In order to assess our writing abilities before our first English class began, my professor (Prof. Joe Williamson, I believe) assigned us a paper to write in class on problems in our community. Once again demonstrating that I hold great disdain for writing on assigned and uninteresting topics, I decided to take a humorous route, although this appears to have mystified my professor. My grade reflected it, although the professor must have seen some spark of writing skill in me, because I was referred to another professor who wanted to study student reaction to professor's comments on their papers. I frequently used my conversations with the other professor as an opportunity to lambast the comments given, which were probably scribbled out quickly as my professor raced through grading 60 relatively equally crappy papers in probably a few matters time. (Much to my glee, the other professor agreed with much of what I said, and even stated that I should have been able to skip English 103. I failed the English CLEP test (much to Mr. Welle's shame), which had to be written out by hand on some inane topic... but I've already ranted enough about that. I should have just taken the English AP - only one person passed Olivet's English CLEP test that year, and the following year, the department decided to be much more lenient.)
This is a research paper, but not anywhere near as dry as the one on time travel below. In biology, my least favorite science class (my motto: all science is either physics or stamp collecting), we had to write a "research paper" involving biology, but we could write it in a creative way, like as a children's book or short story. On December 9, 1991, the day before the paper was due, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning writing this paper, and it shows. I decided that I wasn't inspired enough by working on the computer in the kitchen, so I moved it upstairs into my bedroom - an early sign of my budding talent in procrastination. Once the juices started flowing, though, they really started flowing. My mom commented on hearing me cackle to myself all night, but that was probably mostly due to my method of staying awake: drinking double-strong lemonade with added concentrated lemon juice, broken up by eating a slice or two of lemon between glasses. Anyway, it should be fairly obvious that this is a high school sophomore writing this paper, but if you enjoy it half as much as I did writing it, the read will be well worth the effort. (Incidently, I got the only A+ in the class.)
This paper was written in 1994 for my Expository Writing class my senior year of high school. This paper won the Rochelle Township High School Non-Fiction Essay award, which I'm rather proud of considering I was and still am a math and science person. The teacher of my class was Mr. David Welle, and my Shakespeare / Poetry teacher (from whom I drew my poetry analysis for this paper and who also happened to be on the board who decided the winner) was Miss Mayes.
The first paper written for my Expository Writing class, and a truly dismal one at that (and the grade reflected that, with perhaps a slight bonus since Mr. Welle was the captain of my academic team). I'm not a good enough writer to be able to pretend that I care about a subject in which I have little interest, I guess. I don't know why I'm putting it here other than for its humor value. (Although maybe this is the version that I recycled and used again in my college English class... Because You Can't Plagiarize From Yourself®.)
In English II, we had to do a literary analysis. I thought, "Eeexcellent. Smithers, get me my award-winning paper, 'The Mood of "The Conqueror Worm!"'" Alas, it was not to be. My English professor (NAME REMOVED WHILE I CONSIDER THIS REASONABLE AND POLITELY-WRITTEN REQUEST, the head of the English department) couldn't be bothered to read new literature that we might want to analyze, so we had to pick from her list. However, we could do a "creative" literary analysis by extending the story in some fashion (or as we call it now, "fan fiction"). I chose a short story called "The Stone Boy." Unfortunately, I can't find any copies of it on the net, and it's not the one about Native Americans or whatever that Project Gutenburg has. It's about a boy who accidentally kills his brother and is basically in shock about it, and everyone calls him "the stone boy" because he killed his brother and didn't shed a tear. Having everyone call him that caused him to repress his emotions and turn into what everyone was projecting on to him. (Correction: I've found a copy of The Stone Boy, by Gina Berriault.) I continued the story years later (and I had to do it twice, because stupid Microsoft Works died right as I finished the paper).
I was surprised to find this paper, because I don't remember writing it. In fact, I've recently been wondering when I first established my beliefs regarding Science and Christianity - I didn't remember exactly, but I assumed it had been midway through college after I had a couple of required Bible classes. However, this paper was written for my freshman English I class, so I must have established them earlier than I thought. I haven't extensively reviewed or updated this document for errors or changing in my thinking (although I may be mistaken in saying that Albert Einstein did not have a belief in God, although I think my main point was that science was much more separated from religion than in Galileo and Newton's days). However, I think the gist of my beliefs on this matter are still valid as this paper presents them.
My term paper on time travel that I used both in high school and college. (I actually got a better grade on it in college.) I'm sure that many scientific theories mentioned have been modified since I wrote this, but it's not like this is my doctoral thesis.
Plagiarism Note: If you are considering plagiarising any of these papers in whole or in part, you should consider that your teacher is probably as good or better at using Google than you are, and you WILL be caught. Plus - this ain't really college material, kids. I cringe at some of my sentence structures, but I have reproduced the originals faithfully. I will assist teachers requesting help with plagiarism - e-mail me at website@ryan.xar.us.