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Final PaperDue Saturday, May 28 at 11:59 PMSociology 100Overview:This assignment invites students to reflect on what they have learned in the class, particularly with a focus on how the class has helped them develop a new understanding of their social worlds. This assignment requires students to engage in metacognition—understanding and being aware of one’s own thought processes.Submission Details:You must work aloneFinals should be at least three pages, double-spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman font with one-inch marginsYour final is due Saturday, May 28 at 11:59pm via Canvas (in the format lastname_final; e.g., Matheny_final). If you need an extension, please let me know. I will handle extensions on a case-by-case basis.Submissions must be in either Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or another word processor format (not as a Canvas in-line submission). Please let me know if you anticipate any issues submitting the paper in the appropriate format.Please note that I will be using a plagiarism checker, so be sure the paper is your own work (quotes are welcome, of course, but must be cited; even with quotes, at least 75% of the paper must be your own, original words).Accommodations:If for any reason you require accommodations for this assignment, please let me know.Guidelines:In this paper, you will describe your learning experience with at least three topics from the class (outlined below). For each topic you choose to discuss, please address the following:What you knew about the topic before the class, including assumptions or preconceptions you had about the topic (what did you think before?)To get you thinking about what to include, you might consider asking yourself the following questions: When I pictured this before, what did I think about? How did that image capture socially-constructed ideas about the topic? If someone had asked me to describe this before the class, how would I have answered them?Your experience learning about the topic—what surprised you, what is something you learned that week that you did not know, and what affirmed what you already know? What did you find easy about the topic, and what did you find difficult?How you now view social practices or institutions in your social world.To get you thinking about what to include, you might consider asking yourself the following questions: How have my assumptions (from #1 above) changed after taking the course, and how would I describe the topic to others now? What people or experiences in my everyday life did this teach me something new about, or that I saw in a new way?What is important for others to know about the topicTo get you thinking about what to include, you might consider asking yourself the following questions: What is one thing that stayed with me about the topic that I feel the need to share with others? If I were giving a “Sociology Crash Course” and had only one minute to describe this particular topic, what would I need to say? What am I not sure my peers really understood about the topic? What should we have discussed that we did not?Some of these topics can get personal. For example, you may have personal experience either working in or being a long-time visitor to a healthcare facility due to a parent’s illness, or you might have a cousin who has been incarcerated. You might think about your race, gender, or social class on a daily basis, or you may never have been conscious of these identities until we covered them in class. Both sets of experiences are perfectly appropriate for narrating in this assignment. You should not feel obligated to write about experiences that you find personally painful to discuss. Rather, you are welcome to approach this assignment and speak to whichever topics resonated with you, interested you, or challenged you.Possible topics you may write on from the class include the following:(you do not have to answer the accompanying question—that’s just to further illustrate the topic as it relates to the social world)Culture and Media – How do we portray and make sense of the world around us?Socialization and the Construction of Reality – How do we develop our norms and habits?Groups and Networks – How do we connect with one another?Social Control and Deviance – How do we maintain social control?Stratification – How do we create systems that perpetuate inequality?Research Methods – How do we study the social world?Gender – What is gender, and how do we know?Race/Ethnicity – What is race, and how do we know?Poverty – What makes poverty a social status?Health and Society – How are aspects of health socially constructed?Family – How are family structures a product of our social worlds?Education – How does education function for social reproduction or social mobility?Capitalism and the Economy – On what assumptions do we build our economic lives?Authority and the State – How is authority socially constructed?Religion – How does religion provide social structure?Collective Action, Social Movements, and Social Change – How are social movements social phenomena?Writing TipsYour writing should be formal in the sense that it should be generally grammatically correct, use standard paragraph form, and avoid colloquial language that goes unexplained (e.g., if you speak another language and include a specific term from that language, please define it), but it should be informal in that you may use first-person (I, me, we) language, sentence fragments where appropriate, and other stylistic choices. (For ideas on what this looks like, consider first-person essays online and other memoir-style pieces). The important thing is to write for understanding.For examples of what this looks like, consider googling essays from Tressie McMillan Cottom, Cathy Park Hong, or Eve Ewing.When you are beginning your essay, or when you are stuck, it is okay to tell a story. This can be a story you make up to illustrate a point, or it can be a real story that happened to you or someone you know to connect your personal experiences to the course content.It is okay (even preferable!) to combine topics if that makes more sense to you. For example, rather than writing about just “health and society,” you may find it makes the most sense to illustrate how “gender” and “health and society” connect, either because that is what resonates the most closely with your experiences or that is the dimension of “health and society” that resonated the most with you during the lesson. You do not have to be broad—you can be as narrow as you like. However, please note that if you write about an intersection, this still counts as one topic from the class. So writing about “health and society” and “gender” together counts as one topic. You may write about “health and society” and “race/ethnicity” together for a second topic, a different combination of topics, or a different broad topic from the class.It is okay (even preferable!) to reference your own and peers’ case studies, readings from the course, the chapter readings, and insights that you have had throughout the class as topics arise in everyday life. (If we just talked about the four-day workweek and you’re noticing your partner or parent is overworked, feel free to write about it).Grading:The paper is 25% of your overall grade in the course.Points will be allocated for this assignment as follows:AreaPossible PointsPrior Learning: Student describes what they knew about the topic before the class.10 – Student does this for one topic.12 – Student does this for two topics.14 – Student does this for three topics.16 – Student does this for two topics, with detail.18 – Student does this for three topics, with detail.20 – Student does this for three topics, with detail, including an illustration of their prior understanding for at least one.Experience Learning: Student describes their experience learning about the topic.10 – Student does this for one topic.12 – Student does this for two topics.14 – Student does this for three topics.16 – Student does this for two topics, with detail.18 – Student does this for three topics, with detail.20 – Student does this for three topics, with detail, including an illustration of their learning process for at least one.New Insights: Student describes how they see the social world now, given their learning.10 – Student does this for one topic.12 – Student does this for two topics.14 – Student does this for three topics.16 – Student does this for two topics, with detail.18 – Student does this for three topics, with detail.20 – Student does this for three topics, with detail, including an illustration of their new insight for at least one.Teaching: Student describes what it is important for others to know about the topic.10 – Student does this for one topic.12 – Student does this for two topics.14 – Student does this for three topics.16 – Student does this for two topics, with detail.18 – Student does this for three topics, with detail.20 – Student does this for three topics, with detail, including an illustration of their teaching recommendation for at least one.Mechanics: Student writes accessibly and follows instructions.10 – Student’s writing has many errors and student does not meet the page count.12 –Student’s writing has many errors or student does not meet the page count.14 – Student’s writing has some errors.16 – Student’s writing has few errors.18 – Student’s writing has no errors.20 – Student’s writing has few or no errors and is creative.Total Possible100Note that in most cases, to get full credit (20 points) for a section, the rubric requests an illustration for at least one of the topics in question. Here is what that can look like for the first three sections (Prior Learning, Experience Learning, and New Insights):A personal anecdoteLyrics from a songA quoteA brief excerpt from a book, article, or other reading not assigned during the course (or the description of one written out in your own words)A scene from a television show, movie, or musical (with a link, if applicable, or just the description of the scene)For the fourth section, teaching, you may do the same thing as above, but you may also include a suggested activity for how a topic that builds on a form of media described above. (E.g., if you include a lyric from a Nick Jonas song to illustrate New Insights of a topic, you may describe a brief activity around that song for your “illustration”).Please underline, italicize, or otherwise indicate where you have included each illustration.Bonus: You may earn extra points by answering the following questions with at least two sentences each. You may earn two points for answering one or five points for both.What did you like best about the course, and/or what would you be sure to repeat in future courses?What did you like least about the course, and/or what would you change in future courses? This can be about specific assignments, timelines, course structure, or other features. You can also include a description of something you wish you had but did not (e.g. more group work).
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