My initial reaction to Ballenger’s introduction was “Oh, great. This guy is going to blab and attempt to convince me to find a new love for research papers in 9 pages… great….” Initially as I was reading I couldn’t help but think, “please…” It was pretty similar to Wes' attitude. However as I kept reading I began to realize that this research “essay” may not be that bad or everything I thought it was going to be. In high school it was all about meeting the length requirement, using big words, sounding formal and listing at least 3 or more sources. It really was what Ballenger called a “research paper”. I hated these papers. I thought of them as busy work, something for the teacher to add to their grading book, and something I absolutely detested. I would generally try to write about things that I liked, but due to requirements and lack of effort, I still did not enjoy writing these papers. I would usually choose something about the environment seeing as I am very interested in the subject and preserving our resources. Most things that I’m curious about cannot be answered. For example, the beginning of the Earth. Is it possible to write a research “essay” that has no answer or possible way of finding one?
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Yeah I know how you feel about the whole having to write a research paper thing. In high school we were always taught to do whatever was asked, to do what topic we were told and to had all these restrictions in order to get a good grade that we really weren’t able to experiment and express our own ideas for a change. To be honest, since we were all told what to do in our papers and how to do it, I don’t have much confidence in what my own creativity and own ideas can do. I feel a little uneasy about having no guidelines because that’s what we’re all used to. So I think once we are actually taught the difference of this whole research essay thing, maybe it’ll actually be more entertaining.
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