1.
First off, the reason I ask for a one-page paper and not something
longer is that the length corresponds to what I might ask for in an
essay exam. You need to come to the point immediately and back it
up efficiently. Your essay will first off tell me whether you
really get the point of my question and then whether you are as
familiar with the material as you should be. It's an exercise in
being able to see right off what is needed for a good case without
wasting time.
For
example, let's say I have had you read Professor Smith's paper on why
philosophy majors should be encouraged to change their majors, and I
have asked whether you agree that Smith has adequately defended his
position. One common mistake is to ignore what I asked about
Smith and go on to a discussion of your own thoughts on the idea of
discouraging philosophy majors. Another is just to state
that you do think he adequately defends his position (or not) but
without summarizing the exact points that Smith makes while
indicating the acceptability of his evidence or the quality of
his reasoning. With the first I have no way of knowing
whether you have even read Smith while with the second I would still
not be sure how carefully you have read him.
2. It's going to be very hard to come up with an original
idea--something I have not heard or read before, quite possibly
hundreds of times in other student papers. But that's not really
the point. Each of you is still attacking a question on your own,
and what matters is that you have presented something that gets and
hold my attention because you are still putting something of yourself
in it. Maybe it's because you are using an example that might in
fact be somewhat unexpected but makes your point very
effectively. Maybe it's because in looking at a question you are
seeing how any answer in fact invites a new question and you are able
to whet my curiosity about how much further you could take the
discussion if you had the time to do so.
3. One thing that you need to get away from at all costs.
If there is a particularly interesting point that is not part of what
might be called "common knowledge" and it is not something you thought
up on your own, then you must identify where it's from. Not
to do is plagiarism.
For
example, I.F. Stone some years back wrote a very controversial book in
which he defended the verdict against Socrates. Let's imagine I
ask whether Socrates
deserved to be found guilty and I get papers back that in effect
summarize Stone's case. If there is no mention of Stone as the
source, then the question I have is whether the students thought this
up on their own (very interesting, if so, since Stone's case depends on
familiarity with a lot of material not found in the selections I would
have expected to be read ) and before accepting them I would likely
invite the students to defend their position more at length. If
they could not do so, my infererence would be that it was just copied
out. That would not only cost the students their grade but, in
theory, could lead to some serious disciplinary action on the part of
the college. (OK, I probably would not go that far for a
first offense, but you would have been warned, and you would not really
want to see what might happen for a later offense.)
4. Now you may be seeing a problem. If the chances are that
anything you say that seems at all interesting may well have been
expressed in some source that I would happen to have read (even if you
had never heard of it), then how are you to develop a paper without
obsessing over whether I'll come down on you for cheating
(plagiarism)? For the most part you probably should not worry at
all. In the example above, there is something definitely
distinctive about Stone's argument (go ahead and read the article if
you are curious). Above all it reflects the mindset of
someone caught up in the culture wars of the Cold War era and so for my
own students (who may not even be sure what that term "Cold War" means)
to come up with it entirely on their own seems highly improbable.
5. A last point. Please disregard any "rules" for having to
use a set number of paragraphs (five, let's say) for a
paper. And do not worry about topic sentences or
whatever. Yes, I would expect complete sentences with some care
about the mechanics (spelling, grammar, and all that good stuff), but
my grading standard is not based on anything apart from what I indicate
on the syllabus.
