In all honesty, I don’t think I have ever written a true
research essay before. I was always in classes where they would scrap the notecards
or make you make a website or turn your information into something creative. Even
if I did do a research paper one day, I don’t even remember it. I learned to BS
my way through school at a young age which I might now regret. Now, back to the
research topic:
I had a hard time understanding that this essay, “Theories of Intelligence,” was actually a research paper. I didn’t not see any facts, I did not see any sources in fancy MLA format but then I realized, this is a whole new idea of “research paper.” This is no longer Research and Regurgitation 101 (Junior High). This is “Research and Discovery 101.” I still learned many things reading this essay but, looking back, there wasn’t a single fancy factoid or number that I really didn’t care about, it was built on the foundation of experience and personal discovery. It was rooted in life, not statistics. When we research the holocaust, is it not more telling to read about the personal experiences in an autobiography than to read about facts that have no relations to us whatsoever? It is those books that make us change the future, it is those books that make us look at this time and try to find something about it. I will admit that there is a time and place for these facts but there is also a time and place in research for a little bit of everyone’s life. For is history not a collection of many lives? When we explore them, what should stop us from giving away a little bit of our own history? Nothing. Nothing should stop us. At least not in this class. Because here, we explore, we don’t regurgitate. How else will people hear about new history—us?
I had a hard time understanding that this essay, “Theories of Intelligence,” was actually a research paper. I didn’t not see any facts, I did not see any sources in fancy MLA format but then I realized, this is a whole new idea of “research paper.” This is no longer Research and Regurgitation 101 (Junior High). This is “Research and Discovery 101.” I still learned many things reading this essay but, looking back, there wasn’t a single fancy factoid or number that I really didn’t care about, it was built on the foundation of experience and personal discovery. It was rooted in life, not statistics. When we research the holocaust, is it not more telling to read about the personal experiences in an autobiography than to read about facts that have no relations to us whatsoever? It is those books that make us change the future, it is those books that make us look at this time and try to find something about it. I will admit that there is a time and place for these facts but there is also a time and place in research for a little bit of everyone’s life. For is history not a collection of many lives? When we explore them, what should stop us from giving away a little bit of our own history? Nothing. Nothing should stop us. At least not in this class. Because here, we explore, we don’t regurgitate. How else will people hear about new history—us?
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