writing-Who are your role models, and why?

Purpose:  Set your short-term goals (what you want to get out of this course) and explain how those goals can help you reach your long-term goals.

Here is an example of a brief, philosophical definition of success:

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ultimately, before we can know if we are successful, we must first define what success means for ourselves.

Task: 

For your first journal entry assignment, you’ll write about what success means to you, both generally, and specifically for this course. 

For many people in college, success means good grades, learning something new, ticking a box, or getting a step closer to a new career or goal.  Often we can increase our motivation by relating our academic tasks to our larger or longer-term goals, such as caring for our family, working in a desired field, feeling good about ourselves, or living where and how we want to live.

Step 1:  Write a paragraph or two defining what success means to you both in college and beyond.  To help you write this entry, consider some of the following questions as starting points or inspiration:

• Find a quote (such as the one above) that best summarizes your definition of success, and explain why it represents your ideas around success and your goals.
• Who are your role models, and why? 
• What outcomes do you associate with success?  What do you think those outcomes will require of you?
• What is the biggest change you need to make in order to become successful in college? 
• What supports or resources do you have to help you on your journey to success?

Step 2:  List each of the ENGL 1101 course objectives (you can find them in the Syllabus), and next to each one, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 based on how well you would do at that objective right now.  You may have never even attempted some of the course objectives, so it would be absolutely appropriate to rate yourself pretty low on those.  At the end of the course, you’ll do this again to check your progress.

Step 3:  Pick three of the objectives, and write about how achieving them might contribute to your long-term success in the “real world” beyond college.

File submissions:  Please submit your file as a DOC.X or PDF file.

Criteria on which you will be graded:

Fulfillment of the three steps above

Course Objectives

In this course, you will:

• Demonstrate critical thinking and critical reading strategies.
• Use a writing process to produce writing.
• Write complete and clear sentences that are grammatically correct according to standard written English.
• Use correct spelling and punctuation.
• Develop unified coherent paragraphs by expressing controlling ideas.
• Support and clarify ideas with specific evidence and details.
• Plan writing in light of situation, audience, and purpose.
• Follow a format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation.
• Introduce and close essays while linking paragraphs logically and clearly.
• Write for varied purposes informing, analyzing and arguing.
• Select an organizational approach and style appropriate to varied situational contexts.
• Synthesize information and ideas from one or more sources and explain.
• Integrate appropriate information from outside sources in the appropriate style and form.
• Use GALILEO and Web search engines to locate information.
• Critically evaluate sources and assess varied perspectives and viewpoints.