1 What do you think is the best thing about your HCP? What did you work the hardest on? What part is the clearest? What part is the most sophisticated?
I think the best thing about my HCP is the introduction paragraph. It began with a brief and specific problem on marijuana use and how cannabis advertising relates to the right to free speech of the First Amendment. I used two scholarly evidences to support my claim on marijuana use, which builds academic ethos to my HCP. The clearest part of the HCP is that cannabis ads will cause harm to buyers, but the problem is sophisticated to which commercial speech is protected in the First amendment and it would be problematic to impose restrictions. I worked the hardest on organizing the body paragraphs and developing transitional sentences between paragraphs.
2 What do you think your paper could still do better? What would you have worked more on if you had more time?
I think my HCP paper could improve by relating the problem to current and past liquor regulations as well. I referred the problem with growing marijuana industry to the Big Tobacco in the HCP, but I believe it would be better if I also talk about the Big Alchohol and how it is different/similar to Big Tobacco. Also, if I had more time, I would work more on the conclusion and the paragraph before it.
3 What was your best, most credible source? What do you think made it credible? What made it useful? How did you find it?
The most creditable source was an academic journal written by David A. Alderman titled "Big Tobacco = Big Money = Big Headaches" for Management Review. First on all, it is creditable because it is an academic journal written by an academic scholar. Secondly, the publishing date of 1994 makes the source relevant to the current marijuana issue that I discussed. I found this article on Escrow Host through using the UCI Libraries, which was extremely helpful to me on finding creditable sources to support my paper.
4 What was your weakest source? What made it weak? How did you find it?
The weakest source of all was an blog post article written by Sumaiya Kabir, who listed 20 beneficiaries of marijuana. I did not quote, summarize, or paraphrase any of her words in my essay, but I used her article for my own background knowledge on marijuana. I believe this piece of information is relevant to my topic since I need to know the pros and cons of marijuana itself in order to argue my point. However, she has less authority to provide information on the topic than experts do who writes scholarly journals because Kabir is only a freelance article writer and a blogger.
5 Now that you have a thorough understanding of your problem, what is the possible solution to the problem that you think will work the best? Explain why it will work.
Upon completing the HCP, I began to slowly realize a possible solution to the controversy on cannabis. One possible solution would be promoting better education on the citizens of the United States so that cannabis ads would be defective on educated people who understands the harm of marijuana use.
6 What is a possible counterargument or impediment to this solution? Why can't we enact this solution tomorrow? Who or what is standing in the way?
However, the impediment to this solution would be time. Increasing the average education level of the entire U.S. population cannot be done in a short period of time. It may take years, or even a century, to minimize young people to get attracted by the cannabis ads.
7 What is the next step in your research? What do you still need to do/understand/show in order to effectively advocate a solution to this problem?
The next level of my research would focus on the correlation of education level and marijuana use. It may be difficult to only focus on the education as a solution, so I will research on academic journals and online editorials on possible solutions that relates to education.
8 Is there something about research papers or researching in general that you still don't understand?
As of now, I have no problem on researching or about research papers because I had several experience writing research papers.