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6. The Analytical Essay: "Scrolling Forward in your Career and Life"

  • Assigned: September 23
  • Due: December 16

In his introduction to Scrolling Forward, David Levy writes, "I am less interested in persuading you that I am right than in encouraging you to think things through for yourself and from your own experience" (6).

Write an eight-to-twelve-page essay in which you engage a particular question or issue raised by Levy in Scrolling Forward by recounting in detail an experience with the class projects this semester and/or an experience you've had with creating documents. At the same time, project your analysis/experience forward to the possibilities of creative practice in your intended field of work (or perhaps in a political, civic or cultural endeavor that you will be involved with).

Format

  1. Begin your essay by introducing the question or issue you've chosen from Levy and stating a "thesis" about it--that is, one conclusion that encapsulates your perspective. The punchier and more surprising, the better. You'll want to include in your introductory paragraph a provocative quotation from Levy to hook the reader. (Suggestion: rewrite this after you finish writing the body of the essay.)
  2. The point of this essay is to use an idea from Levy to enable some creative contact between your experience and your analysis of future creative pracitce in your life and/or career. You'll want to avoid, therefore, putting the idea from Levy, your experience, and your analysis of the future in different sections. Instead, try breaking down Levy's question/issue and using the component ideas as the major sections of your essay. Within each of those sections, then, talk about both your past/present experience and your speculations about the possibilities of creative practice in your field.
  3. End the essay by briefly recalling the thesis or conclusion you presented in the introduction and adding something extra (a "kicker"), perhaps an example, detail, quotation or observation that's interesting, funny, or thought provoking which you didn't include in the essay so far, but which suggestions a further implication of your analysis, or that illustrates or crystallizes your overall point.

Quotations, Citations and Documentation

Be very scrupulous about putting quotes around other writers' words and crediting the quotations with in-text citations. Failing to do so, even accidentally or ignorantly, is plagiarism, and is grounds for failure of the paper and the class. If you paraphrase an author, be sure to use your own words and sentence structures.

Be sure to cite the authors and page numbers parenthetically in the text--at the end of the sentence where the quotation appears--and document the source in a "Works Cited" page at the end of the essay using MLA format.

There is no self commentary required for the paper.

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