CHECKLIST for Conformity ESSAY
Use this checklist in class and at home March 3-6, then March 7-9, and on the long 4-da6 weekend March 10-13. If you have one, bring a laptop to class Monday, Tue., Wed. next week.
1. [ ] Brainstorm an idea about conformity that interests you.
a. Remember: for a college essay, 30% of your effort might be taken up by finding your texts, ideas, main point, and then narrowing your topic. Start early.
b. Define conformity. Is it always a negative? Are there different types?
c. Examine education’s role in getting students to conform.
2. [ ] Make a list of interview questions for a grandparent or other person of that generation about pressures to conform when he or she was your age.
3. [ ] Figure out how you will use Kafka’s Metamorphosis in your essay.
a. Or you might be more interested in the graphic novels or Conrad or another work we’ve studied.
b. How can you use Kafka to illustrate your own point about conformity?
4. [ ] Which other texts might you use? Freud (repression of the id, Interpretation of Dreams, Civilization and its Discontents), Genesis (Bible), Darwin (Origin of Species), Conrad (Heart of Darkness), Hamlet, graphic novels (Crumb and Kuper), poems, Frederick Karl, Power in the Classroom, Paolo Freire, or Kafka’s letters.
5. [ ] A clear, debatable point or claim
6. [ ] Option: use the ‘it appears…however’ structure)
7. [ ] Your own clear thinking about society’s pressure on the individual to conform
8. [ ] by our last class meeting, blog about power in the classroom or conformity
9. [ ] by Mon. March 7, blog your introductory paragraph
10. [ ] In the conclusion, explore the pressure on you and your generation to conform (to peers, to college, to parents, to expectations
11. [ ] carefully edited, mostly error-free, no fragments, typos, etc.
12. [ ] Proper MLA parenthetical documentation, header, first-page info, and works cited page
13. [ ] Option: use the ‘it appears…however’ structure)
14. [ ] Have you said something interesting about conformity?
15. [ ] By Sun. March 13, write a 3-5 page essay about pressure to conform using your generation, Kafka, and at least one other text.
16. [ ] Works Cited should include Kafka, perhaps a Personal Interview, and any other works consulted, such as Freud, Darwin, Conrad, etc.
