We’ve hit that point in our semester where if you don’t have an essay, exam or project due in the upcoming weeks (or even this week), you’re pretty lucky. With this being our second full semester of mostly online courses, the workload has felt never-ending. One thing I’m thankful for is that the longest paper I’ve had to write this semester (fingers crossed) has been five pages. Most professors have never asked me to write more than 10 pages for a paper, but with many of my peers having to write excruciatingly long papers for their undergraduate classes, I feel this requirement is too much to ask. 

This contradicted everything high school teachers drilled into my brain about college classes in general. Besides the idea that college would be an inescapable doom, I was taught about the so-called 40-page papers my teachers had to write in their college courses. Thinking about writing something that long is quite unheard of right now, and honestly, if I was assigned this, I would consider dropping the course. Yes, writing longer papers can prepare you for graduate school, but how many college students plan on going? According to the Postsecondary National Policy Institute, in 2015, a mere 12% of adults ages 25 and up had a graduate degree. 

Now, I’m not shaming those who go to graduate school; I myself still consider this option because it would be interesting to learn more about my area of study. However, going to graduate school is often considered a huge privilege, and even so, trying to frame these long papers to prepare students for education after four long years of undergraduate feels forceful. 

Professors must also remember that students are not only taking their classes. The average student is taking four to six classes each semester, and that doesn’t even include their social life, clubs and jobs. Forcing students to write an extensive paper they will probably forget about by the next semester isn’t doing anyone favors. Additionally, professors and teaching assistants (TAs) are the people who have to sit down and grade all these essays, which is something I doubt they have enough time for, whether they have help from TAs or not. Ultimately, assigning shorter papers would not only make the professor’s life easier, but it also provides students and TAs with less stress.

Writing papers isn’t something that all college students know how to do either, which is why many will purchase essays from online buyers, plagiarize other works or both. According to NPR’s interviews with college students, some students bought these essays to help them keep up with everything else going on in their lives. Whether or not you like these controversial homework help companies, I would blame universities for working their students so hard that they feel they’ve exceeded their options and thus have to buy a ghostwritten paper. 

At the end of the day, I think it’s time that professors really reflected on their page requirements for their students. If you wouldn’t like to write a paper that long, do you think your students would? Professors are individuals too, thus it’s counterproductive to assign such extensive work from your students and then dread the idea of grading it all. Professors, do yourselves a favor and rethink your lesson plans if your syllabus requires some kind of extensive paper. I promise it’ll help both you and your students.