:: What is an Essay? What is the Purpose of an Essay?

The essay questions are designed to provide structure for planning and organizing your discussion while also providing room for individualization (that is, there are many ways to approach the discussion, choose the focal points, and to assess what is significant to write about). You will choose one prompt from among several that fits best as a launch pad for considering the ideas that you would most like to reflect upon. I am not asking you to summarize the chapters as one would in doing a "book report." You are to weigh the options provided by the prompts and to then determine what you think are the most important aspects of the material to discuss. Your essay will thus be selective, and not comprehensive. The basis for the grade assessment is the thoughtfulness you bring to selecting the issues to discuss, the quality of the reasoning you employ, and the strength of the evidence you provide in support of your discussion.

Historical Note: Another way to grasp the framework that I am asking you to work from is by noting that the word "essay" is more than a noun. Its initial form is as a verb -- it means "to try, to attempt, to understand." This is close to what I consider to be the objective of writing an essay: an effort to explore what strikes you as what matters the most in explaining what is significant about a topic. (If you want to know a bit more about this word, here is a brief discussion at the Merriam-Webster dictionary site.)

Reflective Essays & 10 Rules of the Road

1. Length: Each essay assignment should be 4-5 pages in length (roughly 1200 to 1600 words), and should be typed, double-spaced, proofread, and spell-checked.

2. Citations: You may use whatever citation style is standard for your major: APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. You should have a works cited page at the end.

3. Primary source material: There are four required books, and each will serve as the foundation for one of the essays -- the prompts will be centered on them. They will be used in the following order: first, American Eclipse (Baron), then Coyote America (Flores), then Burger (Adams), and then History of Video Games (Hennessey).

4. Other assigned materials in canvas: You are encouraged to use any of the other assigned course materials in developing the discussion for your essay (articles, videos, podcasts, etc.). The essays are reflections that you develop by drawing on the assigned materials. The objective is for you to discover what is important to discuss by drawing on your own perspectives. The universe of the assigned materials provided in the modules of our canvas course site is many times over -- more than enough -- to work from for a 4-5 page reflective essay.

5. Non-assigned sources: Are not allowed (see #4 above for why they are not needed.) You are not putting together a research paper, so there is no need to acquire additional sources, and doing so will divert your focus from working with your own reflections.

6. Prompts: You can select from one of three prompts for each essay. You will receive the prompts 10 days before the due date. You can always ask me for feedback as you move forward with your essay -- typically what I ask you to do is to provide some questions about what you are trying to do for me to answer, either by looking at some draft text or hearing your ideas about how to organize your discussion (that is, it won't work to just send me something and ask me to look it over for my general impression).

7. Due Dates: The first three essays are due on the following Fridays (9.25, 10.11, 11.6) in the canvas dropbox by 11:59 p.m. The fourth one is due on Tuesday 11.24. I do not accept late papers (with the exception of a serious illness or other event).

8. However, there is a grace period: Each of the essays has a firm due date, which will be on the canvas calendar, helping to keep you on track. However, I leave the submission dropbox open for 24 hours (to 11:59 p.m. of the next day). This is an automatic grace period -- you do not need to ask for permission, it is already built into the grace period. There is no penalty for making use of the grace period. My experience has been that students typically finish their assignments close to the due date, and sometimes find they need just a bit more time to finish it, which means needing an extra day, so I provide a grace period so that you don't have to worry.

9. Essay Prep: Your basic prep is to do the reading and to access the companion materials to learn about the historical context and related topics to the main one that you can draw on for your discussion. The other assignments also help you prepare for the essay, and you are welcome to make use of any of your work for the class to that date (as long as you cite it). You can also reference comments your colleagues may have made in the discussions or their blog posts, etc., as long as you provide a citation. In addition, several of the blog posts will ask you to discuss an aspect of the book for that unit, which also serves as a warm-up for the essay.

10. Grading: The explanation for how I assign grades is described in the "Grading Guidelines" page. I will do my best to provide a grade and comments within 7-10 days of when you submitted the essay, so that you have feedback before going into the next assignment.