Both of the essays, Why Do People Tan? by Amy Garrett-Brown and An Experience in Acronyms by Jay Holmquist, were both discovery essays. They were very interesting for me to read and kept me wanting to read on throughout the entire essay in both cases.
The essay, Why Do People Tan? by Garrett-Brown, is a discovery essay. The author definitely has an initial question which creates the essay’s topic and she builds on it from there. There were a few lines in particular that stuck out that really proved the essay to be a discovery essay. “It struck me as I read the last lines of this sardonic critique of society that I don’t necessarily wonder why people tan, but why they completely gyp themselves of the pleasures of the sun to be rewarded with a battle with cancer at worst and saggy skin at best.” This shows how the author finds a new question after doing her research and it begins to answer it, showing her discovering information. Also, ‘it struck me’ relays the message of discovery perfectly. “So maybe that’s it, people just like the way it looks to be tan.” Here, the author is making conclusions from the information she has read and the research she has put forth. The last paragraph of the writing also indicates discovery because she states her final thoughts, even though the essay seems to suddenly cut off.
Although the essay, An Experience of Acronyms by Jay Holmquist, is about as completely different of a topic as possible, it too is a discovery essay. The author of this writing is more informative, giving the readers facts and information pertaining to the subject of drugs as well as personal experiences to back it up and giving it the discovery factor. Also, the lines that show ‘discovery’ in this essay are not as obvious, but there are still examples that lead you to easily classify the essay. Holmquist speaks of different occasions when he had done drugs and the experiences that came along with it. He then goes on to say, “I personally stopped my drug use about a year and a half ago. I was pretty much scared into it after I had to call an ambulance for Eric.” In the paragraph prior, the author admits, “The fact that these drugs are so dangerous, yet a lot of my friends do them, scares me.” A combination of these two examples shows that, even after doing these drugs, he now realizes the danger in them and has stopped his drug abuse because of it.
The overall controlling idea for Why Do People Tan? would be that Amy Garrett-Brown had an initial question, and through research, she came up with a few conclusions. Although the ending of the essay was fairly up in the air, she was able to come up with her own opinion as well as stated the views of a few others of why people really do tan, or ‘gyp themselves of the pleasures of the sun.’
The controlling idea of the essay, An Experience of Acronyms, is quite different. After taking hardcore drugs in his life, the author realized the harmful effects and truths about them and therefore stopped abusing drugs. The same lines that I used above would help support this idea, especially, “I personally stopped my drug use about a year and a half ago. I was pretty much scared into it after I had to call an ambulance for Eric.”
Both of these authors use research in their essays. In the first essay, there is not as much factual information presented as there is in the second one. The author relays the information in a more stating facts method but since there is not a lot of researched information, it does not get boring or lose sight of the main question of the essay.
The second essay is a very factual and informative essay, but still was very interesting for me to read. It was filled with statistics and explanations of three drugs, including LSD, MDMA, and GHB, that I never knew about them. Although this information was presented in a different way - he just stated the information because there was so much of it, I still think the author was successful in doing so because it did not seem like he just rambled one fact after another, but relayed pertinent information.
The two essays’ hold a few of the features of the form of research papers that Ballenger talks about on page 432. First of all, the research is driven by questions, especially the essay, Why Do People Tan? Also, the facts and researched information that are in both clearly relate to the initial topic and discovery item for both essays. There is not extra or irrelevant information. The sources for both essays are clearly given credit because there is a Works Cited or References at each of the ends. These writings do not meet all the features of the form criteria because they are not full research papers, but discovery essays instead.
After reading through Ballenger’s features of the form, it helped me pick out ways that I can write a discovery essay but still add factual and research information in order to enhance it. I realized that research needs to be driven by questions, to help get away from the stating facts which is boring and uninteresting to readers. Also, relating questions to what has been said is another important element to successful research. I have not decided yet what to write my essay on, but after reading both of these essays as well as Ballenger’s features of the form for research papers, hopefully I can successfully write my essay.
1) How does lack of sleep affect a person? (performance ability)
2) Why do people favor English/reading or math/sciences?
3) How good for you are taking daily naps?
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I liked your conclusion and your questions as well. I think you if you were a little more specific you could easy write an essay about any three of your questions. I especially liked the question about naps, considering we all take them and discovering more about that would be interesting.
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