Purpose:  In this essay, you get a chance to tackle a question that has been on your mind or that is interesting to you related to the semester's work.  You might go back to an early question.  You might reflect more deeply on something that has come up in your journal.  In any case, you will take a position on a question/issue of importance to you and argue for your point in a well-organized essay that leads the reader through your thinking on a variety of perspectives and evidence.  You should be able to have some fun with this essay as well as fulfill the requirements.

Reading Possibilities
1. Selected essays in Rereading America
  "Higher Education:  Colder by Degrees" (228) and "The Gender Wardens" (491).  Apply your thinking about community to the possibility that college education creates separate and unequal futures for men and women--or doesn't!
  "From Ragged Dick" (306), "Horatio Alger" (320), and/or "The Black Avenger" (376).  Further explore what happens when the American dream meets racism--or doesn't!
  "Color Blind:  The Whiteness of Whiteness" (623), "C. P. Ellis" (575), "I'm OK, You're Selfish" (handout), and/or "TV, Freedom, and the Loss of Community" (718).   Further explore the responsibilities of the individual to the community.
  "TV, Freedom, and the Loss of Community" (718), "Hate Radio" (746), and/or "The Computerized Campus" (277).  Think about how the media and the computer affect the way we think about community.
  "A Society Without Poverty" (handout) [more essay choices to come] What happens when we focus too much on fitting in? 
  "C.P. Ellis" (575) and "The Hard Part Is Making It Happen" (289).  How does change in communities come about?
  "TV, Freedom, and the Loss of Community" (718) and "New Peoples and New Societies" (688).  What IS community, after all?
  "I'm OK, You're Selfish" (handout), "A Society Without Poverty" (handout), and/or "TV, Freedom, and the Loss of Community" (718).  Where does our society fit on the individualism-community continuum?
2. Material from Essay IV
3. Other material appropriate to the particular issue found either through the Internet or a library search
4. Your SHU project journal

Essay Requirements
*  Introduce an issue/question of importance to you so that you communicate its importance to the general reader
*  Incorporate evidence from sources representing multiple perspectives in order to make an argument for a particular way of seeing your issue (your main idea).   These sources will include at least two essays from Rereading America, one other source of your choice from the internet or something you read for Essay IV, and your own experiences and observations (possibly from your journal).  The sources should be used in a substantive way to develop your argument.
*  Help the reader with the transitions in your thinking as you move from one part of your essay to the next.
*  Conclude in a way that integrates all that you've said and leaves the reader with the sense of having arrived somewhere beyond the initial statement of the idea.
*  Incorporate outside sources properly
*  3-4 pages, double-spaced, following MLA format, with meta-text

A Way to Move from Readings to First Draft