critical thinking 440

Instructions: This assignment has TWO parts; together the parts should combine for at least five full pages of writing:

Part One: Write a four-page, first-person, personal essay (non-fiction) on one of the topics below. You should use Tolentino’s essays as a model in terms of (1) using your personal experience to discuss social and cultural issues that have relevance to a wider audience; and (2) creating a strong subjective persona. Your goals in this assignment are the following (these will be the criteria in my rubric for grading this assignment):

(1) to create (through language and point of view) a strong, clear subjective voice, or persona;

(2) to blend, as seamlessly as you can, narration (essentially using stories or anecdotes from your own and/or other people’s experience as evidence), description (sensory information), and exposition (you, as the author reflecting on, contemplating, theorizing the experiences you’ve included);

(3) to organize your essay in a way that grows organically out of your topic—you should not write a standard five-paragraph essay;

(4) to inform AND entertain the reader while you’re exploring ideas that have wide-ranging appeal.

Remember that everything in your assignment must be taken from real life. You may, however, use literary techniques, such as compressing time, combining characters, and re-creating dialogue, but you should still strive to be as accurate as you can be. If you’re writing about other people, you should give them pseudonyms unless you first ask their permission to write about them.

Finally, remember that I will be reading this essay, so don’t write anything that will make you feel uncomfortable if a relative stranger reads it.

Part Two: Write a one-page “meta-essay” (meaning, an essay about your essay; it’s essentially a self-reflection on how you planned and wrote your essay) explaining your intentions, goals, and choices as the writer of the essay. In particular, you should explain how you made specific choices to fulfill the four criteria listed above.

Topics (Choose carefully):

2) Write about the experience of being an outsider.

4) Write about your experience living in “lockdown” during the pandemic.