high school campus visit, but with finals and papers coming up, this is where you need to be. Bustle your butt on over and start your essay research there. Do your research -- hopefully you won't need a step-by-step guide on how to do research? -- and get to work. Take out books if you need to; read journal articles; read peer-reviewed works; just make sure to go further than Wikipedia and Google. Trust me, your professor will know. 3. Start writing As the saying goes, starting is the hardeset. After you've done a sufficient amount of research, turn on your laptop and get to typing. Get off Facebook and Twitter, and turn your cell phone off. Any distractions at this stage might be enough to completely halt your progress and have you contemplating dropping that class. It might be difficult at first, but as the stress starts to fade away with each double-spaced page you churn out, you'll feel more confident. You don't need to do all the writing at once, so take some breaks. Just make sure your breaks don't entail having a grand old time at the Royal Oak three nights in a row. 4. Edit Most people ignore this phase. But do your professors and final marks some good, and reread your work -- doing so out loud can be especially helpful. You'll catch typos and spelling mistakes and you'll end up with a stellar mark. Okay, so don't quote me on the last part, but