Essay, project or final exam

Should I take the final or submit an essay / project?

You should submit something if you would like guidance on better essay writing. This process has many opportunities to improve intermediate and advanced writing skills but does not teach basic essay writing skills. You will get considerable feedback from your mentor about many aspects of your work.

You should submit something if you want to explore a topic in depth. There are so many interesting things that go unmentioned in class.

You should submit something if you like working with non-traditional ways of learning. (That is, painting, CG modeling, sculpture, etc.) You will not be free from the research & analysis expectations and you will need to convince us that this provides a means to learn something substantive. But this does allow you to explore using skills that you enjoy, and receive credit for it. You will also have an audience if you want one.

Note these special expectations about the essay / project. The essay / project expectation is unusual in the below aspects and it seems fair to let you know this now, before you decide:

• It requires not just research on a topic but your analysis based on that research.
• I require you to do research that engages the ideas of others, not just information, and somehow reflect that engagement. This includes fair and accurate use of sources. We check your citations against the original referenced passage.
• It is a multiple step process; do not select this route if you want to put together an essay quickly in one or two days. The process is designed to stop you a couple of different times, mid-course, and ask you to reflect on your work. This includes getting the research (locating and reading) secondary sources early so you can develop you ideas a bit, so that they feel less "green" or rushed.
• Because of the above multiple step process it is better, in terms of workload to think of this as a one-essay-plus-a-couple-of-reports assignment. Download the forms (not read the instructions) to see what I mean.
• I require that you do you own work, even if you are not a native English speaker. For those who are used to having their work edited, by can submit such an edited version but they must also submit their original version. We will grade the original and only reference the edited version if we really can't understand an idea. You must tell us details about the outside help: who, when and what. The outside help cannot contribute ideas; he/she/they can only help with essay structure, grammar, style, form and such.

Risks with the essay / project. Students who chronically submit work just past a deadlines will find that they are accruing penalty points for their essay / project work. Students who don't read and follow instructions will have a similar experience. Students who plan to cheat on the essay or project will find that I am fairly skilled at noticing this and that the penalties are severe ("F" on the assignment or the class, report to the University when appropriate). Students who work honestly with his or her mentor and have done so in the rest of the class as well have nothing to worry about.

About the final exam. That's the essay / project. The final exam will be about two hours long. I will probably allow paper notes that have been written by you and that you will submit with the exam so I can confirm that and which you will not get back (so you'll need to make copies of note if you want to keep your notes). It will be cumulative. And please note, it will require something similar to the essay / project. That is, it will ask for your analysis based on research that includes the engagement of ideas. However, the database is not new reading but rather things assigned and discussed in class. So the final does not relieve you from analysis, but does relieve your from additional research and several deadlines.

Grades. Of course, in the case of the essay / project, you receive several grades as you go along and so have considerable control over the category grade. (The person assigning the grade, by the way, will be your mentor, who is paired with you early in the process and who might be me or one of the two GSIs. You cannot select your mentor.) The final, on the other hand, happens during finals week and is graded by me. There will be no time to contact you about your grade. You will not know the results until after the final grade has been submitted to the University. Also, except in very unusual circumstances, I do not offer makeup exams and I almost never give incompletes.

Students misunderstand my extensive instructions and other comments as being involved in a "tough grading" context. That is wrong. I set up rules to require that you do research that includes ideas and that you think over your work and that you try to bring the ideas of otehrs into your work in some way. However, I don't necessarily expect you to do this well; I just want you to give it a try. Yes, if you avoid required components of the process you will score low; but if you give it an honest go I think you will find us generous about rewarding your efforts. The grading system, in other words, looks somewhat more towards process than product.

Timing (that is, when class will be completely finished for you). The essay / project is designed such that it will be almost entirely done before finals week and could be submitted before finals week. Submitting students do not need to attend the final exam period during finals week; they will be finished with the course as soon as I send them an email notice accepting their work after their final submission.

Making a decision / informing us of your decision. You can, at any point in the essay / project process, swtich to the final exam. However, once you have stated that you are going to take the final you cannot switch into the essay / project process (because you will have missed graded assignments, for one thing). If you have received grades during the essay / project process and the switch to the final, those grades will be a proportional part of your final exam grade. If you fail to submit a step, you will receive late penalties for that step and be switched by me to the final exam. The late penalties will be assessed to the final exam grade. Once you have formally told us, on the step form, that you are switching to the final exam, you no longer need to submit steps.

Table of Contents

• Links
• Due dates
• Some steps require that you send submissions to both me and GSIs
• Start points
• Overview
• Boundaries
• Content
• What are "projects"?
• General comments for submitting assignments (these things are true for all submissions)
• Late penalties
• Other penalties
• Step 00
• Step 01
• Step 02
• Step 03
• Step 04

Links [return to Table of Contents]

• Research resource page
• Comments on style & grammar | Comments on rules of documentation for J7 essays
• Mentee-mentor pairings. See bSpace. It will be there when available.
• GSI emails. See bSpace. It will be there when available.

Due dates [return to Table of Contents]

Go here for due dates.

Some steps require that you send submissions to both me and GSIs ... [return to Table of Contents]

There should be in the misc folder on bSpace a text file with their addresses. If not, I've forgotten to upload it. Please remind me :-)

Start points [return to Table of Contents]

Neither your GSI, your mentor (when assigned) nor me is NOT your start point. Approach us with a few reasonably well worked out ideas in hand.

Generally speaking it is hard to make this decision when sitting in front of a computer. You need to get into the library, pull some books and kick around a bit. It is also hard to choose a direction when still uninformed so judiciously choose a couple of areas that might be interesting and get a bit savvy on them then move forward. Yes, the assignment is designed intentionally to require that you think about the class as a whole, what parts are more interesting to you, and do some work in expanding your knowledge base.

Our course outline—Look ahead. Many students find the topics towards the end of this class more accessible. Beware taking on Genji. Some students take this route simply because it is what we are just finishing up when the topic of essays is introduced. Genji is a challenge and not for everyone. Consider going "very early" as in Jōmon, Yayoi, Kofun, Asuka periods.

These library physical resources:

Cultural Atlas of Japan, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Japan, Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan

A History of Japanese Literature (Kato), A History of Japanese Literature (Konishi), Seeds in the Heart (Keene)

Search Oskikat using "anthology Japan literature" (some of these anthologies are online in their full form)

Don't forget eBrary and JSTOR

Or try this on-site Web page of mine (this is an older J7 resource, not everything is relevant to the current version of this course but it has quite a few convenient hyperlinks): Research

Overview [return to Table of Contents]

All students must do one of these three activities: write an essay that will be submitted near the end of the term or take the final exam, which is an in-class essay. The essay does not have a specific length required. You need to be able to successfully complete your ideas. However, I will say that I often find papers under 1300 words to be insufficient and that I get impatient with long papers that could have been shorter and better with another rewrite. The under-1300, however, isn't, I think, because of the short length but rather uninspired students just don't often go beyond that mark. I have done some simple statistical analysis of essay length and grades I assign and find no real patterns. I am more interested in interesting ideas based on decent research than length papers. Project length is obviously impossible to predetermine. You will need to work it out with your mentor. However, projects that look thrown together will not score well.

All three activities have in common the need for analytic thought generated by the student. The essay or project must be grounded in research; the final exam is based comprehensively on topics raised during the course of the term. All students must decide one of these paths and announce that at the time of the submission of Step 01 (S01). However, if one undertakes an essay or a project one can switch at any time to the final exam. On the other hand, if one has selected the final exam on Step 01 one cannot later switch to an essay or project. (In other words, if you said at Step 00 that you planned on taking the exam but change your mind before Step 01, you can.)

The essay or project receives a mentor who will work with you, and grade you. I might be that mentor. I grade all final exams. It is not possible to take the final exam at any time other than the officially designated time.

The essay and project have essentially the same flow but the specifics are different (see below). This general flow is:

• S00, an opportunity to float ideas to see whether they are within the boundaries of the requirements (grade weight: 0%, except penalties)
• S01, a proposal that describes your project. It will include at least some substantive resources. (grade weight: 25%)
• S02, is a description of work done so far in terms of research, organizing how you will present your ideas, and will likely include a tentative thesis (for the essay) or the main points (for a project). In other words, it is the essay or project well along in its development. This is to create a “two-step” creative process where you have done most research and put most of your ideas on the table and can pause to reconsider your work while your mentor can redirect you if necessary. (grade weight: 25%)
• S03 is a finished project but revisable if necessary. In some cases the essay or project will end at this stage, if the mentor feels the work is complete enough. In other cases the mentor will suggest or require changes. (grade weight: 25%)
• S04 is the final deadline for submission of essays and projects except projects that include presentation. Some projects will not be finished at this point ONLY in the sense that they will be scheduled for public presentation during the final exam period. That presentation is graded. (grade weight: 25%)

Boundaries [return to Table of Contents]

Everything discussed or compared as a main object of the essay / project must be premodern Japan—1868 or earlier.

All essays and projects must have an analytic component (your interpretations and conclusions, built around a thesis). No reports. No "About ...." essays or projects. This expects more than that: you learn about something that interests you, but you write an essay or do a project that is founded on that but goes farther, offering your interpretations and conclusions that are grounded in research about that topic that includes reading the ideas of other qualified individuals about that topic.

Artistic expressions in these areas are OK in most cases: literature (prose, poetry, drama); performing arts (plays, dance, music, reciting arts); visual arts (calligraphy, painting)

These are borderline (they will need an especially clear analytic component): artisan skills (carpentry, ceramics, etc.), fashion & cosmetics

If the paper would work for a history, anthropology, sociology, etc. course, it is not appropriate enough yet in content. Move towards literature and/or culture. The boundary can sometimes be difficult to identify but, in general, you need to know the history of the object you are talking about. That is the groundwork for the essay/project, not the end product.

Content [return to Table of Contents]

Essays & projects must be analytic in nature where analysis is the informed and considered interpretation and analysis by the student on the topic(s). No simple reports, please. No "Noh drama 101" type things.

Essays & projects can be comparative (taking up more than one object for study) but all objects must be within the above boundaries (so not “compare to West” or “compare to modern Japan” or "compare to China" topics) and the student must be well informed on both / all topics taht are the main focus of the submission.

Essays & projects must be well-grounded in research that has exposed students to the analytic ideas of other scholars, not just research for basic information.

What are "projects"? [return to Table of Contents]

Anything that isn't a traditional academic essay is a project. If you write an essay but support it with a lot of multimedia (graphics, sound files) it is still an essay. But if you the heart and soul of the submission isn't an academic essay, even if there is extensive prose narrative of some sort as part of it, it is a project. It doesn't matter a lot to me and I can see cases where essays might morph into projects and the other way around. The only live issue is whether a presentation will be required. By the way, nearly all project will have, as part o the requirement, some sort of prose narrative explaining it.

General comments for submitting assignments (these things are true for all the submissions) [return to Table of Contents]

S01 = Step 01, etc.

ALL submissions must be on time.

ALL students submit all steps, even Step 00, even if you do not plan to do an essay or project but, instead, will take the final exam. You must submit a “step” on time or incur late penalties. Deadlines are listed elsewhere.

ALL submissions must have the correct email subject line or will not be logged in.

Please! Submit once! Check your work, be accurate, then submit. Do not submit twice "just in case" or twice because you noticed an error after sending it. Check first please. This is yet another good reason not to race to the very last minute. I will not guarantee that I will use your corrected version. It is quite difficult at this end to "call back" from your mentor wrong versions or to replace versions that have already been filed. They all look the same. There is the distinct chance that we will use the wrong version, so please check first.

ALL submissions are counted as received when I have been able to open the document you sent. Unopenable documents can cause your submission to be logged in as “late” so take care to produce proper documents. No corrupt documents please.

Watch for an "accepted" email from me. That means I have received your email in good form and been able to open the attachments. If there is a problem, you will receive a "not yet accepted" email. Respond promptly with a new submission or your submission might become late. Promptly usually means within 24 hours. I may or may not specify what the problem is. Check the instructions again. If your submission has been determined to be late you will receive "accepted as a little late" etc. (See below for the four different types of lateness, depending on how late.) When I have logged in all submissions, I will announce so on the announcements page. If you have not heard from me by then, something is wrong. Sometimes I log in right away, sometimes it takes several days.

ALL submissions are by attachment. You can add something in the email if you want but important questions should be by separate email. (I don’t always open assignment submission emails right away, and I assume the email has no content so I don’t go back to review it). If you have a question about a step, use this, or an appropriate version of this, subject line. Example: J7A_S00_LASTNAME_firstname question. That is, keep the subject line that will be used for a particular step and add question at the end.

Different submissions require different addressees in the “To” line. See below. However, ALL submissions include me, on the “To” line, not the “Cc” line. Any resubmissions or fixes also use the same pattern. In other words you never correspond solely with your mentor, you always include me in every correspondence, and use the proper subject line for every correspondence. While the mentor grades the work itself, I grade the timeliness of it and make final determinations about grades when necessary. Therefore, I need a full record of your work. If I am your mentor then of course there is only one person to whom you are addressing all your emails.

“Blank” emails: Some of you will have nothing to submit for a step and those of you who have decided to take the exam will have nothing to submit, ever. Nevertheless, all students submit correctly and on time or incur late penalties . The content of your email can be simply “Hi, I’m taking the test so I’m not submitting anything” or such. However, there needs to be something so that I know your email isn’t blank by error.

If there is a form provided, you must use the form.

Acceptable file formats (note that .docx, .pptx, .xlsx and .wmv are not on the list): Text files .doc, .rtf, .rtfd, .pdf, Still image files .jpeg, .pgn, .pdf Multimedia files .ppt, .aiff, .wav, .mp3, .mov, .mp4, .avi, no flash video please Other .xls

Late penalties [return to Table of Contents]

I give late penalties for two reasons: I need everything to arrive on time and in good order to manage the grading and commenting at this end and I want everyone to have the same amount of time, for reasons of fairness. I do think it is good to learn to work with deadlines, but this is not why I have them.

I am strict about deadlines. I have a lot of students and only limited GSI support. That creates a tough situation. I try to help you; please help me by being on time. That being said, life happens. Please write me if you find yourself in a situation. It is much better to do this before you miss a deadline, not afterwards.

There are four levels of lateness (defined below). Some carry a percent penalty. This percent is what is assessed to the CATEGORY GRADE, not the individual step grade. For example if, having submitted all steps, your category grade was 12 but you have been “A little late” on one step and that penalty was 5% and “late” on one step and that late penalty was 20%, your grade would be reduced by 25% (5% + 20%) and your category grade would be 9: ORIGINAL GRADE minus (ORIGINAL GRADE * 25%) or 12 – 3 = 9. This method of calculation causes quick and severe reduction for your essay/project grade, so please be on time. The penalty numbers below might appear small but they add up. I have tried to create penalties severe enough that you will NOT decide to hold your work longer to make it a little better. You will have a net loss (maybe a bit better but the penalty is strong enough to make it worse, in terms of a grade, than otherwise). Please plan ahead! If you really want to make it better, submit on time, then keep forking on it for the next step.

Levels of lateness (the times below are after the deadline so if the deadline is 5PM and your submission was at 5:15PM, you would get an email subject line "accepted as a little late"):

• First 30 minutes — "A little late"
• First 24 hours except the first 30 minutes — "Late"
• 24–72 hours — "Very late"
• More than 72 hours late — Usually I do not accept material more than three days late. I stop looking for it, mark the assignment as unsubmitted or, if a grade is involved, give the assignment a zero. Further, even if accepted, I do not require that mentors give any feedback. We are just too busy to work with late documents. Missing assignments are noted when the category grade is determined so it will probably help you to submit something and hope it gets into a file somewhere but, in truth, it might be better to turn your energy to the next step. If you receive an email from me it will either say "Too late for submission, not accepted" or "Too late for submission but ..." with some additional notes. There is no fixed phrase in this case.

Late penalties for specific steps

S00 (the late penalties are light as students get used to the process)

• "A little late" — 0%
• "Late" — 2%
• "Very late" — 2% and submission is no longer accepted

S01, S02 and S03 all have the same set of penalties, which are more severe than S00

• "A little late" — 2%
• "Late" — 10%
• "Very late" — 20%

S04, the final step, is treated in a special way because of the tight grading deadline at our end

• "A little late" — 0%
• "Late" — No longer accepted. Step 03 will be used for the final grade. That being said, projects can experience disasters in technical issues. I am not all that forgiving about them, but please do speak with me about it. Some things really aren't preventable. However, with complicated projects, please consider not living dangerously by working right up to the last minute.
• "Very late" — I usually will not even respond to very late submissions, and they are not accepted.

Other penalties [return to Table of Contents]

Not following instructions

Students who regularly fail to meet the submission requirements will, at some point, usually with the second or third error, receive a penalty that is a deduction from the category score, usually measured in letter steps where one “step” is from “A” to “A-minus” and so on. The usual penalty is one step but it can be more for serious errors where it seems the student is not being sufficiently careful. Multiple submissions are a very serious problem at my end so double check your work and submit only once. Multiple submission is considered a submission “error” of sorts. Other errors include not using the form, incorrectly filling out the form, wrong document types, sent to wrong individuals, incorrect subject line, and so on.

Academic dishonesty

Any dishonesty almost automatically causes a fail grade, a zero, on the step involved and causes me to go back and re-grade earlier steps, looking for dishonesty in those as well. Serious acts of dishonesty result in an “F” for the course and a report to the University.

I work essentially with a no tolerance policy so please do not expect to test boundaries, apologize for behavior, and receive no penalty. This does happen though in gray area cases or where it is entirely clear to me that it was an honest mistake. Read my Academic Honesty page.

Step 00 [return to Table of Contents]

To whom do you send the submission? — Me. No one else.

Use this form: J7A Step 00. Title it correctly by changing the LASTNAME_firstname portion to your name. Keep it as a .doc file.

Grade weight in terms of the overall category essay/project category grade: Not graded. You are entirely free to be risky or goofy in this submission. However, I will match your effort. If you tossed something together, I'll toss back an answer. If you send some seriously thought-through ideas, I'll put my mind your possibilities carefully. Generally I will write only a "OK", "Hmm, marginal depends on what you do", "Won't work in current form" "Not enough information to have an opinion" or such. Nothing beyond that. I won't finish or redirect your thinking for you. Note that late penalties can be assessed so submit something on time.

Content:

This is when you to check with me about ideas that you are not sure are within the boundaries of the assignment. If you are nervous about your idea being within the boundaries of the class or not, please run it/them by me.

Remember that everything must be before 1868. (See "Boundaries", above.)

Remember that if you want to do comparative analysis, both objects must be in Japan and premodern. Relating things to origins in China makes sense but comparing, say, Chinese and Japanese tea ceremonies is out of bounds. ("Relating" is something that helps give background or context, "comparing" is placing two objects at more or less an equal level and exploring, analytically, both.)

Projects must have a reason for being projects; that is, you can learn something through the project that you could not learn through an essay. The project option should not be considered as available just because you aren't very excited to write an essay. There must be a positive reason as to why it is a better way to explore the topic.

This is a good place to see whether I consider a topic within bounds in terms of its cultural content. (Example: "Is Heian fashion OK as a topic?" — I can't answer that question. I have no idea what your analytic component might be. "I want to compare men's formal and informal clothing." — I can answer that. It is still out of bounds as is because there is no analytic component yet, but I can see a way where could be one.)

This is a good place to see whether I consider a topic within bounds in terms of appropriateness to this class (content or whether I consider it culture, not history, anthropology, etc.)

This is NOT a general check of ideas or whether I think your ideas are good or not or a chance to seek advice on ideas. It is only to practice the exchange of documents and to tell me about things you are thinking of doing for which you aren't sure are appropriate for this class. There are too many of you for me to give general advice at this step. In the next step, you will be assigned a mentor. The GSIs and I share the duties of giving feedback. Therefore it is the next step, not this one, that is for proposing one or two ideas and getting feedback on it/them.

You can mention as many ideas as you want.

Please remember that I might not be able to visualize your projects or essay as easily as you so please give me a sense of length, shape, whatever as well as, of course, conceptual content.

If you plan to take the final instead, put on this form: I will be taking the final.

If you aren't sure yet — either whether you will take the final or do an essay / project (you will have to decide at Step 01), or in the case that you are pretty sure you are doing an essay / project but don't have anything in particular to check with me at this time : I am still thinking things over or anything else along those lines. (I am working on some ideas but I think they are within bounds. Or, I have several things I'm turning over in my mind still. Etc.)

You can write various things but be judicious in asking me questions. I have a flood of submissions and about 24-48 hours to bounce everything back.

Step 01 [return to Table of Contents]

To whom do I send the submission? — To both GSIs and to me, all on the "To" line and all at the same time. NEVER correspond with just one of us.

What to do after submitting? — As with every step, you should:

1. Watch for an ACCEPTED from me and respond promptly if I have requested a resubmission. (When I ask for a resubmit and you respond promptly it is possible that no late penalty or other penalty will be assessed.)
2. Continue to work on your essay or project, not waiting for a response from your mentor. It can take as long as 2 weeks for a response.

Use this form: J7A Step 01. Title it correctly by changing the LASTNAME_firstname portion to your name. Keep it as a .doc file.

Grade weight in terms of the overall category essay/project category grade: 25%

About projects:

When responding to your submission, your mentor will include specifics as to what will be expected as a proper Step 02 submission.

Content:

In this step you submit your ideas for your essay or project, or state that you will be taking the final exam. If you select the final exam option, you are now committed to it. You cannot switch to the essay / project track. This step is meant for you to have a strong start on a essay or project but not be so far along that we cannot cancel, substantially revise or somewhat revise your direction. Do quite a bit of work and, after submission, continue working (since we will not respond quickly) but be in a frame of mind that mentor is allow to ask or require substantial changes.

Your idea or ideas must have these characteristics:

• Be in bounds (see "Boundaries" and "Step 00", above)
• Be based on some substantive initial research (not just a few paragraphs here and there, at least one full article or one full chapter in a book, nothing from the Web).
• Include, obviously a statement of topic but also gives a sense of what you plan to do with it, after learning the basics about it; that is, you must state your analytic component in at least a general way. If you are unable to do this, it means you have not yet done enough work on your topic for this step.

Advice on getting beyond "About ..." essays and projects and finding an analytic approach:

An analytic approach—what you will puzzle over, the questions you will try to answer, the thesis you will offer—cannot possibly be generated without having done some reading of substance on your topic. Please don't try to rush directly to this part. Identify your topic broadly, then more narrowly, then do some reading while you are thinking about what you want to do with the material. The essay and projects of J7A require foundation work on the topic but require that you go beyond that and develop a good thesis.

Students sometimes develop topics using this approach: "What do I want to know more about that I can find information on?" This generate lots of topics but doesn't lead forward to analysis. It is better to ask the question: "What is something that I am interested in that I can have an interpretive opinion (not a "like/don't like" etc.) about?"

When this seems not to be going forward for you, consider complex objects to explore—literary works are an example.

Finally, you can quickly generate an analytic perspective with comparative projects as long as you avoid the obvious "compare and contrast" which simply identifies common and not-shared qualities. That is too descriptive. However, something like"'honor' as an ethic in The Tale of Heike compared to Saikaku's Great Mirror of Male Love" gives you an opportunity to puzzle over the various meaning of "honor" and try to figure out what is going on in two texts. Just remember, comparative projects double your research load because you need to be well informed of both objects. And, though mentioned elsewhere, both objects must be premodern Japan, in-bound topics.

Advice about narrowing the topic:

You need to do research, not just sit around thinking about what interests you or web searching. You need to do some reading that is not general about the topic, but at a higher level. Once done, it create specificity in your own proposal. When not done, proposals are too broad and lack direction.

Grading rubric:

You are graded on how well you have identified quality academic resources, how much initial research you have done, and how far along you are in formulating your ideas. They need not be complete, but they need to be beyond just a topic statement and need to show evidence that you have spent some time learning the basics of the topic you have selected, including its context (a little bit).

What do you mean by "quality of academic resources"?

The best resources are books from academic presses (things you might find in our library system or on eBrary) and journal articles from refereed, academic journals (things you might find on JSTOR, ProjectMUSE, EBSCOM). Anything else needs to meet these standards: the work must have an identifiable author and you have good reason to believe that author is qualified with regard to your topic, based on other publications of that author that appear in credible academic publications (NOT his or her job title).

GoogleBooks and other sources that provide only partial access to a work: Some of your research it to read for the ideas / thesis / extended analysis of qualified individuals. That research cannot be done in partial-view materials. It will be rejected by your mentor. However, specific information (dates and such) can be gleaned from this limited access sources, when they are of verifiable credible academic quality. (That is, the source is an academic press or such.) Snippet View is NEVER acceptable, even for a date.

How much initial research is required?

"Research" means more than web-searching and lining up materials. "Research" means, as well, extended focused reading of quality sources located.

You should have read in full at least one article or one essay within a volume or one extended argument within an academic work (25-plus pages). You should have read 10 to 30 pages with care and some of that work must include the ideas of others, not just data. This work needs to be evident in how you talk about your topic and proposed analysis. But, Step 01 is NOT a report about initial reading, it uses initial reading.

How far along should my ideas be?

Your topic statement should show that you are fairly well informed about your topic in its basics. Your analytic component should show that you are trying to work out ways to explore your topic with some depth. The overall submission should show that research has been done, reading has been done, and some serious thinking (as if the essay / project were due within a few days) has been done.

Step 02 [return to Table of Contents]

*Students who have indicated that they will be taking the final exam do NOT need to submit Step 02 nor contact me in any way about Step 02. Students whose essays or projects that are "very late" might be asked to drop the work and switch to the exam. That decision will be made by me in consultation with your mentor.

*SPECIAL NOTICE TO NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS: While it is not necessary for this step it will be for the next one and it is good to know this now. I will require that your essay be written by you and you alone. If it is not, I will judge that as academic dishonesty and will fail you on the step and give you a second chance at Step 04. If you are in the habit of having others help you with your essays, you can do so but you will be asked to submit your original draft. SO DON'T ERASE IT! KEEP IT AS A SEPARATE DOCUMENT, THEN START EDITING. You will also be asked to give the details of who helped you, his or her or their contact information, when you were helped and what type of help. Your mentor will grade your original submission, using the more polished version only if he or she cannot understand your original submission. All ideas, of course, must be yours. Good English style is not the point of the essay for this class; it is the ideas. So please be reassured that we will read and appreciate your ideas even if the expression is less than perfect English.

To whom do I send the submission? — To me and your mentor, in ONE email with both of us on the "To" line.

What to do after submitting? — As with every step, you should:

1. Watch for an ACCEPTED from me and respond promptly if I have requested a resubmission. (When I ask for a resubmit and you respond promptly it is possible that no late penalty or other penalty will be assessed.)
2. Continue to work on your essay or project, not waiting for a response from your mentor. It can take as long as 2 weeks for a response.

To whom do I ask questions? — All questions should be put to your mentor except problems with submission. Those should be put to me. (If it is an email, not a conversation, it will probably help if you copy your mentor.)

Use one of the following forms: If it is an essay, there is only one form — J7A Step 02. If it is a project there are two forms. The first is due 48 hours after your mentor has responded to Step 01. The second is due at the same time as the regular Step 02 due date and time: J7A Step 02 preliminary project report and J7A Step 02 (Project). I strongly recommend that those working on projects look ahead to the actual Step 02 form they will use in order to complete the preliminary STep 02 form. It has comments on it that are not here regarding how project Step 02s are graded. Title it correctly by changing the LASTNAME_firstname portion to your name. Keep it as a .doc file; however, projects might need to attach additional files. To be accepted as part of the submission, all files MUST all be in the same email and the total email size must be less than 20MB.

Grade weight in terms of the overall category essay/project category grade: 25%

About projects:

When responding to your Step 01, your mentor should have given you specific instructions as to what you should do for that step. If these instructions are not in the response, email your mentor immediately and put my address on the "To" line as well.

Content:

This step is designed essentially to put you in the position of the final writing of the essay so, in a sense, you write two essays for this class. Here at Step 02 you do everything but the actual writing of the essay. The research is entirely finished, you have what you think will be a decent thesis, and you have a vision for the length of the essay, including its component parts. At this point, I stop you from completing the writing process. This is to give you a chance to step back and think critically of what you have done so far, to rethink and deepen your ideas.

This step, therefore, asks you to share with your mentor ...

1. ... in detail, your research
2. an initial thesis
3. a basic outline of the steps of your essay

We will give you advice on whether you are using your resources effectively, will comment on your thesis, and will suggest that you reshape your essay if it is too long or too short or needs a shift in emphasis.

Grading rubric:

Three areas will be graded by your mentor. The greatest grading attention is on (1), below. The grading attention for (2) and (3) is your mentor's judgment as to how much time you have put into those portions. These are also important but the completion of meaningful research is the leading factor.

—for (2) this means making a credible thesis that is rich in detail and the result of careful thinking. If we can find a problem with your thesis in a minute or two, you have not critically reviewed your own thinking well enough yet (for projects, although each is different, this generally means a meaningful explanation of what you are doing that guides us in understanding the learning value and message of the project)

—for (3) this means a rather thorough visualization of your essay or project (for projects this is essentially the same, though it might be storyboards or sketches or such and will definitely include full technical details)

While the grading emphasis is as above, there will be care taken by your mentor to provide feedback to refocus your thesis and the essay component parts.

(1) Complete and accurate completion of the bibliography section of the form, in terms of what resources you have used and the documentation data for them. This is graded closely. While we do not grade citation style specifically for this step, we will for the next step. Therefore, I suggest that you try now to follow the documentation guidelines given on the Comments on style & grammar | Comments on rules of documentation for J7 essays page.

I am not impressed by long lists of sources. I would rather you find one or two quality sources and learn ideas from them. Remember that your sources much be credible, academic sources that have identifiable authors that you have reason to believe are qualified to express an expert opinion on the topic. Wiki, of course, is out of bounds, as are nearly all non-academic Web sites.

Further, in a later step you will be required to submit a link or a scanned version of the source of every citation for your paper. Therefore consider the convenience of electronic links when generating source material. This shouldn't trump finding excellent sources, but it is a factor to keep in mind.

(2) A thesis that is rich in detail and the result of some extended, careful thinking. It does not have to be your final thesis. It may well change as you actually write the paper.

A thesis is not a topic. A thesis is your opinion, or interpretation, or judgment or conclusion, or other similar statement that responds to a line of inquiry you have created. It will include the posing of the line of thinking, your main conclusions and what you did to arrive at them, and it will be specific, mentioning by name the objects you will analyze and spelling out what, at this early point, is your sense of where your interpretation or conclusion is headed.

Example: "In this essay I investigate whether Sen Rikyu's poetry reflects his philosophy of the tea ceremony. I will present some of his basic statements about the essential characteristics of chanoyu and then will analyze several of his poems from both early in his life and later, near his death when his philosophy was fully developed. I will speculate on whether we can see a difference among the poems and whether we can trace a connection to his philosophy. At this stage in my project, my early sense is that there is no real connection to be found, but that might change."

(3) A thoughtful representation of the stages of your essay and approximately how long each segment is. "Thoughtful" is the keyword: are you being realistic? is there a good flow to the essay? have you made sure your essay is about your thesis and not just random information?, etc.

I ask that your essay begin with your thesis and that the final paragraph restate what you have done in the paper. (That is different than presenting your conclusion for the first time. If you write the sort of essay that has a strong, final, concluding paragraph then this section comes after that, to restate content in conclusion.) Avoid meaningless outlines that are essentially like this: "I. Introduction II. Main idea III. Conclusion" and instead use sentence outlines that look more like this: "I. Presentation of thesis - I present my thesis which is that .... "

Step 03 [return to Table of Contents]

*Step 03 required scans or electronic links to all cited information. Keep this in mind as you plan for meeting the deadline.

*Students who have indicated that they will be taking the final exam do NOT need to submit Step 03 nor contact me in any way about Step 03. Students whose essays or projects are submitted "very late" might be asked to drop the work and switch to the exam. That decision will be made by me in consultation with your mentor.

*SPECIAL NOTICE TO NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS: I will require that your essay is written by you and you alone. If it is not, I will judge that as academic dishonesty and will fail you on the step and give you a second chance at Step 04. If you are in the habit of having others help you with your essays, you can do so but you will be asked to submit your original draft. THEREFORE, DON'T ERASE IT! KEEP IT AS A SEPARATE DOCUMENT, THEN START EDITING. You will also be asked to give the details of who helped you, his or her or their contact information, when you were helped and what type of help. Your mentor will grade your original submission, using the more polished version only if he or she cannot understand your original submission. All ideas, of course, must be yours. Good English style is not the point of the essay for this class; it is the ideas. So please be reassured that we will read and appreciate your ideas even if the expression is less than perfect English.

To whom do I send the submission? — To me and your mentor, in ONE email with both of us on the "To" line. (Special notice to Fall 2011 students: Because of the unreliablity of the Calmail system, you are required to send using a non-berkeley.edu email address and you are required to send to your mentor at his or her non-berkeley.edu email address (see bSpace > Resources > Misc > "Non berkeley-dot-edu GSI email addresses") and you are required to copy me using my non berkeley.edu address which you should have by now but if not it is on the GSI document.)

What to do after submitting? — As with every step, you should:

1. Watch for an ACCEPTED from me and respond promptly if I have requested a resubmission. (When I ask for a resubmit and you respond promptly it is possible that no late penalty or other penalty will be assessed.)
2. Continue to work on your essay or project, not waiting for a response from your mentor. It can take as long as 2 weeks for a response.

To whom do I ask questions? — All questions should be put to your mentor except problems with submission. Those should be put to me. (If it is an email, not a conversation, it will probably help if you copy your mentor.)

Use one of the following forms:

• For essays: Step 03 essay form
• For essays by non-native speakers that want to include an edited version of their work: Step 03 additional essay form
• For projects: Step 03 project form

Grade weight in terms of the overall category essay/project category grade: 25%

About projects:

When responding to your Step 02, your mentor might have given you specific instructions as to what you should do for Step 03. If not, it is your responsibility to arrange something. Email your mentor immediately and put my address on the "To" line as well.

Content:

This step is the finished essay. For some projects it will be the finished project, for others there will still be work to be done. For essays, nothing should be left still to do and your work will be graded as such. It is possible that there will be major, moderate or minor changes requested or required by your mentor for Step 04. It is also possible that your mentor will tell you it meets our standards and Step 04 will simply be a resubmission of Step 03, using a new form. In theory all Step 03s should be that well done, but we do seem to find things here and there that can make for a better essay.

Advice:

Stating your thesis in the first paragraph and restating what your essay accomplished in the final paragraph (what you covered, what you concluded) generally leads to a better score on the essay.

Remember to differentiate between persuasive (rhetorical) argument designed to sway our minds in one particular direction and reasonable argument that offers a credible and interesting observation and conclusion but does not try to argue away other possibilities. The essay for this class is not an exercise in persuasive rhetoric. You should have thoughtful opinions that usually leave room for other interpretations, not drive home a point of some sort.

Many students stray away from their original topic between the first and last page of their essay. If you write the essay just before the deadline you deny yourself a chance to take a step back and see if it is tightly written. It is the job of the writer, not the reader, to reread the prose and organize it will for clarity and efficiency. Read your work critically, from the perspective of a reasonable, and friendly, but skeptical reader.

Be enthusiastic about your topic — it will show naturally. Faking enthusiasm tends to generate suspicion in the reader.

You do not need to sound like you are a true expert in the field, or try to sound super objective like a judge, or authoritative beyond what might be reasonably expected of you as a student exploring a new area. Just share something interesting that has been given some good critical thought by you first.

Readers usually are not interested in the struggles of the writer—please struggle “off stage” in the rehearsals that are your earlier drafts.

Grading rubric for essays:

Three areas will be equally considered by your mentor for a single letter grade. The except is that academic dishonest trumps all other grade issues and leads immediately to severe penalties:

The form itself. How well have you filled out the form and what does it represent in terms of your research activity.

Essay content. Your essay will be read for its credibility first (which includes its arguments and claims and how these are related to research done). Interest is a secondary factor but a factor nevertheless.

Essay form. Your essay will be read for overall organization, good style, accurate use of terms, names and resource titles, and whether the footnotes meet the "accurate and fair" rule on my Academic Honesty page.

About the form. It is self-explanatory.

About essay content. Read the above "Advice."

About essay form.

Try to follow the documentation guidelines given on the Comments on style & grammar | Comments on rules of documentation for J7 essays. BUT, do not over-worry about this. I provide a lot of information for those interested but the bottom line is (check list):

• italicize foreign terms
• don't misspell key names and words
• distinguish between article titles, book titles, and portions of books
• document the basic bibliographic information (author, title, publisher & year)
• indicate if something is a book review, not really a book

Documentation format — Many of you are used to in-line citation form(where after the quote or whatever you put in something like (McCullough, 291). You can NOT use this form for this paper. Use MLA style and use footnotes, not in-line citation or endnotes.

Documentation check — It is very important that you submit a link or a scanned version of the source of EVERY citation for your paper. We will check that your use of the source is fair and accurate. Scanning can be difficult so, in that case, you can stop at three such scans as long as they are wherever possible references that work with ideas, not data. Please consider adding an arrow or something to point us in the right direction on the page. Or mention a paragraph number or "middle of the page", whatever. If it is a URL, please help us get to the right place (that is, please don't just give us a web site and not tell us where to look). Footnotes, when possible, should have something that helps us, in brackets after the footnote or whatever. (McCullough, 151 [two lines up from the bottom of the page], etc.) In other words, imagine what it is like at our end to look up every footnote for every students and how time consuming that is. Please try to help make the process go smoothly.

Bibliography — This paper does NOT have a traditional bibliography. It has a special, annotated bibliography. Fill out the form carefully.

Step 04 [return to Table of Contents]

*When the Step 04 deadline is missed, Step 03 is used for grading.

*Students who have indicated that they will be taking the final exam do NOT need to submit Step 04 nor contact me in any way about it.

*SPECIAL NOTICE TO NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS: I will require that your essay is written by you and you alone. If it is not, I will judge that as academic dishonesty and will fail you on the step and give you a second chance at Step 04. If you are in the habit of having others help you with your essays, you can do so but you will be asked to submit your original draft. THEREFORE, DON'T ERASE IT! KEEP IT AS A SEPARATE DOCUMENT, THEN START EDITING. You will also be asked to give the details of who helped you, his or her or their contact information, when you were helped and what type of help. Your mentor will grade your original submission, using the more polished version only if he or she cannot understand your original submission. All ideas, of course, must be yours. Good English style is not the point of the essay for this class; it is the ideas. So please be reassured that we will read and appreciate your ideas even if the expression is less than perfect English.

To whom do I send the submission? — To me and your mentor, in ONE email with both of us on the "To" line. (Special notice to Fall 2011 students: Because of the unreliablity of the Calmail system, you are required to send using a non-berkeley.edu email address and you are required to send to your mentor at his or her non-berkeley.edu email address (see bSpace > Resources > Misc > "Non berkeley-dot-edu GSI email addresses") and you are required to copy me using my non berkeley.edu address which you should have by now but if not it is on the GSI document.)

What to do after submitting? — As with every step, you should:

1. Watch for an ACCEPTED from me and respond promptly if I have requested a resubmission. (When I ask for a resubmit and you respond promptly it is possible that no late penalty or other penalty will be assessed.)

To whom do I ask questions? — All questions should be put to your mentor except problems with submission. Those should be put to me. (If it is an email, not a conversation, it will probably help if you copy your mentor.)

Use the following forms as appropriate:

• For essays: Step 04 essay form
• For essays by non-native speakers that want to include an edited version of their work: Step 04 edited essay form
• For projects: Step 04 project form

Grade weight in terms of the overall category essay/project category grade: 25%

About projects:

You must submit a Step 04 form even if you have finished work at Step 03 and you and your mentor know that (because I might not).

Content:

This step ideally should be no different than Step 03. That was the finished product and, if done well, there is no need to work on it further, although it must be submitted.

However, that being said, you, as the author, might want to make minor changes and resubmit. You are welcome to do so.

Also, you mentor might have suggested changes or insisted on certain changes. This is the step that shows those changes.

Advice:

Nearly all essays get better on a rewrite but that doesn't mean I am asking you to do so now, just to know that. If you are satisfied with the grade you received on Step 03 and if your mentor has not requested changes, then file this away as a completed essay and just resubmit using the Step 04 form.

BUT, on the other hand, we look carefully at how well you respond to advice. Therefore, read your mentor's comments carefully. If you are not clear how necessary certain changes seem to be, ask. We will assume you understand the intent of your mentor if you do not ask questions.

Grading rubric for essays:

If you submit without any changes, we simply use the Step 03 grade.

Unless there have been requests for changes by your mentor having to do with documentation or form, these are not considered for this step. It is read simply for content (thesis, argument, organization, clarity of expression) and regraded. This grade cannot be lower than the previous grade.

If there have been specific requests you are graded primarily on how well you addressed those issues. If you feel you have tried to make useful changes but they do not show clearly in just the essay itself, please explain what you have done on the form.

There are three categories or suggestions, more or less

CONSIDERFORFUTUREWORK — If this tag is in the comment it means you should work on this in the future but now is not a good time to work on this particular issue.

FIXFORSTEP4 — If this tag is in the comment it means the mentor feels strongly that this is something you need to change for Step 04 and, if it does not change, your grade will likely not be very good.

All other comments that have neither of the above tags are up to you whether to make changes or not. If you do, your paper probably will score a bit better; if you don't your paper will not be graded lower than your Step 03 grade. In other words, work on these things if you have time and interest; otherwise, file them away for now as just advice.

Sometimes students have so missed the mark on what was required for Step 03 that they have been given a somewhat lenient grade for that step (probably a "C" rather than a "D" or "F") but NOW, if they do not show improvement, the grade is likely to be very low indeed.