Herewith some general guidelines for my clarification and, dare I hope, your edification.
What are the requirements for the Final Draft of the term paper?
The final draft should be at least 12 pages but no more than 15, not including a title page, abstract, the bibliography, etc. I suspect most of you will have to do some careful editing to get the paper in under the 15 page upper limit.
Accordingly, let us further stipulate that the paper should allow at least one-inch margins and no less than 1.5 line spacing in a reasonable font--times, say, 12pt, or perhaps helvetica 11pt.
Footnotes are permitted, but bibliographic entries must appear at the end of the paper. Again, the bibliography (or, list of sources) does not count for meeting the 12 page minimum or against meeting the 15 page maximum.
When is the Final Draft due?
According to our calendar, the Term Paper Final Draft is due in class Tuesday, May 12, after your presentations. Remember that presentations begin at 8:00am and end at 10:30am.
What is the Final Draft worth?
As per the syllabus, the Final Draft is worth 100 points. The notes you wrote during our rough draft meeting constitute a kind of checklist I will be using in evaluating the Final Draft.
Have you anything encouraging to add?
Well, yes, as it happens. I was once very much in your shoes, scrambling to complete a term paper after putting it off all semester and feeling that I had absolutely no argument to make or insight to offer. Writing a term paper is always, inevitably, a struggle. No wonder so many resort to LLM's! Yet it is also where you learn the most--and not just about the particular topic you've chosen to engage. For that reason, perhaps, it always felt like some kind of herculean task to me, and I always felt like a fraud handing in my work.
Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones who is able to skip all the inner drama and turmoil. Or maybe not. Either way, I've compiled some resources to help you think about writing (or, really, think about thinking.) Hopefully it can help. Writing Philosophy