Paper 2... OPTION 3!

Dear All,

This repeats what I sent earlier in an email to each of you, but I thought that by posting it to our blog this would allow you to converse more immediately about it via the comments function -- and thus arrive at a decision:

I want to clarify:  just as the paper 2 assignment instills (however playfully, illusively) a "choice" w/ regard to what text you can write on and how many words you can use, my offer to you of coming up with another/different paper 2 assignment is also a choice. In other words, I'm not judging you either way, with regard to the choice you ultimately make. I just want you to make an informed, conscious one, rather than one merely dictated to you. (And I want you to experience that the possibility for determining your own evaluative approach to the course material does exist... and what the ramifications/implications of this might be.)

That being said, it occurs to me that a third option (thus far) for your paper 2 assignment could be that you, in fact, write a critical paper defending the choice you would have made for the assignment, had you had to choose b/w either my "defend your own paper" assignment" or your "boardgame" assignment. In essence, then, for next Wed (4/15), you would bring a draft of this defensive argument with you to class and we would workshop this. A relatively straightforward assignment, yet also with a creative edge. This might be the most effective way to approach this assignment of "choice," as it were, b/c it hinges not on you developing a separate creative piece or inventing a new boardgame, but on the critical defense of why you would have chosen the one assignment over the other. Articulate the steps of your reasoning, replete with the thesis that says what you chose and how you plan to argue the choice and a conclusion that follows up with what you learned as a result of writing about choice as you did. Thus, you could argue for/bring into articulation the decision-making process that would have led you to execute one project over the other -- without actually doing either one -- all while engaging in a fairly analytical, self-aware approach to why you arrive at the decision(s) you do! (For my purposes, this then also allows us to hold in class next Wed the discussion about defensive, persuasive writing [and thus also offensive -- as in playing offense, not being crude!] that I do believe is an important discussion to have.)

I welcome your feedback!

j