Reading for college often involves engaging with new types of texts—sometimes longer or denser than what you’re used to, sometimes surprising in their content, sometimes loaded with new concepts and vocabulary, and sometimes just opaque and confusing. Reading for college in many ways is not so different from meeting new people in college. Meeting new people requires that you pay attention to and learn about who’s in front of you, maybe listen in before contributing to the conversation, and perhaps ask questions in order to position yourself more comfortably and confidently. Meeting new people also means that at some point you have to figure out what you know and understand and think. Your new acquaintances will expect to hear your voice and ideas. 

For the Exploratory Essay I’d like you to carefully consider the ideas of our course readings and compose an essay that demonstrates your engagement with those ideas. The essay will require you to do several things with texts: you’ll need to figure out what the readings say and do, and in what ways their ideas and arguments differ and in what ways they connect; you’ll need to determine a point of entry for yourself—that is, decide which ideas in which texts are worth further attention and exploration; and you will eventually need to take stock of your own ideas, find a “place to stand” in relation to texts, and piece things together in an organized academic essay. 

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