Project 1: Topic Essay

For our topic essays this semester, I chose to talk about vaping in teens and young adults. E-cigs have formed an “unspoken” idea that they are a better than smoking cigarettes, which can be shown in Seitz and Kabir’s study. However, it may only be beneficial for ex-smokers to pick up vaping as the health risks are higher in teens who have never smoked cigarettes. At the same time, big companies such as “JUUL” and “elfbar” have made millions by targeting teens and young adults through marketing, social media, and a variety of flavors to choose. 

I learned a lot about the process of writing in the last six weeks. The “Evaluating Sources: General Guidelines” article from Perdue and “Using the Library Database” link where two of the most useful articles for me while choosing this topic. I was able to find a wide range of information, however narrowing them down was still challenging. My writing process for this project started with multiple ideas or points written on paper, along with gathered information from sources. As it was time to start creating the rough draft I wrote an outline, which I then typed in Word and slowly transformed into my final essay.

Chapter one in our textbook gave many examples of evidence and logical fallacies in different contexts, which I found useful in avoiding bias. While gathering sources and reviewing this chapter I was able to find sources with limited to no bias, which I think I executed well throughout my essay. However, I found it difficult to find evidence to support the opposing side of my argument which does unfortunately form bias within my writing. 

At the end, I feel like I have applied our readings and information gathered through research in writing a successful academic essay. I had a variety of sources that were used in each argument and was able to incorporate them into my essay while avoiding bias. While there are still a few hiccups, I can see more confidence in my writing than I could at the beginning of this semester.