Critical analysis

I'm back at uni and into serious work mode. Before I came down for Christmas I read over an essay of my sister's to give her some feedback, which had us discussing critical analysis. When you first get to uni you're taught about it and by third year, although you really do understand it, it's easy to get bogged down when you're writing 5,000 words. Thanks to this not-so-great occurrence, I put little motivators around my work space that really make you consider if what you're writing is critical enough and if there is any more you can do (see what I did, one little word link :p)

So just in case you're in the same situation, I thought I'd share them with you;

1. critical analysis is finding someone who has an opinion on the topic, but also finding someone who feels differently about the topic, but on top of that it'd also help if there was another person to summarise these contrasting feelings, because my lecturers don't want to hear what I have to say, they want to know what academics have said. You want to show the full critical picture.
   
2. critical analysis is questioning why one person thinks what they think, is that the only view around? why are there differences in views? what caused the differences? which has more agreement? why?
   
3. can you link it to something else you've been discussing? try and bring it all back in together rather than lots of separate points.
   
4. don't just take things on face value, delve deeper to find the reasoning behind the thought and see if you can find any contrasting discussions.
   
5. Yeah this person says that, but what does anyone else have to say? Does anyone else think anything about this?

Not my usual post I know, but I find things like this really helpful and just in case any of you guys are writing essay's too I thought I'd offer up my support.

again, just another writing post so here's a picture of my housemates and I on the day of our Christmas dinner.