How Others Write Essays

Something I thought was really important that we talked about in class today was about how other people write essays. I usually wait until a couple days before the essay is due and then try to cram it all into those couple of days. This semester, I am trying so hard to get my GPA up, and with that I need to take my time on essays, for this class especially. I'm really trying to unlearn all my old habits and make new ones so that I can be successful in this course and other courses over the next two years. I thought it was interesting to hear how other people write their essays. I am really hoping I can take some of that into consideration when writing essays in the future, so that I can be more successful in writing. Writing essays has always been my least favorite thing to do; I love to write poems and creative stories and it's helped me through a lot of difficult things, but I have never been a strong essay writer. A lot of times, I am so unmotivated to write about the topic, even if its something I'm passionate about. I really want to learn to have fun, or at least not be bored to death, while writing essays, and some of what we talked about in class today will help, I think.

"The Curious Researcher": 5 helpful tips

One tip that I thought would be helpful is the "Steps to writing your research essay," on page 6. I think it would be helpful because it breaks up each step by week, for a total of 5 weeks. Even though sometimes people dont have 5 weeks to write an essay, it's not saying that you can't combine some of the weeks, and write the essay in say 2.5 weeks, an amount of time most professors give you to write any essay.

Another tip I think would be useful was on the bottom of page 5. Ballenger says, "But if you're dreading the work ahead of you, then your instict might be to procrastinate, to put it off until the week its due. That would be a mistake, course. If you try to rush through the research and the writing, you're absolutely guaranteed to hate the experience..." I think this is very helpful, especially to me, because I, like many others, am a horrible procrastinator. In high school, I put writing essays off until the last possible minute. And for high school, that was ok. Nothing was really that hard for me, and it definitely didn't count for most of your grade for the entire course. But, unfortunetly, my habits carried over with me to college. I am still a procrastinator, but I'm trying really hard to get better at homework, and especially writing essays for this course. I always think I'm going to get a bad grade, because writing has never been my strong point.

Another thing that I think would be helpful is the "Questions to Ask Your Instructor about the Research Assignment," on page 11. I think this is helpful because a lot of students are confused over the assignment sometimes. A lot of professors wants formal writing, but some don't. Some want you to use the pronoun I and a lot of others don't. It really all depends on the professor, and I think students just need to ask questions about the assignment if they have them, and not worry about looking stupid, which is the case a lot of the time.

On page 15, Ballenger writes, "But factual writing doesn't have to be dull." I think this is helpful because I really think just chugging out facts is boring. I find it irritating to write these kinds of papers, especially in high school. Everyone else in the class was writing on the same topic, with mainly the same availability to resources, and then I end up producing a paper that has the same facts as everyone else. I think its boring to just look up facts and statistics and put them in an essay. I think it would be especially boring for a professor to read. I think Ballenger should expand on how to write a research paper thats not boring.

A final thing that I think would be helpful is Figure 1, on page 13, titled, "Why Write Research Essays?" It explains informal research essays and formal research essays and compares the two. I think this is helpful because some people, myself included, don't think informal and formal writing have anything in common. And its good to know that they do have things in common.

Comment on "Bury the Chains"

I find it quite interesting that General Carleton, of the British army, refused to give into George Washington's demands. He never returned the former slaves to the Americans and instead shipped them to Nova Scotia, where they could truly be free. Despite raids on New York City, where some of the slaves' former owners would travel to New York City and capture and reenslave the slaves freed by the British army, Carleton never gave up on the freed slaves. I think this really shows Carleton's character because he stood behind his beliefs and would not let the Americans take their former slaves back to their plantations, where they might be killed for opposing their owner or worked to death. I think that if more people had stood behind their beliefs the abolition of slavery would've happened a lot sooner. I'm sure the people who started opposing slavery opening weren't the first ones who thought it was horrific. I know that money is a powerful motivator, but the captains and crew on all of the slave ships had to have thought, at least in their mind, since most never voiced their opposition of slavery, that it was wrong to enslave an unsuspecting man, woman or child, of any color, against their will.

"Bury the Chains" Chapter 7 Summary

Chapter 7 of Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild is about the first emancipation of slaves that most people didn't know about, including the 12 men who met in a printing shop in 1787. In 1775, when the American Revolution was about to begin, Britain was desperate to cause trouble for the future Americans. So, they promised that any slave who joined the British army would be freed. When the fighting was over, no one knew what to do with the former slaves, who now lived in New York City. The Americans demanded them back, saying they were property seized by the British during the war. However, General Sir Guy Carleton had other plans. He refused George Washington's demands and didn't give the Americans their former slaves back. Instead, he shipped them to Nova Scotia, a British colony, including a young man named Boston King. This group of freed slaves was the largest group in one spot at the time.

"Bury the Chains" Chapter 6 summary

Chapter 6 of Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild is about a twenty-five year old man, Thomas Clarkson, who, in 1785, decided to submit an essay in Cambridge University's Latin essay contest. The topic for this essay contest was "Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?" Clarkson had won a lesser known essay contest the previous year. He researched and wrote his essay in two months. His essay came in first place. He decided to publish his essay, with some additions, in English. After turning down one publishing company, he ran into a friend of his who introduced him to James Phillips, who owned a printing shop in George Yard. Together, they published his essay, which was now as long as a book, in June, 1786. After spending some time with James Ramsay, he boarded a slave ship to witness first hand the things that happened on a slave ship. After this, he decided that something had to be done to abolish slavery, and he was just the man to do it. He met with 11 others, including James Phillips, William Dillwyn, Granville Sharp, 7 other Quakers and another Anglican. It was here, at 2 George Yard, on May 22, 1787, that these 12 men meeting in a printing shop would begin the movement to abolish British slavery.

Possible Essay Topics

During class today, I found the comparison between Newton and Stephen interesting. I think I might pursue this as an essay topic. I think that Hochschild focuses on the difference between Newton and Stephen because they are so different in the early parts of their lives, yet they come together (at least through their beliefs on slavery later on) and try to abolish slavery in Britain. I think I would focus on Hochschild's description of both men, but also look at other sources, such as biographies or autobiographies on both men, as well as various websites that would effectively portray the differences between these two men.

Another topic that I found interesting was the fact that the people of Britian stood by and watched all these horrible things happen to the slaves in the Caribbean. I think that maybe the people who did not benefit monetarily from the sugar plantations in the West Indies may have not known what it was really like on the plantations, and therefore didn't really care what was happening. I think that the people who grew wealthy off these plantations, such as the ship captains, the plantation owners, or the families of these people, didn't really care that so many slaves were dying because the conditions were so disgusting and degrating on these plantations because they were getting rich. They were killing people and letting people die for the purpose of getting rich and gaining power. I would use Hochschild as well as other websites or books or magazines that effectively portray this as sources if I chose this as an essay topic.

Comment on Chapter 4 Paragraph

On pages 66-67 of Adam Hochschild's Bury the Chains, it states: "Among the slaves, almost all the skilled jobs, like maintaining mill equipment, building sugar barrels, or doing masonry, went to men. This meant that--contrary to the picture in most Britons' minds, then and now-- the majority of slaves in the fields of plantations like Codrington were women. The fact that women did the hardest labor, combined with their abysmal diet, delayed menarche and brought and end to a slave woman's fertility by her mid-thirties. In the mid eighteenth-century British West Indies, fully half of all women sugar slaves never bore a child."

I find this paragraph particularly irritating. To be honest, I can't really think of the right word to describe how I feel about this fact. After further reading in Chapter 4, I find out that after slavery was abolished in the Caribbean, there were only 670,000 former slaves left, after bringing over 2,000,000 to the Caribbean from West Africa, whereas in the southern states of the U.S., only 500,000 slaves were brought from West Africa and over 4 million remained when slavery was abolished. This is horrible. I'm astonished by the fact that these Caribbean slave owners worked so many people to death on sugar plantations. I really don't understand why so many people let so many be killed for so long. Or were the British people, some of whom made all of their money off the sugar and slave trades, really just that clueless? Maybe some just didn't care because they were so wealthy. I honestly have no idea. It's baffling. If these women had never been put into slavery, they would have been bound for marriage and children. But instead, over half of all women enslaved in the Caribbean never had children. This makes me sad. A lot of women now always dream of having children; I'm sure it was the same for the women in this time period. I could not imagine being a woman in the time and being enslaved in the Caribbean, knowing that I would be worked to death on the sugar plantations before having children. It must have been devastating for them.