Formal Essay Assignment: On the Good Life
This assignment asks you to give your opinion and/or explore different possibilities about what you want out of life. Is there one secret to life that everybody ought to pursue? Or is it completely different for everyone? Or is the truth somewhere in between? What, if anything, gives someone the right or authority to tell other people how to live? And just what is “the good life,” anyway? How can this be defined?
Here are some prompts to help get you started:
What did your parents or whoever raised you bring you up to believe constitutes “the good life?” Were they right? Were they way off? Do you think you’ve really decided yet? Could you see yourself changing your mind in the future about the way you answer these questions?
Should the good life be primarily defined as material? Intellectual? Spiritual? A proper balance among the various modes of human existence? Or what?
Are you living “your best life” right now? Why or why not? If you had to predict, how would you say this might change in the future?
Format requirements: Margins should be one inch all the way around. Essays should be typed, double-spaced, in Times New Roman or similar font, and 10-, 11-, or 12-point type. Your name should appear at the top of your essay, and you should give it a title of some kind. All essays must be submitted in Moodle. Email or file-sharing submissions will not be accepted. Any document you submit that is not a response to this assignment (e.g., the assignment sheet, a paper from another course, your grocery list, etc.) will receive a grade of 0 for the draft.
Length requirement: Essays must be 800 words minimum.
Grading:
Essay meets format requirements: 20%
Essay meets word count requirement: 20%
Essay has been proofread thoroughly, with minimal grammar, punctuation, or style errors: 20%
Essay is organized logically: 20%
Essay is a good-faith effort to reflect on author’s self-knowledge, and the “meaning of life”: 20%
