First, think about the groups to which you belong. We organize ourselves into communities and cultures based on the following:
The things we have (or objects that are common within that group).
The things we do.
The things we believe.
Places we have lived.
Physical constructs (i.e. our physical bodies and how these bodies interact with the world and carry socially constructed values. This can include mental health).
Our heritage or ethnicity (food and how we make it and what it means to us, clothing, literature/stories we are exposed to or seek out).
Social or cultural constructs.
Our attitude or personality.
Once you have brainstormed and picked your group/culture/community for this assignment, think about why your experience, your description of that experience, and your analysis of that experience are important and new—what perspective do you offer to the audience, what do you contribute to the conversation, what can you prove to your audience via a careful and critical analysis of personal experience?
The essay must do the following to meet the minimum requirements:
Be within the required word count.
Contain an introduction, conclusion, and thesis statement, which should appear at the end of the introduction.
Have a title, centered above the first paragraph (no bold or large font). Your title can be creative and clever. It must be descriptive and reflect your thesis statement.
Have an MLA Works Cited page and in-text citations for any sources other than your own observational evidence and self-reflection (must speak to me about these sources before submitting).
Follow the formatting guidelines in the syllabus.
Have strong and clear topic sentences that foreground/reveal the main point of a paragraph at its start.
Be free from errors (e.g. typos)—proofread your essay!
Include the final word count in brackets at the end of the essay.