How do people finish college-length essays? I've been deleting and rearranging sentences almost as often as I've actually been adding to this stupid thing. I think it's going to be perpetually stuck around 2 pages.
It's easy enough to produce somewhat bland but quite acceptable essays of any length with a fairly simple method my English teacher taught me back in high school. Break your argument into distinct sentences. Make an introductory paragraph from these sentences. Follow this up with a paragraph based on each of the sentences. If more length is needed, use each sentence in each of these paragraphs into another paragraph, rewording as necessary to ensure that repetitiveness is minimized and you're not just saying the exact same thing over and over again. Follow with a conclusion.
Generally, college essays are more about presenting your argument strongly and within the prescribed parameters than it is about personal style, so blandness is not a bad thing. By using this method, you have complete control of the final length of the paper regardless of the amount of material you have to work with, and can thus focus your entire effort on whatever you are supposed to be arguing. This is the sort of shortcut most instructors approve of unless you're in a creative writing class.
In addition to shaping the length of your paper, breaking the argument into distinct talking points helps to clarify your thoughts and shore up logical inconsistencies. This makes the overall paper stronger, and your argument is much better able to withstand criticism, which is a major goal of college level writing classes.
Stating these talking points in the opening paragraph demonstrates the scope of your argument, ensures that you won't go on any tangents, and serves as an organization aid to the reader. This makes your paper much nicer to read, while making it incredibly easy to keep track of what you are talking about. This will have a distinct positive effect on your grade, which filler will not do.
Turning your talking points into paragraphs of their own keeps your arguments from crashing into each other. This allows you to deal with the pros and cons of each of your logical approaches individually, without confusing yourself or the reader.
The ability to expand nigh-infinitely on any particular argument is a godsend when you're trying to make a point. Meanwhile, the lack of blatant filler will be a stark contrast to your peers that use tricks such as excessive quoting, constant use of full names and titles of any person mentioned, or formatting tricks such as margin shaving or incremental font adjustments to trick your instructor into believing that their paper is longer than it is. Such tricks seldom work, and not using them will generate a positive reaction. That said, you should still vary your word choices throughout, and ensure that you aren't simply saying the exact same thing with different words, as that stands out greatly.
A good conclusion puts your arguments in an easily digestible form, while serving as a capstone to what you are trying to say.
This post was written using the very method I described.
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