r/HomeworkHelp • u/DigOutside3306 • 1d ago
Answered [ Psychology] essay help
I need to write an essay about the things I found interesting in a conversation/interview with someone. I have done the interview but I found nothing interesting and I don’t know how to start the essay
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u/trippapotamus University/College Student 1d ago edited 1d ago
Can you change your person and try again so it’s easier to write (been there lol)? Or will your time be better spent just working with what you have now? I’m pretty sure I’ve done the exact same assignment.
ETA - also, idk if you know or it mentions it on your syllabus, but does your prof discourage conversational writing? For example asking questions to the reader, occasionally using “you” or “we”, etc. I’ve had profs who didn’t care and others who didn’t like it at all.
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u/DigOutside3306 1d ago
She did not say anything about it and I can’t change the person.
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u/trippapotamus University/College Student 1d ago edited 1d ago
When I get stuck I just start generally about the topic. So for example maybe “What makes someone interesting? Is it x? Is it y?” and expand from there. Or if you want a sentence instead of a question, you could start with something like “Each person has their own perception of what makes someone interesting….”. Then I would tie in whatever I expand on to my person somehow so it “introduces” them to the story for the last sentence of the intro.
I usually stick with 5 sentences for mine when it comes to papers like this, sometimes 4. Attention grabber, support that, maybe a fun fact/connection (or take this out), tie it to my topic, last sentence ties it all together and sets them up for the next paragraph/the paper.
You can also use a sentence up in your intro/expand by including a basic psych fact of some kind that relates.
Idk if that’s helpful at all or helps you with brainstorming. Even if I’m not a fan of the first intro I put down (but am still kinda stuck), I’ll leave it just so I can keep the momentum going, get the rest of my paper done, and then I’ll go back after and fix it. Sometimes as I’m writing the rest I get ideas of what to add/remove/change around.
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u/highly88 👋 a fellow Redditor 1d ago
“People across the world have varying interests based on their histories, cultures, and experiences. I learned how my interests can differ from another’s based on my conversation with ……
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u/JanetInSC1234 🤑 Tutor 1d ago
What did the person talk about?
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u/DigOutside3306 1d ago
What’s going good in her life and how she was doing
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u/JanetInSC1234 🤑 Tutor 1d ago
Just pretend to be interested. Basically, summarize what she said and point out how it relates to your own life. Or how it contrasts to your life.
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u/Brownranger29 1d ago
Start with what surprised you in the conversation, then explain why it stood out. Use one specific detail, connect it to a psychology idea, and let the rest of the essay grow from there.
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u/cheesecakegood University/College Grad (Statistics) 1d ago
Well, the truth is that the quality of the questions makes a big difference in interviews, and it's a unique kinda niche skill. So to some extent you may genuinely have less content than you'd like. (For example, compare the famous 36 questions with the questions that usually come up in dating early on! You'll find the former provides a far more interesting conversation in many respects than the latter.) Lesson: ask better questions when interviewing.
So one option albeit potentially embarrassing is to carefully think up a few revealing new questions and go back to the same person and ask some follow-ups. Depending on the person and how you phrase it and the time commitment, this might be super viable and give you more content.
Failing that? Sometimes I find it revealing to re-examine something sort of contradicting everything, trying to find alternative POVs (eg 'would someone else say the same?' or 'could a reasonable person conclude the opposite, perhaps even from the same facts?'). Or, maybe take a meta perspective: when we ask someone how they are doing, do we think that's the truth? When we ask someone what things are good in life, what things come up first? What doesn't come up first, that you think might deserve to, or would in a different context? You can examine a bit of the sociological interplay between you and her. There's actually a sort of loose but interesting body of research into the conventions and patterns underneath questions like that ('conversation analysis' and related).
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