L.A.D. or Life After Degree - Extra Credit

Background: Some of you, when you graduate, will be free to choose your paths in life. Some of you will have unbearable loans to repay. Some will have new responsibilities. Some of you will still have children to raise or parents or other former guardians to take care of in sickness and in health. Regardless, this is an assignment of imagination and possibilities. This is your future as it could be if you made it happen.

In this future you may connect with humanity in a way you never have before. You can explore the world on your own or you can immerse yourself in the collective breath of your brothers and sisters. It's your choice. What will you have?

I highly recommend you travel when your degree has been completed. Or, if you can, travel while working on this degree. I know some of you have barely had a chance to leave the safety of the Shire (you call it home), so change that. The world is a puzzle waiting to be solved. The question is, how will you solve it?

Will it be through travel alone, like William Least Heat Moon did in his autobiographical Blue Highways? Or will you, as a college student, become a citizen of the Road Trip Nation?

Maybe will you remove yourself from Mother Culture and every one of its absurdities and go... Into the Wild, like Jon Krakaue? View the movie trailer here.

Will you help your fellow humans through some service related organization?

• Delaying the Real World (book & website)
• Habitat for Humanity
• AmeriCorps
• Peace Corps

Requirements: Your extra credit assignment, should you choose to complete it, requires you to write about what your ideal plan for L.A.D. While composing this assignment you will:

• Be creative
• Perform research and use it to support your ideas, while citing your research
• Be specific; say exactly what you mean
• Not over use the word “I” you narccisist
• Explain what, where, who, why, and when all this is going to happen
• Write this assignment seriously
• Be specific; say precisely what you mean
• Explain who it is you want to become
• Learn a bit about yourself

Word Count: 900+ words

Value: Up to 20 points, and an extra point of student posts on their blog (in which case you must email me a link to your post)

Submission: Responses accepted as blog posts or Google Doc for online only students. Non-blog responses must be in MLA format, etc. Treat it as any formal essay I assign. Blog posts should have spaces between paragraphs.

Any major formatting, spelling, or grammar errors will cause your essay to be invalid.

Due Date: 30 April 2011

2001: A Student's Odyssey - Extra Credit

Recommendation: Arthur C. Clarke and legendary director Stanley Kubrick worked closely together while making the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The novel was written in tandem with the film’s making and expands upon some of the ideas presented in the film. Watch the opening of the film before beginning the first part of the book; it might help you decipher the book.

Requirements: Your extra credit assignment, should you choose to complete it, requires you to read the first section of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, "Primeval Night", about 35 pages.

Once you've read this, write a response, in the form of a formal essay. Do not summarize. I've read almost a dozen times; there's not anything you can tell me about what happens in it that I don't remember. This assignment is about presenting something new to the reader who has already read this work.

Criteria: What you need to answer, while giving evidence from the text and from your classroom experiences is this:

• How does this relate to English 111 or 112?
• Consider why I would ask you to read and write about this. How does it relate to teaching, learning, students, instructors, classroom mysteries, etc.?
• Use at least three direct quotations, properly cited, to support your analysis.

If you need help, contact me or visit the Writing Center.

Suggestion: Use the Writing Center handouts on Character Development and Literary Analysis. There is also this How to Read Literature Handout. These may very well help you figure out what is going on in the story and why it is happening.

Also review your textbook chapters on analyzing literature.

Word Count: 600+ words

Value: A possible 15 points, and an extra point of student posts on their blog (in which case you must email me a link to your post)

Submission: Responses accepted as blog posts or Google Doc for online only students. Non-blog responses must be in MLA format, etc. Treat it as any formal essay I assign. Blog posts should have spaces between paragraphs.

Any major formatting, spelling, or grammar errors will cause your essay to be invalid.

Due Date: 30 April 2011