In my opinion, both Amy Garret-Brown and Jay Holmquist provide surprisingly intriguing essays while presenting a research topic simultaneously. Both essays are not just pieces of writing that go on monotonously about a research topic; but provide interesting facts and also captivating stories for the reader to enjoy. After reading both essays, the reader can easily grasp how a research essay is different from a research paper. Ballenger describes what both authors accomplished almost perfectly, in this quote from Chapter 11, “The Research essay is much more likely to encourage the habits of mind that encourage genuine inquiry, including suspending judgment, beginning with questions not answers, and accepting ambiguity as a natural part of the process.”
The overall controlling idea of Amy’s essay, “Why Do People Tan” is her question of why people would choose fake tanning in a bed over enjoying the natural bliss of the sun outside. She wanted to find out what was so compelling about lying in a plastic bed full of UV bulbs and “…waste money and time on a prepaid tan that will only result in prematurely leathered skin and a much higher risk of developing melanoma or other skin cancers.” She researches the topic and finds that most of the authors hold a thumbs down for fake tanning and natural tanning (something that she doesn’t necessarily consider bad for herself). She finds that “2/3 of the teens say they look better with a tan and feel healthier, more sophisticated and 50 percent say they looked more athletic”, in a survey conducted by Seventeen magazine. Throughout her essay, Amy transitions (through research) from the idea that “a nice tan once meant you spent your days on the beach playing volleyball and swimming…it was usually accompanied by fit and trim bodies and healthy smiles. Now it means you spent 45$ a month building a base tan” to her final conclusion that, “people just like the way it looks to be tan.” By the end of her story she even admits that she feels better about herself when she’s not “starkly white” and that “it just feels good to be in the sun.”
The overall controlling idea of Jay Holmquist’s essay is that regardless of what some people might say about drugs, they are not safe and could eventually wind you up in a casket. He begins the essay by introducing a crazy story about him and his friend, Eric, in a rave scene where they are offered for the first time to do acid. He ends the short story there and diverges into his “research” aspect of the essay, leaving the reader hungry for more and motivated to finish the whole essay. (A good writing tactic when your audience is a group of eighteen year-old English students who tend to have an attention span of about three seconds). Holmquist spends the next few pages discussing multiple drugs that he has researched and really gives the reader a feel for what effect they might have on a person. For someone who has never been involved in drugs and is unaware of all the different types of drugs and pills out there, it is a very interesting and informative topic. I enjoyed this essay the best and did not even mind that it was much longer than Amy’s essay. I like how he starts off the short story in the beginning of the essay and then finishes it at the very end, after he inputs all of the research that he has done. He also adds a slight spin to the conclusion when he explains, “That’s why I don’t do them any more. I like them too much…” He mixes a negative and positive sentence together and still manages to get his point across while smoothly summing up his topic.
Amy makes her essay fresh for the reader by adding her own voice in and keeping the essay interesting. By saying things like “…who made it cool for white people to be tan?” She introduces her young voice and you immediately can tell that it is not going to be a boring essay. Then she moves into her facts about tanning that she has learned while including her question if the natural sun should also be your enemy, and tops it all off with a conclusions that “there must be some middle ground”. She provides hip talk and sturdy facts all in the same essay, therefore making her research essay a perfect example for us. Holmquist does an even more exquisite job at incorporating both an interesting story and real facts about the dangers of drug use in his essay by providing a small story about his friend Eric’s near death experience, and stupidity to use again after the occurrence, and also writing many facts and statistics for the reader to gasp at.
By reading these two essays and what Ballenger has to say about writing a research paper in “The Curious Writer”, I have gained a good feel for how a successful research paper should be organized and developed and have a slight idea as to how I am going to begin to write it.
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