This essay is different from the others.  Your assignment is to write a personal essay reflecting on your own experience of "the examined life" within and beyond this course.  Where are you going and where have you been in your journey of living the examined life?  Your essay must refer to at least three works or projects dealt with in Principia and should be at least 750-words long but may be longer.  Please include your P.O. Box number on your essay so I can return it to you because this is one paper I hope you will find to be worth rereading once or twice a year.

Evaluation Criteria:
Primary Criteria
· How insightful is your discussion of your own examination of life past, present, and future?
· How engaging and thoughtful are the three or more references to texts or materials considered over the course of this semester?
Secondary Criteria
· How unified is the essay?  Does it stick to one topic or does it jump from topic to topic, skipping across the surface and obstructing deep insight?
· Does the essay carry out an effective and appropriate pattern of organization?  Is the essay organized into well-developed paragraphs?
· How creative or original is the approach?  How much personality (or "voice") is apparent in the writing?
· Is the evidence cited and documented effectively in MLA style?

Suggestions:
· To prepare, study the progression of your Notebook to trace the development of your thinking.
· Return to the goals for Principia and the goals for academic life (in Agenda or in Cronon's essay) in the first set of readings.  These goals—or your own personal version of them—may play an important role in your essay.
· If the personal essay format is foreign to you, consider Malcolm X or Augustine as possible models.
· Use specific evidence from the primary works studied to support your generalizations about the issues you present.  Specific examples make your general points more effective, vivid, memorable, and concrete.
· Be sure to clarify what "the examined life" means to you since we have considered numerous variations on this theme.  A discussion of obstacles to living an examined life might also be worth incorporating.

The Retrospective Essay is due in Academy 304 (slide under my door if I am not in) by the end of the final examination week (December 16th by 1:00 p.m.) and is worth a possible total of 50 points.