Here are some things I want you to accomplish in the library today:
Get a good quote for your essay. Visit Bartlett's Quotations and the Columbia Book or Oxford Quotations. If you're writing, for example, about the day you learned to tie your shoe, you might search for quotations with these terms: shoes, success, trying, childhood, failure, learning, education, school, innocence, breakthrough, discovery. If you're writing about everything your sister has taught you, try these terms: sister, siblings, sisterhood, family, lessons, rivalry, education, childhood, adolescence, growth, maturity, etc.
Find some data for your essay. Writing about the Home Run Derby? Find out record holders and dates of the first one. Writing about Iraq? Get the current death toll. Writing about frialators? Find out how hot they get in Celsius. Writing about Franklin Park Golf Course? Find out the age of the golf course and yardage for the hardest hole there. Search the New York Times and the Internet Public Library. Try EBSCO and JStor and InfoTrac. (The librarian has the passwords.) Don't forget to interview primary sources and quote them. Also consider making a phone call.
Today you might also type your college application essay. Go to Gmail and get an account if you don't have one yet. Email it to yourself at home if you want to work on revising it there.
Final drafts due: Monday. Weight: test grade.
[Note on your second drafts: you have a "promise of a grade" on it. e.g. -->a. This arrow w/a grade indicates that if you do nothing to this draft by Monday, the grade will remain an A. If you want an A+, you need to do some of the above things or whatever else I recommended on your second draft.]
