For a change of pace and to help focus our exam review, please follow the following prompt for Blog Post #5, due Tuesday 10/27:

Put yourself in my shoes and write a plausible essay question for the exam. Then put your own shoes back on and answer it. Some suggestions:

1. The question should require one to marshal evidence from more than one writer we’ve read.
2. Ideally, the question should require an argument to answer it. So it should not ask for description or regurgitation, but for taking a position on something.
3. The question should need a substantial response to adequately deal with it: maybe 1000 words, on the long end of our usual blog posts.

Have fun with it!

As you know, there is a midterm for this class.  It is, however, a bit eccentric: I’ve scheduled it to coincide with a day that I’m missing, so it’s a takehome essay exam that you will have 24 hrs to complete and submit via email.  The exam will be open-book, open-note, and it will require you to think rather than regurgitate.  I will scale it to take about 90 mins on average (though of course you’re free to take more time), since I want to limit your time expenditure to what you would be doing if the exam were in-class.  A few more detailed guidelines:

FORMAT: short answer + long essay

I will give you five questions that can be answered in a longish paragraph.  These will look an awful lot like the study questions I’ve posted on the blog (hint, hint).  There will be some choice as well: perhaps seven questions of which to choose five.

I will also give a few longer essay topics, of which you will choose one.  These will be meatier and ask you to make connections across texts.  The best essays will be at least a few paragraphs in length, have an argument, and use evidence from the texts to support that argument.

TIME BUDGET/SCORING:

The short answers will require about 6 mins each (for 30 mins all together) and will earn up to 8 points each (45 points in total)

The essay will require about 60 mins and will earn up to 55 points.

LOGISTICS:

I will post the exam on the course blog by 10am on Friday, 10/30.  You will email it to me by 10am on Saturday, 10/31 (spooky, I know).  You will write the essay on MS Word or Google Docs or whatever word processor, and send it as an attachment or link to [email protected].  It is your responsibility to make time/space to have a working computer and internet connection over the course of the 24 hours to make this happen.  Given the many resources the College offers in terms of library laptop loans, computer labs, etc., not to mention the tens of thousands of free wifi hotspots around the city, I won’t accept any “the dog ate my email” excuses.  I will check my email on 10/31 and immediately contact you via email if there’s a problem.  If you don’t hear from me, rest assured that I got your exam.

HOW TO STUDY:

The first priority is to make sure you’ve caught up on your reading.  Anything we will have read by Tuesday, 10/27 is fair game.  Second, you should review all notes you’ve taken in class, since I often track the study questions posted on the blog rather closely in leading discussions.  Third, you should test yourself by attempting to answer the aforementioned questions.  Finally, try to think about broader themes that link texts together, since that’s what I’ll be thinking about when I draft the questions for the long essay.