Throw Back Thursday: Research Paper Woes Part II

Last week I promised more research paper quotes from my high school teaching days.  Again, I am including my commentary from my original sharing on Facebook. Again, the identities of the students will remain anonymous.

Let me start with a little something from another homework assignment just to get you in the right frame for mind for the actual research paper quotes.

• Only a few more weeks of research papers and homework answers like this: “I think that the statement applies to [Antigone’s] situation because density is fate and her future is still unknown.” Handwritten- no spell check.

• “Like the saying, people really do only have one life to live, and no one would want to add more death causers to the world than there already occurs.”

• “Also, man parents go crazy just because two of their kids argue fight over a toy.”

• Usually when a student wants to write his paper on euthanasia it is about whether the terminally ill should be able to resort to this or not. I have a student with a new take on it, and it scares me: “First of all, euthanasia of humans would be conducive to a more healthier society of humans because the terminally sick would be taken care of, the mentally ill would be dealt with before they become a problem, and people with certain disabilities will also be eliminated from the community.” Hitler had a similar system beyond just what he had done to the Jews. Do I sign this kid up for counseling or try to talk to him myself?

• More from the above paper: “After wheels start rolling [I hope this is metaphorical and not a tank or something] for euthanasian becoming legal and American becoming a healthier nation; the costs of certain things will go down and there will be more money in the country’s pocket.” I’m usually fairly objective when I read these papers, but I don’t think I can ethically do that this time. Yikes!

• A quote out of one of the better introductions I’ve graded so far: “Technology, since then, evolved over many years giving people the ability to achieve feets unimaginable.” For the record, kid, I don’t like feet, so I can imagine all kinds of scary stuff, but I think you meant feat and want to rearrange your punctuation a bit.

• “Smoking causes limitless amounts of death than all other forms of dieing combined,” said a student.

• “As a result of alcohol being a depressant, it is more likely to become aggressive when intoxicated, than to become a “happy drunk.” I cannot stress enough the importance of clarity in pronouns.

• “Death is not something people, as human beings, want to neither experience nor be responsible for.” First of all, what else would people be if not human beings? Next, if death is not something they want to neither experience nor do, then they do want to experience and do it, right? It’s so cryptic.

• “I have seen too many runaways that were not fixed and liters of puppies/kittens that end up sick or in shelters.” So, we are measuring animals via the metric system now? Aren’t liters for liquid measurement though?

• More student stuff I am confused about: “Antagonists roar that drones are against the back bone [elsewhere in paper written as the one word it should be] of the society of the United States and breaking that would be crumbling the country… The debate of drones could be in the sky over the United States or stored for only emergency use.” I guess you never know when you may need to pull the debate out of the sky and use it.

• No words for this: “This negatively effects the students because students look up to and rely their teachers, especially when the students find the teacher “cool,” but then losing the teacher and getting another one after only about 3 months…One that just started teaching and feels too scared of the kids to do anything with them and they end up doing book work the rest of the year, or the teacher does not feel scared of them but acts mean, rude, and has negative attitudes towards them, and then ends up ignorantly giving the nicest kids referral for something ridiculous and not even wrong or their fault and getting the hard-headed, but still good, kids suspended for expressing their feelings about the situation.”

• “Even though society makes valid points, the matter at hand, should never create an issue today, tomorrow, or in the future.” Isn’t tomorrow part of the future?

• “Opposing views claims that Censorship may not seem as terrible as it seems.”

• In honor of the whole “May the 4th be with you” stuff, I am sharing a student quote apparently inspired by Yoda: “Great pride and joy parents experience from their children.” This is the opening sentence. Much promise this paper shows!

• More paper logic: “Using other organisms could save many animal lives and also find cures for humans. However, killing animals and saving humans has the same results as saving an animal and killing a human, both have one creature killed.”

• “Getting caught with drugs will stay with a person forever, because they will always be labeled as having a wrap sheet.” After all, no one uses wrapping paper anymore- just buy a gift bag!

• “If the world could get over the African American being slaves and except them into society then why not people of homosexual play. They are just like everyone else they just like the same sex.”

• Oh, children, learn your documents before you start quoting them in your papers. “The pursuit of happiness, one of the inalienable rights written in the US Constitution,” (yes, it’s also a fragment) was actually written in the Declaration of Independence.

• “Due to smoking, smokers tend to die five to ten years earlier than those who do not. This can be especially harmful if smokers had previous problems in the area that smoking can cause to begin with.” The last part confused the snot out of me, but probably mostly because I was thinking about how especially harmful dying can be. Also, I suppose smokers who smoke would likely die before the smokers who do not smoke… but again, I am confused.

• Sure, it’s a great idea to begin a paragraph in the middle of your paper with, “To conclude with…” Why not?

FB friend:  “Could be an extra long conclusion?”

FB me:  “No, but two separate paragraphs falsely promised to be conclusions, unfairly giving me hope it would end soon, and then I found a random paragraph tacked onto the end that should have been somewhere in the middle. I’m so confused right now.”

To conclude, that’s my genuine conclusion of these quotes… until next Thursday.