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How fast can you write a five page paper that isn't terrible?

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Double spaced? If I know the topic well and have a general outline... 2 hours. Generally, I'd work at an hour a page single spaced.

I write ~600 word articles once a week for a newspaper, which is about 1 page single spaced, and I usually get through it in 40 - 60 minutes.
 
Thank god for engineering. I never had to write anything this long, excluding thesis of course.

This task would probably take me like 10 hours.
 
I've done it in 2-2.5 hours and got around a 90%. I was kinda lucky with that one but I had all the material at my disposal when I did it.
 
Just a regular paper? Two hours. Never received lower than an A on a paper either. I'm what you'd call a professional bullshiter.
 
Depends on the topic and requirements...how many sources does it need? primary sources? etc?

If it's just an opinion paper...probably an hour and a bit.
 
3 hours.

My greatest feat is me writing a 10-15 page report on Toyota and GM. I was partying in Montreal, got to hotel at midnight, started my research then and there, finished the report right on time (8am), emailed the professor and left to see Formula One. Got an A-. Aww yeah!
 
I was always a weird sort of "responsible" procrastinator where I had to wait as long as I could while still having a reasonable amount of time to finish it without pulling an all-nighter. I didn't have the motivation to start early but I was also terrified of rushing at the very last minute.

I usually started hashing out a paper like this two or three days before it was due and then wrote the bulk of it the day before. I always wrote very fitfully--a paragraph, get up and think--so it would still probably take me at least four or five hours to just bang a five or six page paper out in one go.

The one time I finished a paper well ahead of time, I ended up editing it to death and getting one of my worst grades on a paper.
 
Depends on the topic.

1) I like the subject matter and know my stuff: 2 hours or less

2) I'm indifferent to the subject matter but know my stuff: 3-4 hours

3) I dislike the matter but can write an opposing opinion: 2-3 hours

Lowest grade I ever got on a paper was a B+, and that was on a subject I hated as well as the material.
 
10 hours.

5 if I really know my shit.

edit: But I guess this kinda depends on what we mean by "not terrible"; I'm meaning B+ area, personally.
 
I always procrastinated in school. College was just a step above that. I typed a 19 pg (longest) research paper (I had the research done about two days earlier) in about 7 hours. I got an A on it too! I had a lot of practice from 15pg papers though. History classes are like that.

Fastest 5pg paper would be somewhere around 1.5-2hours with a lot of web surfing in between.
 
Probably about 2 and a half hours. I'll never understand how it can take some people days to write a paper that short. Makes me wonder how long it took them to write the 20-30 page papers required by the end of college.
 
I was a good student while being a terrible one in terms of work habits. This would be an evening.. no clue on how many hours specifically. I more or less always received 90%+ on all papers at every level.
 
Including research? Or the actual writing(typing) part?

5 pages would have taken me 2 hours in my prime if I already had all my researched material laid out in my head

I did get an A on a 17 page paper I wrote in 5 hours once, that was hell
 
Whenever I had to write a paper in college, I drove my wife crazy. She prepares ahead of time for everything and spends a lot of time to complete her assignments so that they're perfect. I, on the other hand, always put off every paper until the night before or the morning of (if it was an afternoon/evening class). I would stress out, rush through it in a panic, and always get an A or a B. She couldn't argue with the results, but she hated dealing with me when I was in my paper panic.
 
And I actually think five pages is a shit length. Anything you can say in five pages you can say in three or two and a half; and anything you need five pages for, always turns into seven or eight if you're thorough and in "this is an A+" mode.

At least that was consistently my experience.
 
Well, I wrote 2 4 page papers in 3 hours in order to get my English Composition credits waived.

5 pages seems pretty easy.
 
Five pages?

In college, I'd knock those out in ~45 minutes. 5 pages is nothing. (Though I would hand in 2-3 page papers from time to time as well. Usually the profs didn't care as long as the argument was supported and consistent.) I saved a ton of time by not revising. Usually got B's for my effort.
 
Depends on how much I know about the subject, how interesting the subject is to me, and my mood at the time.

It can take me anywhere from 5 hours to 2 days.
 
2-3 hours for the bulk of it. Figuring out how I was going to start and finish the paper usually took me forever, though.
 
Yaceka said:
Depends on how much I know about the subject, how interesting the subject is to me, and my mood at the time.

It can take me anywhere from 5 hours to 2 days.
Click to expand...

Time sounds about right for me, but there's really not enough info in the question. If it's a topic that's interesting to me and I know a lot about it, I could write a good paper relatively quickly and probably enjoy doing it. Or an interesting topic that I don't know a lot about, it would take a while because I'd end up reading and researching more than writing.

For a topic that I don't know anything about, or don't really like, it would definitely take me a lot longer than a lot of people are saying. Definitely a day or two.
 
If it's just an essay probably two hours. If it needs citations/research another couple hours. At least, that's how it was by the end of college. It's been a while so I'm probably rusty.
 
shadyspace said:
Under three hours for me if I'm rushing.
Click to expand...

Depends on the subject. If it's something I know about and am passionate about, hour and a half. If it's something I don't care about or I have to look up references, it can take some time.

I wrote my college thesis, an 80 page paper, in a week. I did it on the history and short term future of video games and it's influence on mass media. My fingers just wouldn't stop typing.
 
..slightly off topic of this discussion but I once had a job interview that required a typing test.

They were just using MS Word and wanted me to type this 2 paragraph statement from a piece of paper as many times as I could in like 10 mins. They sat and watched me for like 1 min, and I finished off the 2 paragraphs and they walked away.. I highlighted the paragraphs real quick, ctrl-c/ctrl-v multiple times and just sat back and waited.

I got the job... but the people there were all 50yr old ladies and then me at 22yrs old. Quit after the first paycheck.
 
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