Lil Johnny’s Struggles

are Real
By Mina Alsaigh
 Chapter 1
Lil Johnny
Lil Johnny is just an average college
student. But sadly he is on the verge of
failing out of the Art Institute of
Philadelphia. Writing class is bringing his
GPA lower than he could ever imagine. His
final project is to write a research paper
and present his findings to the class. This
is a challenge for Lil Johnny because he
struggles when it comes to writing research
papers. He does not know how to properly
write one.
Unfortunately, if this research paper
is not golden, Lil Johnny could fail
out of college and never become the
famous artist he imagined to be.
After doing a little research he learns
that if he properly writes a research
paper, he can save his GPA to stay
in school and become a more
rounded individual with a strong
academic background.
 Chapter 2
Picking a Topic
His first struggle is picking a topic. He can
never make up his mind to what topic is the
best to do his research on. Making this kind
of commitment gives him anxiety. So, Lil
Johnny decided to look up some subjects to
write about. Finding a topic that was
interesting to the reader and himself was the
first priority. Since Lil Johnny was an artist,
he decided to write about art. He narrowed it
down to doing his research about a painting.
His next step is to find a specific
question about paintings to answer
through his research paper. Since
Johnny’s favorite artist is Edvard
Munch, he wanted to find out the
meaning behind his famous
painting “The Scream”. Lil Johnny
was feeling less anxious and more
excited about his final project.
 Chapter 3
Conducting Research

Lil Johnny faced another wall. He did not know

how to conduct good research. He thought finding
sources was as easy as typing his question into
Google. Lil Johnny did not know which source he
could trust. Stress began to control Lil Johnny
again and he was about to quit, but he decided to
go look for help instead. So the next day, Lil
Johnny walked into the writing center at his
school for the first time in three years of attending
the Art Institute of Philadelphia. The Writing
Center helped him to determine which sources
are the most suitable for his research paper.
For each source that he found he must
follow three steps to determine if it was
useful or not. The first step was to find
if the author or website is credible. The
next step is to make sure the
information is from an author that is
not biased. The last step of finding a
reliable source is to find a source that
cannot be edited by anyone using the
internet. The sources are the bases of
the research paper and without a
strong base the whole research paper
can fall apart.
 Chapter 4
The Thesis
It was finally time for Lil Johnny to start typing his essay. At
this moment he wanted to kill someone because he was
already stuck at creating the thesis. Lil Johnny has no idea
what his thesis should be. But there is no need to panic
because the thesis is the main statement of the essay and
should be written after the rest of the essay has be
completed. Writing the thesis this early can limit Lil
Johnny’s new ideas that pop in his head while writing. Since
the essay has no structure yet, the thesis is extremely
challenging to write. So, Lil Johnny decided to keep his
thesis blank until he has written the essay and created the
main points.
 Chapter 5
The Outline
Lil Johnny is still freaking out because he
still does not know how to start his
essay. So instead of quitting he decided
to look for help again. He searched
online for methods to start an essay and
came upon creating an outline or
proposal. Lil Johnny was frustrated
because this meant more writing to do,
but since he could not think of any other
way to start the paper he decided to give
it a try.
He will have an easy time writing the outline
is because he has already completed the
“research” part of the project. The reason Lil
Johnny needs to begin with an outline is to
organize his thoughts in a proper way to
make writing the essay in a structured
manner that makes it easy for the reader to
follow. The outline will also help Lil Johnny
determine if more research about a certain
branch of a topic needs to be researched.
When Lil Johnny was writing his outline he
felt more confident in his soon to be “Golden
Essay”.
 Chapter 6
Citation

Writing the actual essay was a breeze for

Johnny. With all of the tips and writing tools
available, Lil Johnny did not struggle as
much as he thought he would. When he was
finished he looked at the requirements and
saw that he must cite all of the information
he used so he would not be in trouble for
plagiarism. Lil Johnny was so lazy and did
not feel like citing all of his sources properly.
But if he does not give credit he could be
expelled from the school for plagiarism.
So Lil Johnny visited the writing center
again. They helped him to learn how to
cite the sources as well as paraphrase and
quote from his sources. The writing center
helped him to understand that
summarizing is not changing the wording
of the source but to say it in his own words
of how he understood the content. After
the proper citation has been completed, Lil
Johnny’s essay became more efficient.
 Chapter 7
Revision

Lil Johnny was ready to

turn in his paper, but with
one quick glance he saw a
typo. He remembered that
his paper has not been
revised. The essay was not
at its full potential.
Looking over the essay for typos and
other grammatical errors could be the
difference between passing or failing for
Lil Johnny. He must reread his essay
several times to spot out all of the
mistakes. Having a someone else look it
over is a good way of having fresh eyes
look for the errors. Lil Johnny’s friend,
Big Mike, also needed someone to
revise his paper so they peer reviewed
each others papers.
 Chapter 8
“The Fluff”

Big Mike noticed that Lil Johnny’s

paper was too short to fulfill the
requirements. Big Mike suggested
that Lil Johnny just “fill in” space by
adding unnecessary words. At first Lil
Johnny thought this would be the
easiest way to get the grade he
needed, but after a lot of thought and
research he decided that the quality of
his golden paper will decrease with all
of the fluff words.
He would not add more words to the paper if it
contained the same about of information. He
decided to email his professor to ask her if it
would be acceptable to submit his paper the
way it is or if he should do more research. Lil
Johnny’s professor emailed him back thanking
him for not trying to write unnecessary words to
meet the requirement so he gave him a choice:
if Lil Johnny thought his paper was the best it
can be then he can hand it in as it is, but if Lil
Johnny feel like he can say more to support his
essay then more research might be the better
alternative. Lil Johnny decided that he could
brach out a little more and find more details to
write about.
 Chapter 9
Organization

The due date was getting closer, but Lil

Johnny was on track. Big Mike and Lil
Johnny decided to peer review again and
Big Mike told Lil Johnny that while
reading he was confused about how
everything went together. Lil Johnny had
some rearranging to do. It was a lot of
information to sort through but the outline
helped to place the information order that
makes it easy to follow for the reader.
 Chapter 10
The Golden Paper

After Lil Johnny overcame all of his writing

struggles, he learned how to efficiently write a
research paper. The golden paper turned out to
be an A that raised his GPA and helped him to
continue his career path to becoming a famous
artist. This research paper has been a learning
experience for Lil Johnny. As a student he
learned that he must overcome the struggles to
reach his goal. The moral of the story is to
remember that writing sucks, a lot, but with the
correct guidelines and writing tools writing can
suck less.
 Picture’s References

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Lil Johnny. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Report card. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Lil Johnny picking a topic. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Golden tree. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Google. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Angry Lil Johnny. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). The outline. Sketch.

 Picture’s References
Alsiagh, M. (2015). Mr. Teacher. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Confused Big Mike. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Essay corrections. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Rough draft. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). The writing center. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Big Mike. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). The golden essay. Sketch.

Alsiagh, M. (2015). Revised report card. Sketch.

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