Criteria: an issue for which you are passionate, that you care deeply about, that affects you or affects people you know
Audience: smart, educated, curious readers and critical thinkers
Length: 1000-1250 words
Brainstorming inquiry questions:
- What is empathy?
- What is an immigrant?
- Does Facebook make you hate people you know, and does Tumblr make you love people you don’t know?
- What is privilege, white privilege, and unearned privilege?
- Does technology bring us closer together or does it isolate us?
- What is privacy?
- Why am I — or we — in college?
- Should colleges ban fraternities?
- What is a “millennial,” and are you one?
- What are you doing for justice?
- What does depression feel like?
- Why do we take & share selfies?
- How is your generation using the words “bitch” and “bitches”? Why?
- Why is youth & teen culture hyper-sexualized?
- How do we write about love? Scroll down to “Attention College Students …”
Then, in an exploratory essay of 250-350 words …
Connect & Analyze
- What am I a part of? What matters to me?
- What problems exist that I can treat as opportunities?
- What do I see well, and what am I blind to? How does my own perspective impact what I see?
- What are the “parts” of the world, and within those parts what deserves my creativity, affection, and sustained effort?
Contextualize
- What is the history of this problem?
Imagine & Design
- What is possible? What would be awesome?
- What am I uniquely suited to do? How can technology amplify my potential?
- Who can I work with to improve the response?
- What absolutely has to happen for this to work?
Act & Socialize in an Op-Ed Essay
- What is the most meaningful action I can take in response?
- Who is my primary audience? How can I best reach them?
- How can I best package my work so that others understand & are moved by it?
- How will I know if what I’m doing is working?
Adapted from Te@chthought for WRD103.