Essay about Stitching Narrative and Research natural science
Write an essay, it must be a minimum of four pages long; it must be turned in through SafeAssign in Blackboard; it must be double-spaced; it must be composed in 12 point Times New Roman Font; and it must follow all other MLA formatting guidelines. For information on these guidelines, see A Writer’s Reference, which is a required textbook for this course.
This assignment must be narratively organized; it must tell a story about an experience you had with a researchable dimension of nature. Stories have two main components: summary and scene. It is better to write scene than summary in short assignments like this one. Don’t tell us what happened, show us what happened. You could focus on a thunderstorm you witnessed as a child, the logging job you had last summer, or the time you went fishing with your drunk brother and you had to save him from drowning. Remember that these essays should have a point. You are attempting to make the reader feel or believe the importance of this event. The purpose of the scientific research you will incorporate into the essay is to help you make that point. In other words, Why this event? Why is this moment important to you?
As I just said, this assignment must include research. How much research? Enough to illuminate your topic. I suggest finding one element from your narrative and including scientific facts about it. For instance, you could research narrative itself, why stories are so fascinating; and you could come across Robert M. Sapolsky’s essay “Super Humanity,” which claims:
The most distinctively primate part of the human brain coevolved with the
demands of keeping track of who is not getting along with whom, who is tanking
in the dominance hierarchy, and what couple is furtively messing around when they should not be. (257)
From this you could point out that most stories, from Game of Thrones to The Avengers, contain such elements as major plot points. Perhaps stories have a biological, as well as a sociological, function?
Commence your essay either with a vivid scene from personal memory or a scientific fact. Do not begin with generalities (never begin with generalities). The difficulty in this assignment is stitching in your research while at the same time maintaining the narrative. If you find this difficult to accomplish, good; it is supposed to be difficult, You must have at least one source, and no more than four.
Works Cited
Sapolsky, Robert. “Super Humanity.” The Best American Science and Nature Writing: 2013, Ed.
Siddhartha Mukherjee. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 255-260. Print.