Informal papers FTW!

After reading Ballenger’s introduction, I had the same feelings. I enjoy writing research papers about topics that I am interested in, but if the topic sucks, I absolutely LOATHE writing the paper. In high school most of the papers I wrote were boring and mundane. They were more like book reports than anything. The only paper I enjoyed writing was a 15 page research paper on a topic related to my career choice. At the time I wanted to be a Neurosurgeon, so I wrote about Sham Surgeries. Basically like the placebo effect in a surgical way. Open the person up, do absolutely nothing, and close them back up. And some people actually did get better. But when I got to college I loved the papers I had to write. I wrote about vegetarianism, euthanasia, and abortion (all in my Ethics and Life Choices class). I also wrote about my musical background, and The Doors/Jim Morrison (for my Music History class). In my Human Geography class I wrote about monetary and living patterns of vegetarians, which I thought was cool because I’m a vegetarian. For my Social Problems class I wrote about the War on Drugs as a social problem and another paper on taking action to legalize marijuana. So far all of the papers I’ve written in college I have liked because they are topics that I am highly interested in. I prefer writing more informal papers because it lets me share my ideas and thoughts with the reader. If I could write about anything I wanted to I would probably want to write about the influence drugs had on the music in the 60’s and 70’s. I would love to write this paper because I’ve always been curious as to how much drugs really did influence music. People are always like “Yeah man, the 60’s was full of drugs!” But did all of the artists participate in using narcotics, or did the peace movement influence music more?

Jennifer:  Are the research papers we’re writing this semester formal or informal?