Final Paper Guidelines

Here are some guidelines for your final paper.

• Your paper should not be a research paper. You should draw heavily on the readings we've done, but there's no need to do additional research.
• Your final paper should be synthetic and analytic: make connections, analyze, draw conclusions, take a position, stake out some territory.
• Your paper should be around five to eight pages in length.
• Before writing, have a clear idea of who your intended audience is.
• I recommend writing in the first person.
• Your paper should be typed or word-processed, and you should fully cite all sources. I don't care what format you use, but you should be consistent.
• Feel free to use a format other than a standard essay. Possibilities include:
  • An open letter. The letter could be backward in time (e.g. to Oppenheimer in 1950), or current, or to someone in the future (perhaps to a scientist in 2050).
  • An op-ed piece or an opinion piece for a magazine or newspaper.
  • A work of fiction.
  If you plan on trying out any of these "non-standard" formats, please let me know beforehand.

Web page maintained by dave@hornacek.coa.edu.