In all honesty, I don’t mind writing research papers. Well in high school I didn’t mind writing them. Like Ballenger said, “ I was simply reporting information about a topic.” I was just restating the information to support my point, which was easy for me. I preferred writing a paper with sound information and hard evidence. As I continued reading Ballenger’s article, I began to think that the college research papers are completely different than the ones I did in high school.
The one research paper that I thoroughly remember in high school was about Diamonds. My teacher made us pick one noun and write whatever we could about it in ten pages. We had done the traditional index cards full of information, the five rough drafts and the portfolio of all these at the end. Most people had picked abstract nouns like power, or love, but I picked diamond thinking and hoping it would be easy. In my opinion, it was just that. Easy. I had found so much information about diamonds and it was easy for me to put it into an essay. A lot of my classmates had to change theirs because it was harder for them to write about their abstract nouns.
I also find writing about certain topic a little easier. It’s hard for me to write a paper with no concrete topic. If I had the choice of writing about anything I wanted, I don’t even know where I would begin. It’s easier for me to write about something that I can think off of, an opinion I can expand in words. The one question I have for Ms. O’Malley is... Is there a wrong way to approach a research paper, like are there ways we could do a research paper wrong?
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I really respect you and I’m kind of jealous of your interest in research papers. I wish that I had the patience to sit behind books for hours and be able to write a good paper incorporating facts and my own opinions. I do like your teacher’s idea that you had to choose one noun and write about that. I think that’s very creative and gives a lot of freedom of what to write about. When I first read that I was actually thinking about what I would write and picked friends. I would have never thought to pick such an easy word like diamond. Good thinking!
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