Revised Last Five Weeks & Paper #2!

NOTE: The questions and video for this week are in the posts below this one! 

Below is the revised schedule for all General Humanities classes (I'm no longer worrying about individual days anymore).  

NOVEMBER

M 2 – F 6:        The Gift, Part 1: video and questions (assign Paper #2)

M 9 – F 13:      The Gift, Part II: video and questions 

M 16 – F 20:    Othello, Act 1: video and questions (Paper #2 due Friday by 5pm)

M 23 – F 27:    Othello, Act 2-3: only questions / Thanksgiving Break

DECEMBER 

M 30 – F 4:      Othello, Acts 4-5: video and questions

Paper #3 (Final) due TBA 

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Paper #2: Sage Advice 

Only when your sickness becomes sick/will your sickness disappear (Tao te Ching, Verse 71)

For your second paper, I want you to write a letter of advice to someone close to you: it could be a parent, a sibling, a friend, a significant other, or even yourself (the past or future you—or even the present you). In this letter, you should offer help/advice/insight to someone who is going through a tough time, or has some sort of conflict or pain that you feel you could help with. The trick is that you’re going to give them advice by connecting 3-4 poems from both the The Gift and the Tao te Ching as your ‘message.’

The poems you choose should hover around the same kind of advice about living, healing, accepting, understanding, etc. Your paper should introduce each poem to the reader and explain what these poems mean, and how they can collectively offer wisdom to help the person either heal, or move forward, or keep something important in mind. You SHOULD NOT quote the entire poem in your paper. Rather, quote a few lines from each one that represents the most important part of the message/advice. I want most of your paper to be your writing, and your analysis of the poems—what they say, how they connect, and why you think they offer a valuable lesson to this person.

In general, use the poems to give a message of hope, perseverance, consolation, or simply, love. Though you can say anything (you can even criticize the person in question!), I’ll be grading it on the following factors:

• Connection of the poems (if the poems seem logically to build on one another, and aren’t chosen at random)
• Understanding of the poems (you can explain what each one means and why you chose them)
• Unified theme or message (that your paper seems to offer a general message using the poems and doesn’t go all over the place)
• Proper citation (introducing the poems and cite the page #’s of each quote)

Paper #2 is due in two weeks—Friday, November 20^th by 5pm (for all classes) by e-mail. Good luck and please e-mail me with any questions or concerns!