CIE100: Common Intellectual Experience - Essay 1 (100 Points)

Purpose, Task, and Criteria

Purpose: To turn close reading into a specific, arguable claim by asking what it takes to see the world, and ourselves, more clearly.

Task: Write a 1200-1500 word MLA essay that advances a contestable thesis on one of the prompts, grounded in close reading of Plato, Adichie, and/or Merz, and built through the draft-and-revision process.

Criteria: I assess your thesis, how you develop the argument, how you use and synthesize textual evidence, your organization, and your citations. The revision itself carries real weight; the rubric below has the full breakdown.

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:
  1. To formulate a clear, arguable thesis statement
  2. To support a thesis with carefully chosen quotes from primary sources
  3. To engage substantively with the drafting and revision process
  4. To explore the question of what a real education and real unlearning require

Background Reading and References

Please refer to the following readings and examples offering templates to help get you started:

The Assignment

In this first essay of 1200 to 1500 words, please construct an argument grounded in close reading of the texts we have discussed so far, which are Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Adichie’s Dear Ijeawele, and Katie Merz’s Live the Questions. The essay takes up the first core question of the course, what should matter to me, by asking what it takes to see the world, and ourselves, more clearly.

Prompt

Choose one of the following options. Whichever option you choose, your essay must advance a specific, arguable thesis and support it with carefully selected quotations from the text(s), cited in MLA format.

  1. Plato and Adichie both describe a process of unlearning. The prisoner has to turn away from the shadows, and Ijeawele’s daughter has to be raised against the grain of the “conditioning” her culture supplies. Construct an argument about what a real education requires, grounded in close reading of one or both texts. You are welcome, though not required, to test your argument against an example of unlearning from your own experience or from contemporary life.

  2. The freed prisoner returns to the cave at real personal risk, and Adichie writes a letter she knows the very people it hopes to help may resist. Construct an argument about what people who come to see differently owe the communities they came from, and about what limits, if any, bound that obligation.

  3. Katie Merz’s Live the Questions poses its questions in glyphs and images instead of sentences. Using the Smokestack installation alongside one written text from this unit, construct an argument about how visual and written texts pose questions differently, and about what each form can do that the other cannot.

Scaffolded Deliverables

You will develop this essay in three stages, and together those stages make up the 100 points of this assignment. The thesis statement, quote list, and rough outline are worth 10 points, the complete first draft is worth 30 points, and the revised final draft is worth 60 points. You must meet in person with our Writing Fellow between the first and final drafts, and your final draft has to respond substantively to that conversation. Cosmetic edits don’t count as revision. That meeting is worth 10 of the 100 points, all or nothing, so meeting without revising earns zero on that row, and so does revising without meeting. Please name the change the conference produced in your revision memo, so the credit is easy for me to see. Book early, since the whole section shares one Writing Fellow.

  1. Thesis Statement, Quote List, and Rough Outline. A one to two sentence working thesis, a list of four to six quotations (with page numbers) that you expect to use as evidence, and a paragraph-level outline.
  2. First Draft. A complete draft of the full 1200 to 1500 words, and not a partial sketch. The more complete your draft is, the more useful your Writing Fellow conference will be.
  3. Final Draft. The revised essay, accompanied by a brief (one paragraph) revision memo describing what you changed and why.

Submission Instructions

Please submit each deliverable through Canvas before the start of class on its due date, as listed on the course schedule. If you consulted a generative AI tool for a purpose the course policy permits, such as refining a research question, please disclose that use in your Acknowledgements section. The writing itself has to be entirely your own.

If collaboration with a buddy was permitted, did you work with a buddy on this assignment? If so, who? If not, do you certify that this submission represents your own original work? Please identify any and all portions of your submission that were not originally written by you.

Submission

Submit a word processed or PDF document through Canvas before the start of class on each due date.

Assignment Rubric

Description Pre-Emerging (< 50%) Beginning (50%) Progressing (85%) Proficient (100%)
Thesis: An Arguable Claim About the Text (20%) No thesis, or a statement of topic ('This essay is about Plato's cave') rather than a claim. A reader cannot tell what you are arguing. A thesis is present, but no one would dispute it. It summarizes what the text says, or observes something the text itself states outright. Nothing is at stake. The thesis makes a claim a reasonable reader could reject, and it is specific to this text rather than to the topic in general. It may still be broader than the essay can actually support in 1200-1500 words. The thesis makes a specific, arguable claim that this essay is the right size to defend, and it engages one of the course's core questions (what should matter to me, how should we live together, how can we understand the world, what will I do) instead of floating free of all four. By the end of your first paragraph I know what you claim and why someone might disagree.
Quotation and the Work It Does (20%) Few or no quotations, or quotations dropped into the essay with no framing and no comment. The passage is left to speak for itself, and it will not. Quotations appear, but you chose them for what they are about rather than for how they are written. They restate a point you already made in your own words instead of giving your reader something to look at. Quotations are well chosen and introduced, and most are followed by comment. Some passages run longer than the point requires, or the comment paraphrases where it should analyze. Every quotation is an anchor passage in the sense we practiced in the close reading workshop. You chose it because its particular words matter, quoted only as far as you needed to, framed it so your reader knows where they are in the text, and followed it with commentary that does work the quotation cannot do alone. The essay reads as though you selected the passages on a second pass through the text.
From Observation to Interpretation (15%) The essay reports what happens in the text. Observations are listed without being connected to any claim. Some interpretation appears, but the essay returns repeatedly to summary, and the reader is left to supply the connection between the evidence and the claim. You consistently turn observations into interpretation, and you usually state the warrant (why this passage supports this claim) instead of assuming it. Some paragraphs still stop one step short. Each paragraph moves from something specific on the page to something your reader could not have seen without you, and states the warrant connecting the two. Where a passage admits an alternative reading, the essay acknowledges it instead of pretending the passage can only mean one thing.
Structure and Movement (10%) Paragraphs appear in no discernible order; the essay could be rearranged without loss. The essay has an order but the reader has to reconstruct it. Paragraphs cover more than one idea, or transitions announce topic changes without connecting them. Each paragraph does one job, and the transitions connect ideas instead of just marking a change of subject. The overall arc is clear, if occasionally repetitive. The paragraphs are ordered so that each one earns the next, the essay builds toward its claim instead of piling up material, and the conclusion says something the introduction could not have said.
MLA Citation and Quotation Mechanics (10%) Citations are absent, or quoted material is not marked as quoted. Citations are present but inconsistent in format, or page and line references are missing. MLA in-text citations and the Works Cited are correct apart from minor slips, and quotations fit grammatically into your own sentences. MLA format is correct throughout, quotations are integrated so the sentence reads naturally with the quoted words in it, and alterations and ellipses are marked honestly.
Writing Fellow Conference and Response (all or nothing) (10%) No conference took place. 0 of 10 points, because this row carries no partial credit. No conference took place, or one was scheduled and missed. 0 of 10 points. The conference took place, but the final draft does not respond to what was said in it. 0 of 10 points, since attending is necessary and not sufficient. You met in person with our Writing Fellow between the first and final drafts, and the final draft visibly responds to that conversation, with a change you can point to and name in your revision memo. Full 10 points.
Revision (Substantive Change Between Drafts) (15%) The final draft is the first draft with the typos corrected. There is no revision memo, or the memo describes edits where it should describe changes. There are sentence-level changes, but the argument, the evidence, and the structure are still the ones the first draft had. You acknowledge the Writing Fellow feedback without acting on it. The final draft changes something that matters, whether that is a claim sharpened, a paragraph resequenced, or weak evidence replaced, and the revision memo explains what you changed and why. At least one change responds to the Writing Fellow conference. The revision reconsiders the essay instead of repairing it. Perhaps the thesis is different because drafting taught you something, or you cut evidence that did not survive scrutiny. The revision memo names the specific feedback and the specific change, and it can say what the essay now argues that the draft could not.

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