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Due: Before class meeting #3, by email to both instructor and mentor. Length: 1 page (250 words) Estimated time to do assignment: <30 minutes Reasons: 1) encourage empathy with Humboldt as he first leaves his family home, then his country, then his continent, then his culture (and language); 2) inspire thinking about how we are affected by major changes in our lives, whether or not at the time we suspect or expect that they will happen, and then later when we understand better what has changed and how we have (been) changed; 3) strengthen descriptive and narrational skills in both concrete and abstract realms of experience and thought (particular emphasis on the various ways we might sequence the experiences we narrate); 4) preparation for discussion of learning outcomes and where we are at various times in our (self-)education; 5) prepare for reflection and self-evaluation at the end of the course, when we'll discuss "Coming home". Grading: on-time; critical thinking; expository language; revision. See "Scoring Guide for Reflective Writing" - Your assignment will be returned to you with the scoring guide and comments. Activity: Think about what "home" and "leaving" can mean, whether concrete or abstract, literal or metaphorical. Then write about leaving home (whether you have already or not, whether you regard leaving home as something that happens only once or may be repeated). Don't neglect the concrete information, but - unless you're a capable poet - concentrate more on concepts, meanings, implications, conclusions. Along with the usual 6 questions (Who, What, Where, When, and - especially! -Why and How), you can consider these: 1) If you've left home, have you arrived at A new home, THE new home, some place along the way? Food for thought - some iconic quotations about home, especially when we are far away from it: "There's no place like home." - Dorothy, movie The Wizard of Oz (1939) "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." - line from "Home, Sweet Home", well-known popular song, late 19th Century, and still widely known. Look Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again- title of novel (1929, 1940) by Thomas (not Tom) Wolfe; taken from an even more famous poem, "Lycidas", by an even more famous writer, John Milton "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." - poem "The Death of the Hired Man" (1915), by Robert Frost "I'm 500 Miles Away from Home" - 1961 folk-revival song, recorded by many singers, with much older roots in folk culture. The granddaddy of all literary passages about young people leaving home and then trying to get back is the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). --------NOTE-------- If for serious personal reasons you do not wish to write about your own home, family, and leaving home, either write about someone else's experience, or generalize the topic and write about what leaving home can mean to various people. |