Mini-Assignment B due Sunday, Sept. 11 – Brainstorming For Essay
This mini-assignment is all about brainstorming ideas for your essay. You can complete it however you brainstorm best. Maybe you want to list ideas, maybe you want to draw a diagram connecting difference pieces of your thoughts, maybe writing helps you clarify things so full sentences work best for you. However you like to brainstorm is fine, just do it in a Word document or PDF that you can upload to Moodle. You'll want to revisit this later to help you write your essay!
Look over the description of Assignment 1: What is a Life of Significance? Break out the different questions it asks you to consider (hint: look under the Goal and Situation/Challenge sections). For each question, brainstorm some concepts, topics, or ideas you might want to talk about in your essay.
Draw on our class discussions (including the post-it exercise), the Parker Palmer book, the videos on narrative identity and growth mindset, the podcast on living a good enough life, and the alumni panel discussion from Common Hour. What do you think, feel, believe about these ideas? What questions do you have that you could wrestle with in your essay?
Example: Must one be famous or can one be relatively unknown? Does one have to have a “big” impact or can one’s direct impact be small?
I think my parents live a life of significance
Is my mom’s life significant if she mostly impacts me?
What about civil rights leaders who aren’t famous? Relatively unknown but had big impact?
Is it about how many people you impact or how deeply you impact them even if it’s just a few people?