- Solidify a topic and ideally get it approved by my professor so I feel more confident in moving forward with it
- I used to spend very little time on this step but now I try to spend at least half of my total time for the paper researching and reading. I take notes and then find connections between my sources and see how I can fit them all together.
- I outline my paper, typically in a pretty standard five-section template. Whether I actually like this template or because of years of repetition writing with it, I find it the easiest to construct my thoughts within.
- Write a (very) rough draft. I try not to edit myself as I go because this makes it really hard for me to get very much material down, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
- Very important- step away. I need to take at least a day away from the paper in order to look at it with a fresh set of eyes
- Come back and evaluate things like- how do all the concepts connect throughout the piece, am I answering my thesis, is there a good balance of research and my own thoughts, etc.
- Revise, revise, rewrite, revise
One Paige At a Time 
Your academic writing process is very similar to mine. I also outline using the standard five section template (although depending on the length of the paper is can have a lot more than five sections) because that is how I originally learned to write. Now I have trouble writing a paper without one. Writing the first draft for me is also a very rough draft. However, I think there is value in “shitty first drafts” because it allows a person to get all the ideas they have at the time on the page without worrying too much about how good it is; that is what second and third and maybe fourth drafts are for. If I try to edit as I go, it would take me probably four times as long to finish writing. Stepping away from the first draft become coming back to revise and rewrite I think is a hugely important step that a lot of people do not do (at least for many of my friends it is because of procrastination). I think without that break before revision, a lot of things that should or could be changed for the better are missed. Without that freshness after a break from the piece of writing, I think many people are either in a hurry to get it done or are burnt out which can trick the mind into thinking something is okay when it could be better.
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English teachers, at least in college, mock the 5-paragraph essay — and try to get students to stop using it so much as a template. However, using the 5-paragraph essay format makes sense as writing teachers also tend to want 3 major points in papers to ensure that your major position/thesis is properly developed and supported. Perhaps one way of stepping away from the strict 5-paragraph template is to realize that each point is most likely going to take more than one paragraph to support, especially in college. Try to think of a paragraph as a complete idea, but that you could have several ideas supporting each point. You could also have several ways of supporting that one point. In fact, in college, most teachers will probably be overjoyed if you support a point with several different sources and/or types of evidence.
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