Official Beginning Time: 9:00PM (Eastern) on Thursday, 10.6.05
Official Deadline Time: 9:00PM (Eastern) on Friday, 10.7.05
YOUR READINGS/ASSIGNMENTS SO FAR THIS SEMESTER
You were to have read 3,482 words for the section of "TQIC" devoted to "Writing a Thesis." Thus, you should know the essentials of writing your own theses and identifying the theses of your readings.
Additionally:
- You were to have read 2,251 words for Horace Miner's rather fun essay, "Body Ritual among the Nacirema." You should therefore be able to identify his thesis and his support for it.
- You were to have read 1,437 words excerpted from Jimmy Carter's somewhat dour speech, "Crisis of Confidence: Energy and National Goals." You should therefore be able to identify his thesis and his support for it.
- You were to have read 4,416 words for Katherine S. Newman's "American Nightmares" piece. You should therefore be able to identify her thesis and her support for it.
- You were to have read 3,525 words for Charles Derber's quite shocking "The Good Man Fills His Own Stomach." You should therefore be able to identify his thesis and his support for it.
- You were to have read 2,960 words for P.J. O'Rourke's essay titled "Slamming and Jamming." You should therefore be able to identify his thesis and his support for it.
- You were "Pop Quizzed" to be sure you'd correctly identified those theses and their authors' support.
Also:
You were to have written abstracts for the above-mentioned readings as well as for your Nacirema essay, placing them correctly in your WRA135 webfolio.
Plus:
You were to be certain your SLWP Webfolio (as linked on this semester's SLWP Agency List) was "up to date" and thus ready for your Agency Contact Person to view.
ASSIGNMENT FOR MIDTERM ONE'S "ESSAY" COMPONENT
Open your WRA135 and SLWP webfolios in Netscape Communicator's "edit" mode. (You may well wish to open them separately - just be certain the ENTIRE assignment for this "essay" is completed before 9PM on Friday, 10.7.05.)
Be sure you can access the "web" folder of your Andrew File Space (AFS).
SLWP WEBFOLIO
Imagine you are your SLWP Agency Contact Person. What would you expect from an MSU student who will be representing your agency? (Remember: GREAT things have come from the Service-Learning Writing Program!)
As it's always a course requirement anyway, make CERTAIN your SLWP Webfolio is PERFECT. By "perfect," that's just what's meant. That is, no "place holder" links, no "dead images," no mentions of the Hypothetical Zone or Alice McDonald, no specific phrases from the sample I wrote, and - to be sure - NO DEAD LINKS and NO LINKS TO PAGES THAT AREN'T YOURS (unless you explain WHY they're to, say, a different agency, as required by the Agency Fact File).
Send your revised SLWP webfolio - correctly filenamed! - to your AFS space in the right folders.
WRA135 WEBFOLIO
As it's always a course requirement anyway, write objective abstracts - each being between 50-150 words - of your five readings (Miner, Newman, Derber, O'Rourke) as well as your Nacirema essay. REMINDER: hundreds of thousands of sample abstracts (however abbreviated) are available at ProQuest.
Thus, you are to make PERFECT your WRA135 webfolio (as found on the Student Class Pages for the current semester) with correct abstracts for (at least) the following:
- Your Nacirema Essay
- Your Pop Quiz of 9.20.05
- Your Self-Description
- Your Rubric Strengths/Weaknesses
- Your GroupÕs Library Tour
- Carter Essay
- Miner Essay
- Newman Essay
- Derber Essay
- O'Rourke Essay
Send your revised WRA135 webfolio - correctly filenamed! - to the correct place in your AFS space.
Double/Triple/Quadruple/Whatever-check EVERYTHING to be CERTAIN it's all PERFECT. (By "perfect," gentle reader, that's just what's meant.)
So you're not actually "writing a take-home essay"; instead you're making CERTAIN you have your ATL135 webfolio completely UP TO DATE and PERFECT ... and that your SLWP webfolio is PERFECTLY READY for your Agency Contact Person (and the rest of your audience) to view. To be sure, if you've been FULLY keeping up with the class requirements as detailed during class sessions and via email, you can just walk away with a smile; you're already done! Otherwise, you have 26 hours to do what you've had about 5 weeks - on and off, that's over 860 hours - to accomplish.
That said, this clearly offers you an excellent opportunity to be unquestionably certain both your webfolios are, again, simply PERFECT. This is, as Martha Stewart might say, "a good thing."
Remember, this assignment counts just as much as your objective section of the First Midterm Exam. It receives, as you know, a Level II evaluation to factor in to your Final Evaluation for the course.
I have a "bot program" set up to automatically download ALL your webfolios to my computer's hard drive at precisely 9PM on Friday, 10.7.05. There are NO exceptions to this "time constraint." Just be sure your webfolios are all perfect (and check them on computers OTHER than the one you're currently on) and you'll be just fine.
REMEMBER: my bot program ONLY reads what's linked from these two pages
- http://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/135Students-F05.html
- http://www.msu.edu/~jdowell/135/AgencyList-F05.html
Therefore THOSE are the pages from which you will want to check your work!
Good luck and have some fun with this!
revised: 10.5.05