My dog SHOULD'VE ate my homework

After reading Ballenger’s introduction, I’ve realized why I, along with many students, despise writing research papers. The topics are usually dull and there are so many restrictions and requirements. I’ve yet to write a research paper where I’ve chosen a topic of interest and put forth 120% of effort. In The Curious Researcher, Ballinger states that in a research report, you just go out and collect as much stuff as you can, write it down, organize it and write it down again in the paper. Essentially, all I’ve been doing throughout high school are research reports rather than research papers. Nonetheless, until I receive a research paper that I actually enjoyed writing and learned by making my own opinions rather than getting information from various sources and jotting them down on a sheet of paper, a research paper will always be a research paper to me. One of the biggest papers that I had to write in high school was a capstone research paper for my academic field. We had to find a problem in our field of study and come up with a solution. I learned nothing from writing this paper, however I did get an A on it. As Ballinger stated, it was just rewriting and organizing information that other people provided.

Since I’m so fascinated by technology, writing about some fantasy super computer that is able to complete whatever task I wish would be something cool and interesting to write about. Hence, I must ask why are students required to write long boring papers on subjects that are uninteresting to them if journalist aren’t required to do so? In addition, if research reports only require for the student to gather information and write it down on paper, why are instructors continuing to assign them? They don’t allow students to think for themselves. Research reports only pose as information to remember.