S.-ING. FUDGING. Padding. You know what I'm talking about-- how to fill up ten to fifteen pages on a topic you know nothing about. Yeah, that’s right. Bullshit. Now, let it be clearly understood that there is an art to b.s.-ing your way through a paper. You can b.s. the paper, but you can’t b.s. the b.s. Since most of the university community are presently up to their unmentionables in papers, | thought now would be the appropriate time to present some do's and don’t’s on b.s.-ing those essays and term papers. While the mood of this article is somewhat lighthearted, the advice herein is both completely serious, and totally valid. Following this advice will raise your marks substantially, assuming you don’t do something else completely stupid that | didn’t discuss here.

PART |:BABBLING ON

Let’s face it. You'll get lots of assignments to write 3000 words ona topic on which there is only 1000 words worth of stuff to say. So write your 1000 words. Then what? First of all, DO NOT, under any circumstances, repeat what you've already said three times more and hand it in. It’s time to pad the essay, and it’s time to call upon all your reserves of finesse and subtlety. There are three good techniques for filling out a paper to the required length. Filler #1) JARGON AND DEFINITION. Clarify, explain, and clarify some more. This is a great way to fill space, and it’s an intelligent one as well. No well- written paper should be an inscrutable fog of jargon. (Civil service documents are not well- written papers.) If you were taught special terms or phrases in the course, though, you should be able to toss them around in your writing on the course topic. So, you start talking about the widgetry of sixteenth-century Bavarian literature. Groovy. Define it. Distinguish it from wuzzlery. Explain the background of the term ‘widgetry’. Whatever. Even if you didn’t get much in the way of specialized jargon in your course, fear not! Actually, it’s even better that way. (If you were taught the jargon n class, your prof has his or her own idea of what the term means.) What you do now is get REALLY intense about defining the terms you use. It doesn’t matter if they're quite ordinary words that a child of two knows. You're producing something original as the synapses in your brain collide, and vomiting it out into this essay. Therefore, you should clarify everything you say. Besides, you can fill a complete, double-spaced page defining what you mean by education in your particular context!

Filler #2) WRITE LIKE PETER GZOWSKI TALKS. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the host of CBC Radio's Morningside program, Mr. Gzowski is in the habit of doing very long commentaries full of qualifiers and interjections. It runs something like this: “This morning, scant moments after

GETTING YOUR DEGNEE IN BS

[HE FINE ART OF THE COMPOSITIONAL SNOWIOB tess casio

the breaking of what | like to call--although many will disagree with me on this, some circles anyway, moot point--the dawning of a new day, | and my, if | may say, life partner or significant other, not quite arose but more laid still for the most part unconscious from our warm, but yet not entirely comfortable slumber into a partially somnambulist state.” (Translation: My wife and | got up early this morning.) Be VERY careful if you're trying this method. You can get yourself so tangled up in subordinate clauses and misplaced modifiers that you won't know where you are going; but qualifying things doubles as a filler and an

attempt to be excruciatingly accurate-- and what's wrong with being accurate? So don’t just say “The boys went to the store.” Say “The majority of the boys who live on the east side of the old line road went on foot to the catalogue outlet of Sears Canada.” Just make sure the sentence makes sense. If you can’t say it aloud, don’t write it.

Filler #3) SIDE RESEARCH. It can be appropriate to fill out your information that is directly related on the topic at hand with some extra stuff. This extra stuff MUST clearly relate to the topic of your essay. This technique is good for throwing in some technical

CR:

| x.press march eighth 1994 page 10 |

ils

<q BROT diryis

1 229°

information or some contrasting opinions. F'rinstance, if you’re writing about the artistic impact of the painting in the Sistine Chapel, it could work well if you smoothly worked in a section of technical information on how Michelangelo prepared his frescoes, and how he kept the paint from dripping off the ceiling into his eyes. Remember, they key word here is “smoothly”. It shouldn’t look like an encyclopedia reference on a completely different topic zinged in from a space missior and landed in the middle of your paper. In the example above, you might work it in by suggesting that besides being a darn impressive looking painting, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel also introduced important technique: that other artists have found useful. (Maybe | don’t know. | don’t study fine arts, but you get the idea.)

Contrasting opinions can be good, too- when used carefully. F’rinstance, if the pro wants you to read and do a book review, bu not spend time researching all sorts of dens: academic opinions, that’s groovy. You can d it that way. You canalso slip in the info that th staff reviewer of the Daily Hornblower think that this book sucks donkeys. (Naturally yo would phrase that in the most polite an intellectual manner possible.)

PART 2: THE HOME STRETCH

Ok. So those are some of the best ways filling out a paper. Remember, be smoot about it. Subtlety is your watch word! | doesn't matter if you don't really have anythin to say. You're in university, and you're suppose to be using your brain. It’s just as important t use your brain to be devious as it is to learn th course material.

So now that you've padded out the pap: with some not necessarily vital, yet completely extraneous material, how do y« make sure you don’t completely blow it? mater how clever your bullshitting, you wor get through if you commit one or more ' these major, tacky boo-boos. If you do the things, the person marking your paper will so disgusted, they won't give your text a fi reading. Therefore, memorize this list of

WAYS TO MAKE YOURSELF LOO LIKE A COMPLETE IDIOT IN : WORDS OR LESS

1) Get the name and number of the cour wrong on the title page of the essay. Actual you could even get away with screwing up t number of the course, but if you write thatt paper you're handing in to your English pr’ on the topic he assigned, is for Anthropolc 391, all your credibility is blown. Misspell the prof’s name doesn't help, either.

2) Screw around with the margins on /° word processor in an obvious fashion. Mov! your margins and the line spacers around ! been a refuge of the desperate for as long students have been typing papers. Every“ knows abutit, and everybody has been red‘ to doing it at one time or another, But th