I want to draw on your wealth of academic experiences. Over the course of your education, you have learned some important lessons for yourself. You undoubtedly have some significant expertise in areas that might include:
achieving academic success
solving problems
learning effectively
dealing with your workload
managing your time effectively
coping with college life
interacting with fellow students
interacting with professors
dealing with groups and group work
simultaneously balancing your personal life, relationships, work, and education
etc., etc., etc.
Some of the things you have learned about navigating university life and achieving academic success came to you easily. There are also some lessons that, inevitably, you learned “the hard way” (a few of the most important things I’ve learned in my life came from making some downright awful choices, taking personal responsibility for those choices, suffering the consequences, and then figuring out how to make better choices in the future). But whatever you learned and however you learned it, much of what you know can be traced back to at least one particular experience; that experience can be the source of a story has great potential to help others.
Imagine first-generation college student (i.e., they are the first in their family to attend university) just starting their first year here at CSUN next Fall. Think about one thing that you have learned about college life and success about which they would benefit from hearing. Think about something that would be better for them to learn from you, rather than having to figure it out for themselves or learn that lesson “the hard way” by making mistakes.
Please share with us a memory about an academic experience from which you learned something important. Orient that story toward this first-year, first-generation student. Don’t just say what you learned; instead, use language to paint a picture about your lived experiences. By the end of your story, if you told it well, we should understand clearly what you learned from your experience.
Remember that stories have plot and character development. Generally, the plot of a story should move along at a lively pace, establishing a scene, describing a conflict, and then relating how that conflict was resolved. Stories have characters that have personalities, beliefs, reactions, knowledge, quirks, values, emotions, etc. Some characters may be protagonists and others, antagonists. Stories might have heroes and villains. These things need to be portrayed efficiently in your story.
And another important note on utilizing description and imagery: Don’t just tell us. Instead, SHOW us. For example, it is one thing to tell us that a character in your story is introverted; Like saying “Kendall was very introverted.” But this is neither interesting nor engaging. Instead, show us that personality trait enacted by the character. What does this character do and say that leads us to the conclusion that they are introverted? If we understand how a person behaves and how they interact with others, we can figure out for ourselves that they are introverted. We don’t need you to tell us because we can see it. Don’t tell; SHOW. If you understand nothing else about storytelling, this is the thing to understand.
After spending some time developing your story, post it in this week’s discussion board. In a few days come back and comment on at least three of your classmates’ stories. Specifically, state wat you saw as the “take away” (the lesson learned) in the story, mention how clearly you say that message come through in the story, and give suggestions on how the storyteller might better SHOW (not just tell) the events and characters that lead up to the moral of the story. The discussion board will be available for four days following the due date for you to continue your conversations. You can post this a as a written story, or you are also welcome to post a video, if you prefer. Either format is acceptable – pick the one that is most effective for you. You can post a video to a discussion board using exactly the same process that I explained last week for posting video to a page. Or, in this case, you might even just want to use the web cam option and record directly to your disucssion board post, which is also acceptable. After you send me my paper I will send you the other replies so you can reply to 3 of my classmates
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