 'free full text'.
Saves research papers in a numbered order for easy reference and organization.
Highlights key points from papers for inclusion in the essay and later referencing.
Stresses the importance of rephrasing information to avoid plagiarism.
Uses RefWorks for managing citations and integrating them into the essay.
Prefers the Vancouver referencing style for its clarity and impact on word count.
Details the process of importing citations into RefWorks from PubMed.
Demonstrates how to cite sources within the essay using RefWorks and Microsoft Word.
Emphasizes the efficiency of citing as you write rather than doing all at once at the end.
Mentions the time-consuming nature of citation management but its importance for academic integrity.
Encourages viewers to try the method for themselves and reach out with any questions.
Concludes with a reminder to subscribe and engage with the content for future videos.
Transcripts
what is going on guys my name is kenji
and welcome back to my channel it was
the first time you're watching one of my
videos i am a third year medical student
studying at king's college london uh as
some of you might know that i actually
have a degree in biomedical science
today is a tuesday and i have a 3000
word essay to write and because of that
i thought it'd be a really good idea to
take you guys through how i write my
essays i'm gonna be showing you guys the
exact method that i use to write all of
my essays in biomedical science and it's
also actually the exact same method that
i use to write my first publication
which should be
right there
and this exact same method that i used
to write my first publication and all of
my essays all my assignments in medical
school as well so without further ado
let's get started
[Music]
right so the first thing that i do when
starting to write an essay is i open up
two microsoft word documents so let's go
ahead and do that right now um so here's
the first document i have um here's the
second one as well
um the first document i'm going to name
sa notes so i'll just put that in the
middle
uh sa notes
and in the second word document i want
to call that um
essay
okay once i have that done i then go on
to start
dividing my essay into the relevant
parts so i want to have
an introduction
i'm going to have a main body
and also a conclusion
and also at the end i'm going to have my
references
okay and what i want to do is i want to
copy copy this format um into my
essay notes page
and i'll explain what this is in just a
second
okay so the two pages i have the first
page is my essay notes page the essay
notes page is essentially where i want
to put all of my notes um so when i do
some research and i find something
interesting or something quite profound
which i think um really needs to be in
the essay i'm going to come over here
and then copy that you know part of the
text into this essay notes essentially
what it's going to produce after a while
is one huge document with all of the
relevant information on the essay topic
which i think really really needs to be
included and then the second document is
going to be um where i actually write
the essay and i'll show you guys exactly
how i write the essay later on using the
essay notes but as a summary the essay
notes page is to collect all of the
information that i need to write the
essay and the essay page is where i
actually go on to write the essay itself
right so once that's done it's time to
start actually looking for information
which i'll need to produce this essay so
what you want to do is go to
to pubmed so if you go to google and you
type in um pubmed
uh it's the first thing that comes up
i'm not entirely sure if you guys have
heard this before but essentially what
pubmed is is a database of all of the
research papers currently um out there
right now um so it's kind of like a
google i guess you can say for um
research papers and the thing is when
you're writing essays university um you
don't want to use textbooks anymore you
don't use wikipedia you don't lose
websites anymore i remember the first
essay that i ever wrote in university i
got 40
and the past mark was 40 so i just about
passed and the reason why i got 40 is i
didn't use any research articles i just
used like literally um like websites and
books and stuff like that but the thing
with these resources is that they're not
up to date and if you use something like
pubmed you get all of the research
papers that are really up to date and
from really good journals as well
okay so what you want to do is go to the
search bar and type in whatever topic
you're currently on so for example right
now my topic is on erectile dysfunction
following prostatectomies so i want to
write the topic right here erectile
dysfunction uh
prostatectomies
prostatectomy and then what it should do
is give you a list of all of the
research papers that are currently out
there right now
as i said it's very very up to date and
what you want to do is come up here and
click sort by um make sure that it's on
best match and then
what you also want to do is click free
full text because obviously student
budget i don't have a type of student
loan to be paying for papers and paying
to read papers okay so what you want to
do is go through um you know all of
these different papers read the titles
and see what is best to start on what i
do recommend start on is to start by
reading review papers and then once you
have a general idea of what the topic is
through review papers you want to then
go on to actually look at clinical
trials and primary papers to kind of
explain what these are a review paper is
basically
a paper which is written by someone who
didn't do any research themselves they
didn't do anything in the lab so it's
kind of like a summary of the topic and
it's a really really good way to get
started when trying to you know scope a
topic and understand what is going on
before you move on to the specific
papers uh which will be the primary
papers the primary papers is different
so primary papers are novel things that
people have done so these are people who
are in the labs doing research you know
you know on the actual cells doing
experiments themselves and they write
this into a primary paper so this is
their own like unique work this is all
the um you know brand new work that they
did themselves um which is what you want
to go into later on once you have a good
idea of the whole topic as a whole so
what you want to do is also start off by
clicking review as i said all of these
right here will be a review of the whole
topic so you want to spend uh maybe a
couple of hours maybe you know reading
up to like you know five to ten review
papers um so what i'll do for example is
um click click this uh this first thing
because that sounds quite interesting
and it sounds like it covers the topic
that i want you want to then try to get
access to this paper so click on um full
text links over here in the corner
so i'll go ahead and click that once
that's clicked um you should have the
whole paper just right here in front of
you
sometimes you don't sometimes you need
to do a bit of digging it's fine paper
but normally it's quite easy to get the
paper and then what you want to do is
download the pdf copy
so you should go so you should be able
to find pdf somewhere normally it's in
the top right corner here but if it's
not you can just save it as a pdf
yourself what i'm going to do is make a
new folder on my desktop i'm going to
call this um let's say
essay within the essay folder i want to
make a new folder called papers so this
is exactly where i'm going to store uh
store all of my research papers
everything that i read will be stored in
this folder right here
and now what i do personally is to save
it by number um so i'll explain why
later on when i do that but i want to
start by calling it number one and i'll
save it in there
so i should have it on my
desktop now so i'm going to open up
those papers and there it is that's my
first research paper saved okay so what
you want to do is as i said to find
maybe five to ten different uh review
articles and uh start doing some
research start doing some reading um
what i tend to do now is to get the
highlighter and go through the whole
paper and you know highlight anything
that i think is really important
something that i think definitely should
be in the introduction the main body or
the conclusion so let's say i found this
first um this first paper right here
really really intriguing very very
profound i think definitely has to be in
there what i'll do is i'll highlight it
and then once i go through the whole
paper you know once i've read it and
i've highlighted everything i need to
know i then come back to the paper and
copy it so i click copy text and i'll
paste it into the essay notes document
where as i said i'll have all of my
research information that i think is
very relevant so go in there and i'll
paste it um
the annoying thing is that it kind of
messes up the format so you want to
quickly just fix the format right here
make sure it's in a bullet point um
and there we are that's our first um you
know sort of information that we think
will be really really relevant for the
introduction what is really really
important as well is to make sure that
you um you remind yourself where you got
this information because once you have
the whole
you know essay notes completely done you
want to know where you got the
information from because when you come
back to referencing it and referencing
where you got this information from
you're going to end up forgetting unless
you have a method or a system to
remember where you got it from uh so
what i do is i put in brackets the
number so as i told you before i named
the first document or the first paper by
number so the first one i named number
one so because i got this information
from that paper i'm going to come back
here and put brackets one
so now now i know straight away that
this first bullet point came from from
that paper called number one so when i
when i need to reference it later on i
can just come back to the paper and
you know go back to name the paper and
know exactly where i got the information
from so you want to do this for the
introduction the main body and
conclusion as well um to get more of an
idea of what you want to write about
once this is all done once this is all
written up then you start reading
primary papers so when you feel like you
have a good idea of you know what the
topic is about
of what you want to write you want to
come back over here and um go back to
where we started from but instead of
clicking a review you want to remove the
review and
look for primary pages itself
you can you can either click clinical
trial here or you can go through the
papers just normally and look for
whatever looks like a primary paper so
for the purposes right now we're going
to click clinical trial and we're gonna
start off by um reading the titles and
again looking for something that stands
out looking for something that we think
will be relevant for our study okay so
as i said right now i want to find
trials i want to find you know novel
things in the field you know whenever
you write a paper you want to have you
know the most up-to-date information so
sometimes it is relevant to go back
maybe 50 years to get the information
about you know how let's say
prostatectomy started for erectile
dysfunction so you want to start off by
you know having a few old papers which
maybe were the first papers ever written
on this topic then you want to move on
to more recent topics
and then in the main body at least you
want to start
talking about
the most latest information or the novel
clinical trials which we have right here
so again what i want to do is find the
trial this trial number one sounds quite
relevant so i'm going to click on it and
what i want to do is to do the exact
same thing and save it as a pdf copy
go through the trial
take all the relevant information
highlight it and then copy into the main
body or the introduction and that's the
first step in getting what we want so
there are essentially two ways to find
the most up-to-date papers the first is
what i just mentioned
so you know going on to pubmed and
searching for clinical trials or looking
through um the homepage and finding the
most relevant information which you
think will be the primary papers
the second way of doing it is to
get these these kind of primary papers
from the actual review papers so if we
go back to the paper that i first
started off with so over here is the
review paper that we first started off
with and what you can kind of do is kind
of cheat and steal the papers that they
reference themselves so let's say i um
i was reading this paper here and it
became very obvious that you know this
paragraph over here over here was
talking about a primary paper let's say
that they were referencing like a
clinical trial that you know that they
think is very important to know about
what i want to do is then go to where
they referenced it themselves
so i'll click on the number right here
so number 11 and that should take you to
their references
and right here it gives you the title of
that primary paper that they're talking
about
so it's a nice little kind of little way
to um to cheat and to go straight to the
private paper they're talking about
as i said because it is a review article
they should normally reference quite a
few um primary papers which makes it a
lot easier for you because they kind of
do the hard work for you they
review papers kind of do all of the
research for you and you can go and
steal their clinical trials steal the
primary papers they talked about and
then go
copy the title
um and head back to pubmed
open up a new pubmed screen
and then copy that copy the title that
they have
and that should take you straight away
to the primary paper again download it
as a pdf have a read of it and see
whether or not it's relevant to add to
your essay
so let's say that all of the research is
done
normally this takes me quite a few hours
to get my essay notes completely
you know filled up to a level where i
think that i'm ready to write the paper
but let's say that um it's all done now
i'm going to take you guys through to my
essay notes that i've already done i
started this a bit earlier on so i
already do have like quite a bit of
essay notes already so i want to open up
my essay notes just now
okay so here we are um so what i want to
do straight away is open up my essay
notes
in combination with my essay itself this
makes it very easy to have a look at um
what i've written in my essay notes and
to rephrase this and you know write it
in a way that makes sense into my
introduction um so it allows me to do
two things at the same time it is quite
useful to have a secondary monitor so as
you can see over there i normally work
with my laptop straight onto my monitor
so i have my essay notes up on my screen
and then on my laptop i have my essay
itself
but for the purposes this video and also
like if i'm in the library or if i'm
somewhere without my screen this is
exactly what i do so what i want to do
is to start writing the introduction
itself um so the thing is you want to
make sure that you don't place your eyes
you know plagiarism is a huge university
so what you want to do is have a read of
your essay notes and as you're reading
your essay notes you want to rephrase it
and make it into your own words so it's
not um it's not taking off the copyright
so i'm just going to do that right here
so i'm going to write prostate cancer
is
um
one of the most common
malignancies
uh in males and is being diagnosed
uh more than ever before okay so this is
just as a quick example
okay so let's say i've gone through um
and i've done this for the whole
introduction um let's just say that you
know the introduction is completely
written
what you want to do is as you're writing
this introduction you want to also start
to um to reference um it's a lot easier
to reference as you go along um because
you know you you know exactly where
you're getting the papers from um it
saves a lot of time rather than coming
back to the end and you know doing all
your references
at once so i want to show you guys now
exactly how i do my references what you
want to do before you start is to talk
to university and to make sure that you
have the right essays the right
referencing style that they use um so i
normally tend to use vancouver if they
don't specify a lot of the times in
university they will let you choose
whatever you want and i highly recommend
the vancouver system a lot of people use
the harvard system as well but the thing
was the thing with the harvard system is
that i just don't find it as clean
because the references are actually in
your
in your writing
whereas in the vancouver system you use
a number instead to reference and also
it kind of um it loads your word count
overall as well okay so in order to
reference what you want to do is to make
an account with
refworks there are loads of different
referencing softwares out there i just
prefer to use refworks since what i've
used my whole life so we're gonna go to
refworks
uh login to refworks as you can see
refworks.com
um make an account i'm just gonna log in
straight away to my account
and then once you're logged into the
website um you can see all um these are
all my references i've used in the past
you want to go back to your microsoft
word document and log into refworks on
the actual document you do have to kind
of install this as a plugin you want to
make sure you have refworks on your word
um i'm not gonna go through this right
now go into refworks and should have all
of the information on there about how to
do this okay so once you make an account
with refworks refworks essentially what
you want to do is to come into microsoft
word uh click the insert tab up here and
then click uh get add-ins then what you
want to do is to search for refworks
itself
then click add and this is going to add
a new panel on the side which is going
to be your citation manager which is
going to allow you to um to cite all of
the references that you want to do what
you want to do is then go back to pubmed
and for each paper you add and the each
paper you want to write and citate what
you want to do is to um to save it as a
citation so i'll show you how to do that
right now so let's say i really wanted
to use this i missed a review paper over
here what i'm going to do is click um
send to um so just to quickly show you
guys how i got here again in case you
forgot um
let's go back to the first page
so let's say yeah so let's say i really
wanted this paper i searched for it i
found it what you want to do is to click
on it straight away and then
go to send to
and then click citation manager
and then click create file what you want
to do is to make a new folder for all of
your citations all these citation files
and don't worry if it's making some
making much sense now it will make sense
eventually
so go back to your essay file that's the
folder we made earlier on you want to
make a new folder called citations
and then
save all of your citations here
so because we named the first paper
number one i'm gonna call this number
one as well what you want to do after
this is to go back to your refworks in
the actual website and what you wanted
to click off that is import so click
import in the bottom right over there as
i did you want to then uh choose the
file that you just saved so go back to
where we've saved so citations number
one
um
make sure that it's on to uh pubmed and
that's pubmed as well and then click
import what this is gonna do is it's
gonna download and import the reference
and reference it exactly as it should be
so you don't have to do anything after
that and then click view last imported
folder
and this right here is the citation that
we just um imported so as you can see
there's a title there's all of the
authors
the source as well and pretty much all
the information you need to know when
referencing um a paper what you want to
do now is to go back to your microsoft
word
and then find it
exactly where it should be
so it should just pop up right here at
the top as mine did over here and then
you want to go to where you want to add
the citation and then click quick cite
so as you can see um it's generating a
citation so it's added a number here for
you
of exactly where um what the citation is
and then down in the references below
it's added it uh to your reference list
um so you know so you kind of have to go
back and forth and do this for every
single paper you cite
but what you'll find like you cite
multiple sentences for the same paper
so now that i have this already um saved
as a citation let's say i wrote
something else in the next page so let's
say i wrote a different sentence just um
just over here
you can go straight back to this area
here click quick site and it'll cite
that sentence for you so once you've
saved one citation you can reuse it
constantly you don't have to keep going
back and forth but you do have to do
this for every new paper that you find
and yes it can be time consuming
in my dissertation in my final year in
biomedical science it took me hours to
get my citations right because i had
over 100 citations um once you get this
done for a 3000 word essay it shouldn't
be too bad and you should be able to do
it in in no time hopefully so that is
pretty much it guys i want to show you
guys to give you guys a feel about how i
like to do my essays so i'll take you
guys through how i do the research how i
then use the research to write the
information um itself onto my essay and
then finally how i um reference all of
this and complete the essay um so i
really hope this has been informative
for you guys i know it's a bit confusing
try it out for yourself you kind of have
to do it yourself to get an idea what
it's like um if you have any questions
at all please let me know down below and
i'll be happy to answer them for you
make sure you subscribe maybe make sure
you give this video a thumbs up if you
found it useful as well
good luck on your essay and i'll see you
guys in the next one
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