Its Not just a piece of plastic

College students abusing credit is very common nowadays. In the student essay "Example Student Writing," Richard Hatch writes about the issues that college students encounter with the misuse of credit cards. Hatch introduces three different sources and synthesizes them. Each source has a different view. The first source Eric Hoover reports on the impact of credit problems on college campuses. In the second source, Charles Haddad explains the impact of this crisis on the other parts of the economy. Finally, James A Roberts presents research to explain the problems with college students and credit. Throughout the essay Hatch uses these three sources to argue his thesis that by using different tones and examples aimed toward different audiences, these arguments present very different views of college students, ranging from sympathetic to accusing.

In my opinion this is a very poorly written synthesis for a couple of reasons. First of all, the thesis of the essay is very poorly written and is very vague. Without a strong thesis it makes it hard to prove a strong argument or prove the thesis. Along with the poor thesis, the conclusion is also vague, because the conclusion is a recap of the argument. The second thing that makes this a poorly written essay is that the introduction paragraph basically sums up the whole essay and explanatory paragraphs are not even needed. The intro shows what each article is saying and the audience can be gathered by the title/publisher of each article.

Out of all the student example synthesis essays, I believe that the strongest essay is the synthesis essay that Drew Lachey wrote. Lachey wrote about the right to vote and the first line in his essay grabs your attention immediately by saying that the most important duty Americans have is to vote. The essay is strong throughout and keeps the readers attention while staying focused on the topic. Lachey presents the best essay while in my opinion Hatch writes the worst.

Jordan Engel