How Majoring in Political Science Improved My Writing Skills

Understand the power of reading and practice to write better.

I have always been interested in writing. I always like to have to-do lists and cross the things I have done. Casually, I keep a diary, write things that I wouldn’t have express anywhere else. Also, I keep a blank notebook around to write and note anything that comes to my mind.

However, writing for me was very causal, random. I had no goals, no intentions, no obligations to write better, more fluent. My writing had no structure. It was like all over the place about everything and anything.

It was not a passion that I wanted to do every single day. I was writing to focus, to be more aware of my mind, to remember things.

Over time, during my undergraduate studies my writing skills significantly improved. Not because that I intentionally worked for it. It improved because, I needed to write constantly to survive in my major, political science and international relations (IR). I needed to express the concepts I learned, synthesize ideas, and show critical thinking skills in the short amount of time given in the exams to get good grades.

Reading improves writing.

There exists a heavy emphasis on history and theory in Political Science&IR. Besides, it is closely related to other fields such as sociology, economics, history, law, philosophy. We read passages from nearly every thinker; both classical and modern ones.

Some of them being: Aristotle, Karl Marx, Gramsci, Max Weber, Adam Smith, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Descartes, Pierre Bourdieu, Freud, Hanna Arendt, Erich Fromm, Machiavelli, Plato, Hans Morgenthau, Kant, Waltz etc.

At Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, I had 4–5 political science classes in each term. Roughly every class had 2–3 articles assigned each week, making 100 pages at least. So each week I needed to read 400–500 pages of political science & IR material which was not like reading fiction.

Those texts were full of information and I needed to internalize ideas and remember them later. And the language of texts was pretty heavy as well. It was not easy to understand them in the first place.

So I was constantly reading. And constantly taking notes. As I read, I got better at understanding the structure of the articles, their main points, cause-and-effect relationships, given examples, etc. This became apparent in my writing as well. My writing became more structured, understandable, fluent. Everyone who read my articles, my professors, friends realized my improvement and had a better sense of what I wanted to say.

Reading and writing are essential parts of research.

Political science is a social science. It is about analyzing power relationships between countries, societies, people.

Like any science, there exists a heavy emphasis on research. For a couple of classes, I needed to write 15–20 page research papers. Those papers had a structure as follows: Introduction, literature review, theoretical framework, data, results of empirical tests, and conclusion.

The most exhausting part was the literature review. I needed to read tons of articles, the literature, about my topic to build up my thesis.

For example, for my Politics of Latin America class, my topic was Latin America’s underdevelopment.

I went over 50 articles to form the literature review. Then I divided my finding into five sections, each showing a reason for underdevelopment. Moreover, I formed my thesis after going through many topics and articles.

Combining different articles under clusters was very hard. And I needed to deeply understand, internalize and express in my own words.

Further on my research, I needed to link the theory I find suitable for testing my thesis and the data I put into empirical tests. I build up critical thinking skills both theoretical and practical through this exhausting process of conducting research.

Writing is a tool to remember.

I cannot forget the Theories of International Relations class I took. This class involved many abstract concepts I cannot make sense of. Also, our professor gave special importance to reading the cult, original texts by the founders of these theories. She assigned extremely heavy texts each week.

As being a very practical person, from the first class, I was sure that I will not be doing anything related to theory in the future. But, again, I needed to survive. I had to pass the class with good grades.

So after reading articles too many times in the first weeks, I started to distinguish what is important for each theory. After each article, I wrote what I understand and the supporting points, examples, I found relevant in my own words. I wrote 500 words summaries for each article to remind myself and internalize the deep theories.

Explaining what you read in your own words and writing it makes you remember it better. Furthermore, it speeds up your learning process.

Leave behind perfectionism and have a structure in mind to write.

One of the challenges I have overcome over my political science and writing challenge was perfectionism. I used to think I needed to have extensive information, I needed to read every single article to write about a non-fiction topic. But now I can only take part in an article and write upon it. I can combine it with other concepts.

I learned to decide the main points, supporting arguments and have the ability to form a thesis. And realized the fact that to write a literature review, you do not have to read the whole article. Rather you need to read the part that is relevant to your thesis.

I understand the context, look out patterns and synthesize them in my writing.

In sum, I read a lot and wrote a lot to survive in political science.

Honest to be told, writing for me was an obligation rather than following a passion. It was very exhausting to read so many articles but I am glad that I did it. I have a broader sense of the world now and my writing skills improved dramatically.

I can understand the context behind the world that surrounds us. I can easily form cause-and-effect relationships. I have a mind that can easily distinguish the structure and main parts of a text.

After spending hours looking at blank word documents to write an essay at the beginning of my Political Science & International Relations major, I realize how far I have come. And I am proud of myself.

So, to write better, you need to read and practice writing often. Over time your writing speed and quality will increase.