DUE Wednesday, October 28, 2026 at 5:10 pm

Submit online in Canvas in the assignments section.

Purpose

Despite generative AI, humans must develop and exercise their mental skills or else they will never get to a level of expertise needed for their careers. Growing research shows that adults who do not regularly exercise their minds experience cognitive decline earlier and faster than those who do. Writing expository essays is an essential part of higher education that gives students experience with performing research, doing critical thinking to synthesize ideas, and writing. It therefore is a vital part of authentic intellectual growth. What does ChatGPT think? It claims, "A university education isn’t just about producing a final paper—it’s about learning how to analyze complex ideas, form coherent arguments, and express them clearly in your own voice. These skills are transferable far beyond academia, into careers and civic life, where nuanced reasoning and original communication are invaluable." Thus, we can admit that writing is difficult and it is often not fun, but the whole process of doing it provides fundamental skills. There is no substitute possible for exercising this mental skill, you must write.

Activity

Working alone and without generative AI or other "aids" to do your writing for you or participate in the create process of writing, write a new 1200-1500 word expository essay (equivalent to 5 pages) in your own words using third-person voice (i.e. do not use "I", "we", or "you") consisting of a central idea supported by your own analysis and examples in which you address one of the topics provided below.

If this is your first college expository essay, then please learn more about expository writing by doing a web search on that key phrase using your favorite web search engine. One explanation is given HERE. You are encouraged visit the UCD Academic Assistance and Tutoring Centers so you can have your essay reviewed by a writing specialist.
This assignment is due at the beginning of class on the date stated above. For you to get full credit, your essay must be turned in at the beginning of class on the due date. Assignments turned in late will be penalized by 10% per day. Assignments late by more than 1 week will not be graded. Exceptions require either prior approval or doctor-validated medical excuse.

No copying, collaboration, using generative AI to write for you, or paying others to write your essay is permitted. No plagiarism is permitted; include citations to the sources of knowledge when you state informaiton that you did not invent yourself. All submissions will be reviewed by TurnItIn for plagiarism and also checked for evidence of having been written by anyone else. We cannot perfectly police the use of generative AI, but sometimes it is obvious that it has been used; choosing to use it only hurts yourself by making you less competitive for doing a job well. Employers generally do not hire people to write prompts, because if their needs could met with a prompt, then they would just write it themselves and fire you. You must be mentally skilled and experienced enough to provide function and value beyond writing a prompt.

Additional information on how to avoid plagiarism is available HERE.

Expository Essay Topics for 2026

You **must** pick ONE topic among the following two prompts for your essay. Regardless of which prompt you pick, include at the end of the essay as part of the references section the specific articles you found that addressed the topic of your essay (including name of media, date of article, and which page of the media it was on).

1. Floods are endemic to California. Write an essay that compares and contrasts how California floods have been portrayed in newspapers between the two 50-yr time periods 1847-1897 and 1976-2026. To research the topic, you are strictly subject to the following constraints. (1) For the historic period 1847-1897, you MUST use the online California Digital Newspaper Collection (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/) to find and analyze at least TEN relevant historic newspaper articles about floods in California. (2) For the modern period, you may use any news media sources but you must also find and analyze at least TEN relevant ones. When writing your essay you are subject to two additional constraints: (3) You must use and reference your sources in the essay to demonstrate that you have synthesized ideas from the 10 sources per time period. (4) You must cite all 20 of those articles at the end of your essay. We will check to insure that the sources you cite are real and that the historic ones did come from CDNC.

2. Droughts are endemic to California. Write an essay that compares and contrasts how California droughts have been portrayed in newspapers between the two 50-yr time periods 1847-1897 and 1976-2026. To research the topic, you are strictly subject to the following constraints. (1) For the historic period 1847-1897, you MUST use the online California Digital Newspaper Collection (https://cdnc.ucr.edu/) to find and analyze at least TEN relevant historic newspaper articles about droughts in California. (2) For the modern period, you may use any news media sources but you must also find and analyze at least TEN relevant ones. When writing your essay you are subject to two additional constraints: (3) You must use and reference your sources in the essay to demonstrate that you have synthesized ideas from the 10 sources per time period. (4) You must cite all 20 of those articles at the end of your essay. We will check to insure that the sources you cite are real and that the historic ones did come from CDNC.

Researching Your Topic

It is no longer feasible to expect students to engage in traditional essay "research" involving a literature review, because there is no valid means of evaluating student performance in this arena without direct visual observation of students as they work (which I cannot do) in the new age of generative AI. Therefore I have changed the way this assignment works. Instead of providing a broad essay prompt and allowing for explorative research into the literature over some days (for which students would now just put the prompt into ChatGPT and have the essay written for them in 15 seconds), I am providing a choice among 2 specific prompts, with each one requiring a database search on a particular website that is difficult for generative AI to "use". Therefore, your research should involve performing searches as stated in the prompt you choose to find at least TEN source news articles per time period to use to formulate your professional opinion and analysis. Make sure you understand all the vocabulary in each essay and what each author is trying to explain. Then, use your critical thinking to develop ways to compare and contrast the ideas between the two essays. 

Essay Format

• Submit via Canvas' assignemnts page. It provides you a text box you can paste your essay into. I advise you to write it in a word processing program first so you have a copy of your essay saved in your files before submission. Then just paste your text from your file to the Canvas text box.
• On the first line type the title of your paper.
• Leave the second line blank.
• Begin your essay on the third line.
• The reference list at the end DOES count toward your 1200-1500 words.
• This report constitutes 20% of your grade, so the more time you put into them, the better your grade will be.

Writing Your Essay

Begin your essay with an introduction paragraph that identifies the theme of your essay. This theme, also called a "thesis", is a generalization that you have gleaned from reading the variety of sources that you have researched. The introduction paragraph needs to be fairly short to leave space for the main arguments and evidence to follow.  With a short essay like this, I suggest avoiding the use of personal stories for the introduction, because they take too long to unfold. The following paragraphs should provide supporting claims and specific facts, quotations, and other forms of evidence backing up your claims. End your essay with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes what you have explained to substantiate your thesis.

In your essay, use citations from the source articles to back up facts and examples you state based on your sources. You are welcome to read, draw from, and cite other articles you deem relevant, but it is not required. Citations in the body of the text should be in a format such as (Author, Year, page #). In the reference list, use a format such as "Author. Year. Title. Publishing information. Page number". Essays lacking adequate citations and citation formatting of the source articles will be penalized. Writing the exact words from a source is not permitted. Avoid using long quotes as well, as you need to integrate the information into your own ideas.

DO not use generative AI to do the creative process of writing for you. In other words, when you start from scratch, you should do the writing. If you have it write for you, and then you just analyze and tweak its writing, then you have failed to learn how to write and your brain will not get the exercise it needs to cognitive develop as a writer. On the other hand, if you really want to use AI, then you CAN use generative AI to analyze specific aspects of your essay to give you feedback on the quality of it. This is what the TAs and professor are for, but you can use AI as well, if you prefer, for that. For example, you might upload your essay into Gemini Pro and ask it, "Does this essay conform to the standard structure of an expository essay? If not, give me three criticisms of my essay that I can then use to improve it, but do not tell me what to write or give writing examples."

What Makes a Superior Essay?

An excellent essay is one that addresses the topic clearly, demonstrates a thorough critical understanding of the material, explores the issue thoughtfully and in depth within the allotted space, is coherently organized with ideas supported by apt reasons and well-chosen examples, has an effective, fluent style marked by syntactic variety and a clear command of language, and is generally free from errors in grammar, usage, and mechanics.

If you want, you could upload your essay into a generative AI and them prompt it with  the previous paragraph to find out if it thinks your essay makes a superior essay, and then get tips on how to improve it. I'm ok with that, because you've already exercised your brain and now you're just trying to learn how to improve.

Extra credit is possible for additional supporting materials (not words, simple photos, or additional citations) that improve the quality of the paper, at the discretion of the professor. Extra content should be explained in the text; avoid peppering random photos into the essay. The sources of any additional materials should be properly cited.