Most of the papers you will write for Harvard classes begin with an assignment sheet and some suggested topics. Read the assignment sheet carefully to make sure you understand what your professor's or TF's expectations are. Is he or she giving you a topic or merely suggesting some possibilities? Are you supposed to do outside research? What kind? How much? How long should the paper be? Are you supposed to summarize something you have read, to present someone else's argument, to compare two or more arguments, or come up with a thesis and an argument of your own? Are you expanding a topic that you only touched on in class, or are you trying to get a better grasp of course materials by working with them more carefully and expressing your own point of view?
If you ask yourself such questions while you are reading the assignment, you should be able to get a clear idea of the purposes and requirements of your paper. Professors and TFs try to anticipate questions, so often you can find the answers you need by reading an assignment carefully. For example, a government or moral reasoning assignment might read:What does Locke mean in his Second Treatise on Government when he talks about man existing in a state of nature? How does a state of nature become a state of war? What is tacit consent? Provide examples from Locke's text. How does Locke's belief that man is initially a blank slate affect his theories of government? Discuss these issues in a 5 - 7 page essay.
As you first read this assignment, it may seem to be merely an exercise for you to show that you have done the reading and understood Locke's points. However, the final question does require you to do some analysis. You are to summarize some of Locke's major concepts, providing examples to illustrate them more clearly, but you are also to consider what effects, if any, his belief in these concepts had on his theories of government, which, of course, you will have to describe. You have been given a topic, but the thesis is up to you. You will have to examine Locke's arguments and evaluate his theories. You will need to focus your argument on one or two major effects of his belief in "man's natural goodness." You may want to take issue with the question and argue that Locke doesn't believe that man initially is a blank slate, or at least that this term needs to be defined before you can say whether he believes in it or not. You should refer to Locke's text to support your argument, providing not only his words, but also explanations of how they corroborate what you are saying. The most important thing to remember is that you are not merely repeating what Locke said, but also giving you own analysis and your own point of view. In coming to that point of view, you may need to explain what Locke said, perhaps to relate his ideas to what others said in his own time, or to show what others said about his ideas.
Sometimes, a professor will ask you to write a paper on a topic of your choice, leaving you the task to figure out what sort of topic is relevant to the course. You will need to think about the material you have covered, the methods of analysis used by your professors and the authors you have read, and any questions or propositions the course maybe trying to address. When professors give this kind of assignment, they hope that you will expand the boundaries of the course and go beyond the material covered in class. They hope that you will follow your own interests, solve a problem that the course has presented, or relate the material of the course to other readings or disciplines.
Here again, however, you should be clear about the kinds of sources that the professor expects you to use in your paper. How long should the paper be? How much of the paper should be synthesis of other people's ideas? What kinds of topics or questions does the professor see as appropriate and manageable? What does the professor see as the goals of writing the paper? What will you learn from doing it?
If one of your history professor's goals is to make you understand the way people lived and thought in 18th century Paris, in addition to learning about events of the Revolution, then for a paper you might ask some questions about daily life, culture, or behavior. You could answer these questions by examining letters, diaries, newspapers, art or music of the time. If the course is concerned more specifically with politics, you may want to concentrate on government documents or the autobiographical writings of political figures. When you look at primary sources such as these, you give yourself a better chance to do some real analysis that if you read only secondary sources, where some other scholar already has interpreted the primary evidence.