How to write a good research paper the fast and easy way using an iPhone 5 (optional) The best way to approach a major research paper is to break it down into days and pieces. This way every time you sit down to work on it you've already expected that you will complete that stage in that allotted time. Setting achievable goals like this will keep the research paper from overwhelming you and keep you on track to finishing.

Day 1 Brainstorming. This is when you use the Internet and all available class materials to get a general idea of the topic or an angle on an existing topic. It is totally acceptable to use Google Wikipedia or anything else to start getting an idea in mind. It will give you an overview and reduce uncertainty and anxiety.

Day 2 The Library You plan on a day or in the afternoon or you will spend as much time needed in the library to get the required number of sources for your paper. You already have a good rough idea of your topic so now you can start typing in keywords at your university library database like J store. Find the section or sections of the library containing the books which will be most relevant and start grabbing your sources. You can take a big backpack to the library if you want to check these books out, which is what I do. It is not unusual to leave the library with 10 to 15 books in your backpack when writing a research paper.

Day 3 Taking notes from sources This is the day where you will find a nice comfortable relaxing place sit down with your sources and using either your iPhone or regular no carts start to take notes and keep track of the locations of your sources for when you do your footnotes and bibliography. Today's goal is simply to find outstanding and noteworthy information and be able to access it for day 4 when we make our outline. While taking notes you're going to want to think speed, valuable information, efficiency, and let the outline write itself in your mind as you are taking note cards. Send your notes as an email to yourself, then open the notes later and save them to your computer. Then you will be able to just copy and paste for your outline after some rewording of course.

Day 4 The outline This is an easy day. What you're going to do now is take all of your notes and form them into a logical rationale and interesting progression in which you will tell your story and prove your thesis statement. Just think of today as connecting the dots in a way that is informative and enlightening. Or you can think of it as storyboarding or mind mapping.

Day 5 Starting the research paper Today you will take your outline and you will plug in the segments of your outline into your research paper to start creating the skeleton of your research paper, the bone structure or the internals. The meat and potatoes if you will. You can copy and paste directly from your outline, but it's always best to reword. This can be easily accomplished by using your iPhone and just rewording as you read your outline off the screen into a new note you create in your iPhone. Once you plug in your entire outline into your research paper you're going to see that there's quite a bit of blank space yet to be filled. But now you have a large part of your research paper completed, and now you can start to introduce your own ideas, elaborate on your sources, Demonstrate your creativity and reasoning abilities, and for lack of better words fill in the blank space and Get ever closer to the minimum word or page requirement for your research paper.

Day 6 Finalizing the paper Today you will take what should be a research paper that is about 70 to 75% complete at this point and you will look for any additional info from your sources, the web, etc that will add to and tie everything together. This is your opportunity to add any new points or observations realizations and ultimately finish the paper.

Day 7 Final draft / citations and footnotes / bibliography This day is more administrative than anything. Today you will check for grammar punctuation spelling, artistic flow of your paper, ensure that all footnotes and citations are in order, and then finally complete your bibliography.

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