Please spend some time this week contemplating your own needs for information that will enable you to make some practical decision. A decision about your own academic future or welfare might be just the ticket. But whatever the decision, it needs to be--

• one that you have not made yet
  
  
• one that you can't answer with what you already know
  

Write down some notes about your contemplations so that you'll have the information handy when you discuss this matter with others a week from today. By the end of that class, you should have in mind a reasonably clear QUESTION, about which you will need to make a DECISION, but about which you'll need more information before you can make the decision.

The question you'll eventually settle on should be valid for you--a question you really do want to answer and need to know more about. It should be relatively--

    PRACTICAL, rather than abstract

    LOCAL, rather than national or global

    SMALL, rather than large.

Furthermore, it must be--

     PERSONAL--the question MUST contain the word "I."

    CONTROVERSIAL--the more controversial, the better!
 

For example, it could be about the choice of a major. (NOT What should I major in? but Should I major in computer science or physics?)

• Or the choice of what to do when you've taken all the credits here at Reynolds that will transfer to a university. 
  
• Or whether to sign your uniform donor card, in your Virginia driver's license.    
• Or whether to keep on working full-time, or quit your job, get a loan, and study full-time.    
• Or whether to leave your body to medicine, through the Anatomical Society, or some other such organization.    
• Or whether to rent a house at the beach for your vacation next summer.    
• Or whether to have your male children circumcised.    
• Or whether to send your children to Children's World or the Richmond Montessori School.   
  
• Or whether to quit your job and stay home with your young kids.    
• Or whether to educate your children yourself at home, instead of turning them over to a government school.    
• Or whether to change your name when you get married.   
  
• Or whether to continue living with your parents or get your own apartment.    
• Or whether to be cremated or buried when you 
• Or whether to trust your dentist's sterilization procedures.    
• Or whether to put your fortune into an IRA or a CD or give it to the Salvation Army.   
  
• Or whether to fix up your old klunker, or replace it with a new or newer car.    
• Or whether to make out a "living will" that will prevent a hospital from keeping you alive through "heroic efforts."
  

Or almost anything like that--just as long as it's something that you really want to decide about but can't decide without first getting more information.

Also: your question should be such that you can become the world's leading expert on it in about one month--so you can see that it needs to be relatively small and constrained.  On the other hand, it needs to be large enough so that your report of your answer to the question will occupy about 3 or 4 pages.  That's arbitrary; but the question ought to be real and pressing for you.
 
 

Related documents

Reporting The Quest - How to do this assignment.

Researching & Reporting - How different "research papers" work and which to do for this course.

Attribution & Documentation - How to do the "he said" and "she said" stuff