carmun-ifesto
1. Working alone sucks.
People in business don't work alone. Writers in Hollywood don't either. Ever noticed how many Nobel Prizes are shared by more than one person? Exactly, they're not working alone (and they're friggin' geniuses!) So why should you, the overwhelmed, undernourished student have to create a 7 page masterpiece or study for a final alone? Right. You shouldn't! (Hey, alert the parents! You already learned one thing in college.)
2. Reinventing the wheel is a waste of time.
Sure, we know that you've got a one-of-a-kind, quirky-but-oddly-brilliant take on whatever it is your studying. And yet still, someone, somewhere has walked at least part of this path before you. How great would it be to find out what they read and what they thought about what they read? What else should you read? How else might you think about the problem? What have you missed? The way we see it, why spend energy crafting that wheel when you can spend your time creating a totally unique destination.
3. Asking for help is a sign of intelligence.
Sometimes it feels like everyone in class has a handle on the assignment and a perfectly formed idea of their paper... everyone but you. Guess what? That's what everyone in class is thinking. (Except that guy with the HUGE head in the front row. He really does get it.) Except everyone is just too afraid to turn to the next person and say, "Uh, help?" Well, you know what they say, the first step is admitting you can't go it alone. And you can't. Know why? Because no one can. We say raise your hand and ask for help. Everyone might not be in the same boat, but they're in their own boats and they're taking on their own water. Who knows, maybe you can even toss a life vest.
4. You can do it by hand. But why?
Once upon a time people actually had to put their index finger into a round hole by the number they wanted to dial and turn it. Not all that long ago people actually got up from the couch to change the channel on the TV. How crazy is that?? About as crazy as doing your own bibliography and footnotes by hand, that's how crazy. If you could do that automatically, with a click of a key, you could save your fingers for more productive pursuits. As far as we know there's no automatic way to open a Diet Coke.
5. There is never enough time. Never.
We get it. Your problem isn't that you wait until the last minute, it's that 4 years of college is actually nothing more than 1,555,200 last minutes. Efficiency is the coin of the realm. Whatever helps you do it smarter and better but most of all, faster, is always the right answer.
6. The most beautiful word in the English language? Shortcut.
If you ask the librarian to help you find some books, that's a shortcut. Sort of. Ask a friend who wrote a paper on the American Revolution to tell you what to read for your Thomas Paine project, that's a shortcut, right? If you could feed your 7 page paper into a machine that formatted it perfectly what would that be? Shortcut. This is what you do to get by. Or it was, before you met us. You want shortcuts? We've got shortcuts. Don't you love saying the word? Shortcut. Shortcut. Shortcut.
7. You're not the only one who waited.
Except for the big-headed guy (see point #3), everyone is running on vapors near the deadline. The next best thing to reaching out for help (point #3, again) is giving it. Especially if you don't really have to do anything annoying like going out of your way the least tiny bit. Imagine that just by writing your paper and listing your sources or getting your bibliography done automatically you could be helping someone else who is having a last-minute moment (see point #5).
8. Two minds are better than one. 10 minds? You do the math.
Actually, scratch that. Ask if someone else has already done that math. See how much better this is than working on your own? (point #1, natch.) There's a world of people out there who have climbed this mountain and have left really tasty bread crumbs for you to follow. And if they haven't a quick shout out through our pipeline gets you more bread crumbs than you can eat in one sitting. Yum.
9. Start strong. End strong.
The bun, as they say, is as important as what goes in between it. Not that the filling isn't important, of course, but if you can get a good running start ("Where do I look first?" "What should I avoid?") and finish with a spiffy polish (Bibliography, check. Footnotes, check.) well, we think the rest is a piece of cake. Made of other delicious bread crumbs (point #8).
10. You always need 10 points to make a wicked manifesto.
