To be honest, my reaction to the introduction was like “sure, there’s a difference between the two…NOT” I really do think that all research papers are the same, so that is why I never look forward to a paper, or essay if you must call it, because of the research and the writing which I’m not much of a fan of. All research papers that I did in high school consisted in high school were choose from the 3 or so prompts the teachers gave you and then research and write on the topic. Simple as that. As simple as it seems, I always had the problems of organizing all my thoughts and information I had collected. Most of the papers consisted of my analysis of literary works, as well as specific topics the teacher assigned. If I could choose what I wanted to write about, I think it would be even more difficult for the process I go through to write because I’m not very creative in coming up with things on my own. I’m used to being told what to do, as it has been for me through a majority of my life. So my question is that you can you really be able to teach me to be able to come up with these thoughts and topics on my own, with my own way of thinking on them all. I am curious to see if what Ballenger said is true once I get more of a feel for the research essay. So my overall question is can you help me and inform me about trying to do a research essay rather than a research paper.
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I pretty much completely agree. I am basically on the same playing field when it comes to being creative. Creativity is something that God did not bless me with so that is why crots and these kinds of papers are so hard for me to get excited about and to work on. But I will say that I think that this really stemmed from all of the bad experiences that I have had with research papers in the past where we were given a prompt that was beyond boring and then were told to spit out a research paper. Who knows maybe writing about something that I like might not be so bad after all.
ReplyDeleteI get where you are coming from and yes, making up with your own original ideas can be just as challenging as writing the research paper itself.I always hated the high school research paper, but for other reason than the ones you stated, but what we did have in common was the nature of always being told what to do. We come from a society where individuality and originality is lacking. We always take what is given and ask no questions. The key in figuring out how to come up with an idea is to begin by questioning everything. When you question everything you begin to think, when you begin to think your mind begins to wander, and that's when you have ideas. As for the ideas you can elaborate on them. This has always helped me when dealing with something as difficult as coming up with my own original idea.
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