For instance, I am in a senior seminar studying very specific details about the presidency of Gerald Ford. We were expected to come up with a thesis for a 20 page paper way at the start of class before we even covered 10% of the material. That made no sense! No student learns anything about Gerald Ford in depth during high school or any other period in their college studies, so how were we supposed to know what we might want to write about?? So I just turned in some general BS thesis and ended up changing my topic later.

However, in a general english class, they generally let you chose the topic you want to write about. Students usually pick a topic in which they already have a strong opinion or background knowledge. When I took an argumentative writing course in college, we could pick our own topics, so I just chose things I either already knew something about or had a strong opinion about.

I see where you are coming from, but it totally depends on the class!

The professors do this to understand where YOUR direction is on a topic. And if you had chosen the topic yourself, they want to know you understand the material well enough to develop a strong thesis along with supporting arguments once you’ve done your research. And if you didn’t, they want to at least see you’re paying enough attention to grasp the subject matter.

Like: “How can we decide…(what ever you plan to show)”?