Opinion Essay Samples - Sources and Pointers

Opinion Essay Samples - Sources and PointersWhen I started my college career, it was my intention to earn a degree in English and I wanted to take advantage of the many essay samples that I found. At first, I thought that I could simply find any essay from any online resource and then write a quick essay on it and submit it as is.I did some research on this idea and discovered that the more original the content, the better the essay will be. If I use a quote from a book or television show that I have already read, I might as well put a few old jokes in there and try to make them fit in. This didn't work for me at all and I eventually stopped with this approach.To get around the original content issue, I needed a way to achieve the degree that I was looking for without the original content. What I needed was an essay sample that was entirely original and a test or assignment that graded it based on the quality of the original content instead of the grammar, spelling, sentence structur e and even punctuation.There are lots of tests and essays that have no problem grading them based on the quality control levels for original content and some of these pieces are quite good, but some are not. The difference between the best and the worst is usually only a single letter grade.Some great sources for opinion essay samples are as follows: The New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Pages, Oprah, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, USA Today, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Oregonian, Tucson Citizen, United Press International, Law360, Scientific American, ACS, U.S. News and World Report, The Christian Science Monitor, Personal Opinion, etc. I recommend these sources to anyone because they are non-fiction pieces that focus on the reader's opinions on a particular topic or information.Another great source for opinion essay samples is the works of authors that are written in the form of essays or reviews. Some of these authors are David Sedaris, John Updike, George Saunders, Grace Paley, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nora Ephron, Richard Russo, Nancy Meyers, Barbara Kingsolver, Marcia Lucas, Michael Chabon, Michael Lewis, Bernard Malamud, Emily Gould, William Strunk, Jr., Claudia Roden, Judith Viorst, Barbara Demick, Nancy Yates, Wendy Brown Smith, Karen Blanchard, Michael Lewis, Diane Ackerman, Eleanor Davis, Stephen Elliott, Amy Tan, Milton Friedman, Gary Shteyngart, Douglas Rushkoff, Naomi Klein, Judith Viorst, Thomas Frank, etc. In addition, the book 'The Best American Essays', by Robert Carmichael and Dennis Jacobson has essays on every topic under the sun.Once I narrowed down my choices, I looked for opinion essay samples that were also based on research papers. This way, I could write a topic based essay about the research paper that I had just read. For example, I have essays for Neil Strauss' 'The Game' based on his book on the subject of infidelity.One last th ing to keep in mind when looking for opinion essay samples is that the best sources for opinions are not always the ones that you would find in the classroom. They can be opinion based articles that were published in publications that are aimed at readers who have other types of interests. In my opinion, this makes the opinion essay samples a little more unique and interesting than a piece that has a similar title and topic.