Please write an essay of approximately 1,000 words in response to ONE of the prompts below, and post it in your Learning Journal, with the words Spring Final at the top of the entry. In order to receive feedback to help you revise, you must post a complete draft in your learning journal by noon on Friday, May 27. Your revised draft is due by noon on Friday, June 3. Some advice: (1) Trust me: You want feedback; you want to revise. (2) This essay should be as polished as your most wonderful WRIT essay. And (3): There is no I mean NO margin of error for late or incorrectly shared papers.
Prompt 1: How Ill Live My Learning
Youve probably heard the expression Be the change that you want to see in the world. What change do you want to see in the world? How will it contribute to creating a more socially just world? And how will you be that change in the years to come?
Imagine next year: How will you start (or continue) to be that change? Why? Imagine the rest of your time in college: How will you be that change? Why? Imagine yourself 10 years from now? How will you be that change? Why? What will you take from our conversations, readings, or viewings in the LLC this year to guide you along the journey youve described? Please explain your choices.
Please note that the questions above dont call for short answers; rather, theyre meant to guide you through the steps of a single, coherent argument, to be composed as a single essay. Also, note that you are to draw upon terms and concepts weve learned about this year in class.
Prompt 2: Volunteer reflection
Reflect upon your volunteer work this term. How has your understanding of the nature and purpose of social justice work developed or changed as a result of your experience? How has your understanding of yourself changed?
(The best way to approach this one is probably to narrate your experience for the first half of the paper, and then, in the second half, to analyze it drawing upon terms and concepts weve learned about this year in class.)
Prompt 3: Connect, Question, Respond
Drawing upon reading that youve done for a different class this year, formulate and respond to a question about a topic in social justice.
(If you choose this option, you must write your question and get it approved by me in class. And by question I mean not only the question itself, but a full and carefully crafted paragraph that contextualizes that question and makes the connections to outside texts.)
Prompt 4: Climate Refugees
Pick one:
1. How do mainstream media and politicians seek to advance their own interests through the way that they lump together refugees of natural disaster and their situations with the situations faced by American racial minorities? 2. How does climate change contribute to the forms of social injustice connected to food insecurity? 3. How have Western/colonial leaders used their power to perpetuate the economic hierarchies that keep climate refugees oppressed? What is the social fallout of this hierarchy? 4. Many critics of the idea of allowing Syrian refugees into America argued (especially on social media) that the US ought to focus on the plight of homeless US veterans instead. However, some of these online critics never posted anything about housing the homeless prior to the refugee crisis. Why do you think that at-home activism becomes so much more popular during a time when an other population needs American help? When and under what circumstances is it valid to compare social justice issues, such as the plight of homeless veterans and that of stateless people, against each other?