PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE (aka My Brilliant Career)

The first paper will explore your past, present and future (and  begins to answer the main questions the course seeks to explore: Does history matter? Related and general questions are at http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/CourseQuestions.htm).
The purpose is threefold: 1) to get baseline writing sample 2) to allow you to do some analysis and synthesis of the journal work to determine what kind of career would best allow you to use your talents and 3) allow us to get to know other other a bit better, as we'll be working closely on each others' drafts (and possibly group projects).

Part 1: Deep Past

Ideally, someone in your family has already written down family history, or at  least some stories (or maybe captured some on film/videotape?).  Or maybe they have constructed your genealogy/family tree. If not, maybe you should try to save your family history before it's gone.  This could be as simple as asking relatives to tell you what they know and remember, perhaps going through family pictures (it's a good idea to number the pictures, or maybe write down info on the back (even better to get info on how to preserve pictures, perhaps by digitizing them).  A good place (free) to start on family tree is Mormon archives http://www.familysearch.org/ a more generic site is http://www.genhomepage.com/.

Worst case, you won't be able to find out much about your family history, but you can still do general research (e.g., if all you know is some of your family came from Sweden in 1850's or from Korea in 1970's, you can still find out what life was like there and then, and make some good guesses about what their lives were like.)

Once you've gathered this information, look for patterns (for example, when i search the WWW for people with my name, they're in central Canada and North Carolina--not an accident. They tend to be teachers, linguists, and historians (what's weirder is that I'm all three; thus family history might help you identify genetic talents). Can you figure out the origins of any characteristics of your family based on history (e.g., religious, political, economic values, occupational choices?). Are/will any of these be potential assets or obstacles in your life? How so?

Part 2 Personal past

The basic approach here would be simply to write down the story of your life, then go back over it and look for patterns, especially in what be useful in future decisions (e.g., do you find yourself making similar choices? Do you see any patterns in your success and failures?). You could then expand on the parts that you consider interesting and important and condense the parts that aren't. A more powerful and productive approach would be to examine different aspects of your life more fully and systematically. See Progoff's Stepping Stones, also Bolles gives us a good method for this in What Color is Your Parachute? (both at http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/jrnlex.htm) Twyla Tharp gives us questions that are related, but more tailored to exploring your creative talents and dreams (see Creative Autobiography at http://people.ucsc.edu/~pmmckerc/tharp.htm).  Bolles and Tharp are also in your course reader.

Part 3: The Future

This part invites you to extrapolate (take what you know and imagine the trends continuing into the future) explore your perfect life.   Ten or twenty years from now, where do you envision yourself being? What are your accomplishments? How did you get where you are? What is a typical day like? What assets did you build on? What obstacles did you overcome and how? What role does creativity play in your life?

Format: I can't imagine a topic that's more important right now (because you have maximum freedom now to explore options, but it's a very limited time period, and the decisions that you make now will have big consequences) and there's nothing you know as much about as yourself; thus I can't imagine being able to do justice to the material in less than 3 pages; it can be as long as you like, since longer is always more interesting because it has specifics. I don't have any strong feelings on how you format the paper, as long as all the bases are covered. One option is to imagine you've done something insanely great in the future, and a magazine has asked you to write about your life.  Alternatively, you'd even figure out who a good audience is and tailor the writing to them: for example, a fiance you are hoping will wait for (or even support you) while you go to grad school, a prospective employer/sponsor you're asking to take a chance on you, your family to support (or at least not throw up roadblocks) you while you pursue your dream.  if you do that, you'll have a head start on the argument paper later in the quarter.

Let me know if you have questions or ideas.