Why You Should Keep Copies of College Papers

I graduated from college over 10 years ago. Recently, however, I found myself needing to track down a paper that I remembered writing. I was considering applying for graduate school (again), and I wanted to use that paper as a sample of my writing. Luckily for me, I'm a bit of a packrat and so I still had a copy of that paper in my bedroom closet. It took a little bit of digging to find it, and I needed to retype it, but at least it was there.

Had I not saved copies of the majority of my college papers, I would probably have had to talk to the professor for whom it was written, and see if he had kept a copy. I work closely with one college professor now, and he does keep copies of the papers his students submit to him, because he asks the students to give him two copies - one for his files, and one for him to return to them. In my case, had I been required to go back to the professor for whom my paper was written, I would have been out of luck. I contacted him about a letter of recommendation, mentioning the paper. He didn't even remember me having written it. I seriously doubt he had kept a copy.

This is just one of the reasons why it is important to keep copies of your college papers. You never know when they might come in handy in your future life. While not all college students go on to graduate school, there may be some fields in which future employers are interested in seeing an academic writing sample. If you plan to go into any field that will expect you to publish your research, those college papers might provide a good start for your research and your article writing. And just because your immediate career goals might not seem to fall into these categories, you never know when you may change your mind about those career goals. Every so often, a change might be just what you're looking for, and those papers previously suspected to be useless may be the one thing you wish you still had.

While it is true that it is a bit excessive to keep every single thing you write in college, most college students should be able to get a good gauge of which of their papers might be useful later, and which are just the sort of "busy work" that many college professors assign. A lengthy paper in your major field is always a good choice for a paper to keep. In fact, pretty much anything written for your major courses could come in handy in the future. A short essay written for a general education type class is probably not worth keeping, unless you feel it is a stunning example of your work. Exams that include essay components probably also fall into the category of "things to get rid of," but they should be considered on a case by case basis, as some essay exams can contain excellent samples of your writing.

There is every possibility that a college graduate will never again have use of their college papers as they leave college and enter the working world. It would be far worse, however, for you to throw away every paper that you ever wrote and then realize, ten years later, that no copies of your work exist, and that paper is the one thing you need. So it's a good idea to keep your old college papers after graduation. If nothing else, a big box of old papers could be useful for a makeshift weight set.