The Ultimate Guide to Ace Your SHARP

By Mia Hanuska

The dreaded season for all sophomores has begun: SHARP. It’s built up for the entire first semester, but with guidance, it’s not too difficult. My qualifications for this guide? My SHARP was 30 pages—and got a high A in both classes. I wrote mine about photography for the technological advancement prompt (which I find to be the easiest if you are looking to do the least amount of work), and I’ll provide examples of my work throughout for clarity. 

**This guide is based on my own experiences in writing the SHARP, and should not be taken as fact. I am not liable if you follow this and get a bad grade.**

Part I: Research

The research stage is the most important part of your SHARP, after all, it is a research paper. Spend your first packet of notes doing general research: deciding what topic you want, the timeline of it, and just trying to get as much information as you can. Don’t slack on these notes—they are the basis of your argument.

After you finish your first packet of notes, try to identify three to four main subtopics within your topic. These will be your divisions of proof (DOPs) in your essay. You’ll also want to choose what side of the prompt you’ll be arguing, depending on your findings. For your second packet of notes, focus on fleshing out these DOPs. I’d recommend having at least a page of notes per DOP but make sure you keep track of their sources. That is what I can stress the most, it will save your life when you go to cite. Keep a Google doc of all your links if they’re online, or write them down; do whatever you need so you don’t lose them. You’ll probably need to do more research as you write; that’s normal. I liked having a list of possible reliable sources on a doc.

Thesis

Your thesis doesn’t need to be super fancy, especially not at first. What you argue is whatever side you’ve chosen on your prompt. For example:

  • Prompt: Is technology a blessing?
  1. Technology is a blessing.
  2. Technology is a curse.
  • Prompt: Does power corrupt?
  1. Power corrupts.
  2. Power does not corrupt. 

By the end of the research stage, you want to have a general idea of what your DOPs will be, and what information will be in them.

  • Technology is a blessing
    • DOP 1: Documentation – scientific discoveries due to photography, governmental uses, colonialism, wars, etc
    • DOP 2: Accessibility: cheap art & headshots, information (such as propaganda), memories, women in art
    • DOP 3: Movements: impact on industrial revolution, impressionism

If part of your research contradicts your thesis—perfect! That will be your counterpoint + rebuttal. You must remember though, you must have proof that can rebut the contradictory research, otherwise you’re just weakening your argument.

  • Counterpoint: results in commercialization of art, and people don’t learn “real art techniques”
    • Rebuttal 1: Classist
      • Photography allowed lower-classed people to get family portraits
        • Improves accessibility in ways to remember family
      • Defining “real art” as techniques that are financially inaccessible to many is, by definition, classist
    • Rebuttal 2: photography is an art itself
      • Lighting and composition plays a large role
      • Takes time & skill to develop photos
      • Allowed people a creative outlet
    • Rebuttal 3: Photography actually HELPED artists
      • Faster & more accurate details
      • List artists it helped

Outline

Now that you have a thesis with your DOPs and counterclaim(s), you can create an outline. Your outline has all the information you plan to put in each paragraph. This can be changed later, but try to craft it thoughtfully so you have less work to do in the future. I recommend a short outline and a long outline. A short outline contains the general ideas in each DOP, and the long outline has deeper information and links. It may sound confusing, so I’ve shown an example of one DOP below.

Short Outline

  1. DOP3: emerging movements
    1. ❡impressionism
    2. ❡travel

Long Outline

DOP 3: impacting emerging movements in art and travel

  • Art: it influenced impressionism (and other stuff after the 1900s)
  • Impressionism was a response to photography’s realism – the purpose of paintings became to express, to evoke a feeling, rather than realistically replicate an image
  • Important because
    • it freed artists from having to represent things realistically 
    • which led to more modern & abstract art forms 

Tip! Have a Google doc with all your sources, your outline, and once you start actually writing, links to all other SHARP-related documents. I like to keep my docs organized like this:

Part 2: Drafting

Once you’ve got roughly 80% of your research done and have an outline, it’s time to start drafting the actual essay. If you struggle with writing, DON’T start with the introduction paragraph. Format your doc with an MLA format, copy and paste your thesis, and then begin writing. Depending on what prompt you’re doing, you’ll have different needs for the type/format of your paragraphs. For the technology prompt, I had a separate paragraph introducing the history of the tech, but that can also be included in the introduction.

Body Paragraphs

Argumentative/research papers are not too different from your typical English essay; instead of quotes from the book, you restate your information in your own words. A single BP outline would be:

  1. Introductory sentence:
    1. State general division of proof
      1. Ex: made images “a reliable way [of] document[ation]”
    2. Introduce sub-DOP(s)
      1. For your first body paragraph on a topic, introduce all sub-DOPs for your DOP. ** Often you’ll have to split DOPs throughout many paragraphs due to extensive amounts of evidence. For those paragraphs, you only need to state the sub-DOP that the paragraph will cover.
        1. Ex: Government: cities, colonies, civil servants, military personnel, armies & scientists: studies and experiments
    3. 1 sentence
      1. Ex: “Photography directly enabled governments to commission images of their cities and colonies, civil servants and military personnel, and armies; and it allowed scientists a reliable way to document their studies and experiments.”
  2. Context:
    1. Contextualize the sub-DOP
      1. What is going on in the world during your sub-DOP?
    2. 1-2 sentences
      1. Ex: “Under the reign of Napoleon III, France underwent Haussmannization, or the urbanization of Paris, and recorded the changes through photography.”
  3. Sub-DOP 1:
    1. Introduce evidence
      1. 2-3 sentences
      2. Cite!! Citations for now can be just the names of your articles or sources to make your life easier (I’ll be covering how to properly MLA cite later).
      3. Ex: “Photographs were used to document the houses being torn down [Appendix B figure 1] and the ones being rebuilt [Appendix B figure 2].”
    2. Connect evidence to your thesis: how does this show your argument? In what ways does this event/information prove technology is a blessing/power corrupts/war is justified/etc?
      1. Ex: “With photography, the public could see Paris’ past, present, and future; they could see the transformation of the city, allowing them to repeat and tweak the process in other countries or colonies. With documentation, people could measure the effectiveness of leaders by comparing the city throughout different rulers’ reigns, providing proof of worsening or improvement.”
    3. Repeat A & B for all evidence for your sub-DOP. Remember citations!
  4. Conclusion:
    1. Repeat sub-DOP
    2. Connect sub-DOP to DOP and your SHARP topic
      1. Ex: “Without photography, this use of emotional propaganda could not exist; simply, words in news stories cannot be inferred or altered the same way a photo can.”

This is a general outline that can be adapted for whatever topic you’ve chosen and can be repeated for each of your Divisions of Proof.

Conclusion

The concluding paragraph is very similar to that of a normal English essay. Reword and repeat your thesis and summarize each of your divisions of proof. Then, connect your topic to the larger picture. Why is your thesis relevant today? How are the topics you’ve discussed seen in today’s society? Your concluding sentence(s) should tie back to your prompt and your answer to it.

Introduction 

The introduction has three parts: Hook, context, and thesis. Your introduction should attract readers and interest them in your topic. Good options for hooks include (but are not limited to) interesting statistics, analogies, and bold or unusual statements. Context should properly introduce your topic and its historical significance. Unlike the context in your body paragraphs, this can go deeper into the history of your topic and provide a timeline for the events you’ll talk about. This can be anywhere from 2 to 10 sentences. Note: if you do the technology prompt, you’ll need to include the time period of your technology (I learned this the hard way). Then, attach your thesis to the end of this paragraph. Boom—introduction.

Part 3: Citations

Citations, in my opinion, are the best part of the essay. I know not everyone shares my view of citations, but they’re incredibly important (and if you don’t have them, you’re failing the essay). When writing your draft, use links or names that easily identify your sources. 

Works Cited

In case you are unfamiliar, a works cited lists all the sources you reference in your essay AND the sources you used for research, and is alphabetized by entry. All online articles are cited: 

Last Name, First Name. “Name of article,” Website name, Date of publication, link. Date accessed. 

Make sure your link is not hyperlinked. You can tell if it’s hyperlinked if the link is blue or if it has a line under the words. If you have articles that are missing authors or publication dates, you can omit those. Additionally, not all your sources will be online articles. To determine how to cite other sources, Purdue OWL is the best website for reference. You can also use online citation machines if you don’t enjoy writing them yourself. 

Appendices

Appendices hold any images, graphs, timelines, etc that you may reference in your text. One of the most frustrating parts of the SHARP is that you’re often not told the formatting requirements for things like appendixes. Luckily, it’s not too difficult. Here’s a quick step-by-step guide. 


Step 1. 

Label your first appendix “Appendix A” and in MLA font/spacing center it on your document. 

Step 2. 

Import the first image you are referencing. Below it, label it “Figure 1.” (the period is included in the citation). Enter once to proceed to the next line. 

Step 3. 

Cite your image according to the MLA rules. Remember that all images’ citations need to be in your Works Cited as well, so make sure to add it to that as well. 

Step 4. 

Repeat this process for all your images. If you have multiple per DOP, I’d separate them by division of proof. Your next appendix will be “Appendix B” then “Appendix C” and so on. Similarly, the numbers for figures are sequential. Organize the images in the order you reference them in your essay. 

Example:

In-text Citations

Works Cited

These are referenced in text by the last name of the author in parentheses, or if it lacks an author, the name of the article in quotation marks inside parentheses. If you have two articles with the same title, list the title, followed by a comma, followed by the source in italics. Citations belong at the end of the sentence, with a period after them.

Examples:

  • Author: (Cole).
  • Article: (“What is a Daguerreotype”).
  • Same title: (“Camera Obscura.” The Engines of our Ingenuity).

Appendix 

These are referenced in text by listing the appendix letter and figure number in square brackets. Place them right after you refer the image in the appendix, unlike citations, which always belong at the end of a sentence.

Example:

  • Photographs were used to image the houses being torn down [Appendix B figure 1] and the ones being rebuilt [Appendix B figure 2].

Part 4: Final Draft

This is what you’ll turn in, at the very end of the project. Reread your essay multiple times. Read it out loud. Have your friends read it. Just get as many eyes on it as possible. You want to catch as many possible errors. Verify all your appendix references actually line up with the appendix you’re referring to. Do whatever you need to in order for you to feel comfortable with your writing. Combine all your documents together onto one final document, add your MLA heading, and voilà, you have written your entire SHARP. 

Part 5: Relax

If you are still here, congratulations. You deserve an A on your SHARP just for reading all 2143 words of this article. I’m sure there are things I’ve left out, and remember, this is a big project that will vary from topic to topic. This is what I’ve found helpful, and hopefully it can help at least a couple people out. The best advice? Don’t wait until the last minute and DON’T USE AI. C’mon, it’s 2025, you can write your own paper. Don’t be afraid to talk to your teachers for advice on this either, majority of them want to help you, they really do. Good luck sophomores! 

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