Your Student Guide says that this assignment asks you to "identify an inquiry in which you have personal experience and interest" and then to write a "a narrative or description that enables readers to understand why you have chosen to conduct this particular inquiry" (153). You have already identified this inquiry in your Rhetorical Analysis and Persuasive essays, so I'd like to shift the focus of this assignment a bit. I would like you to apply the creative skills you've gained from your first two assignments towards the writing in your own life over this past semester.

Specifically, I want you to reflect on how you've been reading, writing, thinking, changing, growing, learning as a student, a thinker, a writer -- a human being -- this semester. I want you to gather your research-in-progress and remember -- or "reread" -- everything you've done this term -- in this class, your other classes, and your life outside of school (here is where your journal will come in handy). How have you revised yourself this term? What has changed for you? What have you learned about yourself and the person that you are? [quoted from "Essay #3: Self-Reflection," by Julie Jung, who devised this assignment]

Then, write/create a 4-6 page essay by doing the following:

• bring together some of the texts you've read and written this term -- you will already have selected which texts are meaningful to you. Quote or carefully paraphrase from these texts. You can attach the text(s) or incorporate them into your essay in some creative way. You'll probably quote yourself as you reread and reflect on your own writing.
• analyze and reflect on the significance of reading these texts. Don't simply give us a chronology of your work this term..."And then I read Beloved, which was really confusing. But I really liked the movie. And then I read about civil disobedience for this class...." Instead, explain why and how you read, wrote, and thought and felt as you did and do. Why do you interpret as you do? What life experiences, values, assumptions inform your meaning-making?
• get creative in both your content and form. Who you are as a person -- the contexts in your life -- should shape both your ideas and the form you use to express them. Do you identify as a student, a writer, an artist, a photographer, a filmmaker, a musician, a poet, a web designer, a scientist, a parent? How do these identities shape how and why you make and communicate meaning? How does the medium convey the message? Because this is a writing class, I'll need to see writing, but you can experiment with the kinds of writing you include as well as the form you use to communicate your message. [criteria taken from Jung assignment]

Evaluation: I'll follow the rubric used for your first two essays. What am I looking for? I can't say this any better than Julie Jung's formulation in her assignment description, where she says: "For this particular assignment, I will be impressed by an 'essay' that demonstrates your ability to analyze creatively. I'm looking for something called 'analytic passion.' Can you show me what it looks like? I want descriptive, full-bodied moments from the texts in your lives accompanied by wickedly intelligent analyses of their signficance."