If you have your Bachelor's Degree and also a Master's degree, you might be considering doctoral education. Anyone who studies for a PhD, especially where it's not the culmination of a taught course, will eventually need to produce a dissertation proposal.
If you have just started college then you may find that the notion of term papers is rather different from the term papers you wrote when you were in high school.
While there are books written on how to write a doctoral dissertation, the fact is that a dissertation, by its very nature is one-of-a-kind and although there are certain conventions common to most, each one is also unique.
College is a lot stricter than high school when it comes to writing essays. Not only will you be expected to produce work that is free of errors, you will also need to quote any sources used in the writing of your college essay.
If you have a good degree and have decided that you want to do some postgraduate study, you need to find something that will retain your interest for several years.
As soon as you're old enough to go to high school you'll be required to write term papers and if you go onto college you'll be still be writing these same papers.
Essays are part and parcel of any academic course whether high school or college, you will be expected to write on various topics both in class and as part of your personal study.