If you want to write better essays, it’s helpful to understand the criteria teachers use to score them. Instead of solely focusing on the grade you are given, focus on how you are being graded and how you can improve, even if you are already getting a high grade.

Development of Your Thesis

A thesis is the essence of your paper—the claim you are making, the point you are trying to prove. All the other paragraphs in your essay will revolve around this one central idea. Your thesis statement consists of the one or two sentences of your introduction that explain what your position on the topic at hand is. Teachers will evaluate all your other paragraphs on how well they relate to or support this statement.

Strong Form

A good essay presents thoughts in a logical order. The format should be easy to follow. The introduction should flow naturally to the body paragraphs, and the conclusion should tie everything together. The best way to do this is to lay out the outline of your paper before you begin. After you finish your essay, review the form to see if thoughts progress naturally. Ensure your paragraphs and sentences are in a logical order, the transitions are smooth so that the paragraphs are coherently connected, and that your body paragraphs relate to the thesis statement.

Style

Just as your clothes express your personality, the style of your essay reveals your writing persona. You demonstrate your fluency by writing precise sentences that vary in form. A mature writer uses various types of sentences, idiomatic phrases, and demonstrates knowledge of genre-specific vocabulary, all the while ensuring the writing reflects your authentic voice.

Conventions

Conventions include spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and grammar. Having lots of mistakes suggests carelessness and diminishes the credibility of your arguments. Furthermore, because most essays are written on computers these days, there is a lower tolerance for spelling mistakes, which can easily be avoided with spell-checking tools such as Grammarly. Beyond spelling, Grammarly can also help to weed out other major grammatical errors. Follow up with a close reading of your entire paper.

Support and References

Finally, your teacher will examine your resources. Select information from reliable websites, articles, and books. Use quotes and paraphrases to support your ideas, but be sure to credit your sources correctly. Also, always remember that copying five consecutive words or more from any source constitutes plagiarism. If you are concerned about unintentionally quoting your sources, Grammarly Pro offers a plagiarism detector so you can always double-check your work.

The grades you get on your essays are important, but you can never improve your writing if they are the only things you consider. Focus on improving your essays’ overall structure—the thesis development, form, style, conventions, and support. Learning to master these five elements will cause your scores to soar!

Congrats, you’re officially a homeowner! It feels good, huh?

But no one warns you that the paperwork was the easy part. Now it’s just a fun mix of surprise expenses, questionable decisions, and figuring out how to make your money go further (but yay).

So I’m gonna jump in here and hopefully save you some financial headaches. Here are a few things I wish I’d known sooner:

Don’t overpay for car insurance

You're probably getting overcharged on car insurance by $450ish/year¹. Especially if you haven’t compared offers in the last 6 months.

For example: I cut my car insurance bill by ~$1,300 this year by switching carriers (same exact coverage too) and it took me all of 5 minutes.

Take a few minutes and pull up a comparison site (I used Coverage.com, Auto-Savings.com is fine too) and compare multiple offers from different companies in one go.

Worst case scenario: you stay with what you’ve got. Best case scenario: you save a few hundred dollars a year.

Here’s a link to a good comparison site: link.

Use your home equity

If you’re low on cash, you might want to look into a HELOC (home equity line of credit). It’s more/less a credit card, but you borrow against your home’s equity.

They usually have lower interest rates and more flexible terms that a typical loan would.

Here’s a calculator from Lendingtree where you can enter your home info and see how much money you could access: link.

Put your savings to work

I'm always shocked at the number of people still using garbage savings accounts that pay 0.5% (or less) a year. There are literally hundreds of banks that will pay you 8x that, usually 10x that rate.

Here's a bunch of options to compare: link.

Pause credit card interest payments until ~2027

High-interest credit cards can make it ridiculously hard to get ahead.

But, here’s a credit card that offers a 0% intro APR until nearly 2027 and no annual fee, which means more of your money actually goes toward paying down your balance.

It could be worth considering if you want to break that high-interest cycle. Check it out here.

Swap high interest for lower interest

Nothing is more expensive than high interest debt (particularly credit card debt).

Think about using a personal loan to swap your high-interest debt for lower-interest debt.

The basic idea: find a lower-interest personal loan and pay off your credit card with that loan money. Personal loan interest rates are typically far lower than credit card interest rates.

Here’s a free 3rd party service (Bankrate) where you can compare different personal loan options.

Do your own research, of course, but here’s a link to their site.

Get help reducing your debt

If you’ve got $10k+ in unsecured debt (think credit cards, medical bills, etc), you can ask a debt relief company to come in and negotiate it for you. You typically will save around 23% on average (after their fees).

Here’s a link to a savings calculator from National Debt Relief's website if you want to see how much you could save: link here.