The Research Paper

The “term paper” has been one of the ubiquitous experiences for college students of all majors, and this has been even truer for students in the humanities.1 Late nights in the library, often in the last days of the semester, and the “all-nighter” have been portrayed frequently as clichés of college life in motion pictures, literary fiction, and other media. One might assume from such (unsubstantiated) images and reports that college students everywhere are diligently engaged in the process of finding data and other information, reading and digesting those “facts,” and then using those ideas to write reports, essays, and other papers that demonstrate their understanding of their chosen subjects’ contents. Or are they?