Gateway Colloquium: Happiness

Fall 2011

Course Description and Objectives

What is happiness? Is happiness the same thing as pleasure, or must there be other, perhaps more serious, elements within it? Whatever happiness is, how do we attain it? Is it even possible--or desirable--to be happy for more than brief moments in time? In this course, we will examine the nature of happiness by considering a variety of different ideas on the subject.

More fundamentally, this is a course in writing and critical thinking. All Gateway Colloquia have the goals listed in boldface below. Since the language of these goals is somewhat open-ended, what follows each goal is a description of how we will pursue the goal in this class. Gateway Colloquium seminars seek to

• introduce students to the process of intellectual inquiry and develop students' critical thinking skills. This class should develop your ability to analyze and evaluate arguments, to spot assumptions and biases, to apply a concept from one text to others, and to support your own views with solid evidence and reasoning.
• develop students' ability to evaluate competing ideas and experiences. This class should develop your ability to weigh conflicting opinions and evidence, to evaluate, quote, summarize, paraphrase and synthesize sources, and to conduct elementary research.
• develop students' skills in the structures and conventions of presenting knowledge in written academic and public discourse, and in strategies for effective revision. By the end of the class, you should show competence or improvement in organizing an essay around a unified, sophisticated and original argument, structuring paragraphs, documenting sources correctly, using language effectively, understanding and attending to the needs of your audience, and revising your essays to strengthen and focus their arguments.
• engage students in learning activities that prepare them for academic life in the university. In this class that primarily means all of the above, but in addition, the class is structured so as to encourage you to participate actively in discussions and to take advantage of the opportunities and resources available at IWU.
• This particular section of Gateway Colloquium has an additional goal: to encourage you to think about your own life and decide for yourself what will make your life most fulfilling.

Required Texts and Materials

• George Orwell, Brave New World
• The Pursuit of Happyness (movie); I will place a copy on reserve for those who cannot attend the scheduled viewing.
• Most the readings are online; see the schedule below for links.
• You will need access to a dictionary and reference materials on grammar, punctuation, and documentation of sources, but rather than requiring you to purchase expensive print sources, I encourage you to look up this information online. Below are some useful places to start:
  • The IWU Writing Center Student Resources page, <http://www.iwu.edu/writingcenter/sturesources/>, has links to dictionaries, grammar and punctuation guides, and documentation style guides.
  • The OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Purdue, <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/>, is reasonably comprehensive and easy to search. I would start here to look up grammar and punctuation topics.
  • The University of Minnesota Online Grammar Handbook, <http://www.onlinegrammar.org>, offers links to other sites rather than materials of its own. Some of the links are broken, but if you have trouble finding a topic or can't understand the explanations on the Purdue OWL, this is a good way to expand your sources quickly.
  • The University of Toronto Writing Centre, <http://www.utoronto.ca/ucwriting/handouts.html>, covers fewer topics than the Purdue or Minnesota sites, but what it does cover it discusses more thoroughly than the other sites. This is useful if you are having trouble understanding the explanations of the other sites or figuring out how to fix a problem.
  • Jack Lynch's "Guide to Grammar and Style," <http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/index.html>, is organized alphabetically. You have to know the name of what you're looking up, and guide doesn't cover everything, but depending on your preferences you may find its way of explaining things more useful and/or friendly than some of the others. This is probably not the place to start, but it's a good back-up.
  • Webgrammar, <http://www.webgrammar.com/>, is a commercial site. It is limited in its coverage of grammar and punctuation and somewhat annoying in its tone, but it does have some resources that the university sites don't.
  • The grammar page at Accredited Online Degrees, <http://www.accredited-online-college-degrees.com/grammar.html>, is organized as a list of terms (Acronym, Adjective, Adverb, etc.). The list is fairly short, but their explanations of rules are more detailed than some. A good place to look it you're struggling to understand something explained too briefly elsewhere.

Course Requirements

Your grade will be based upon the following:

• four papers (30% total; 10% each and you may drop the lowest grade if it is not an F)
  • assignment for paper 1
  • assignment for paper 2
  • assignment for paper 3
  • assignment for paper 4
• a series of informal writings (25%)
  • informal writing 1 - freewriting on paper 1
  • informal writing 2 - thesis and discussion of thesis
  • informal writing 3 - claims about happiness in The Pursuit of Happyness
  • informal writing 4 - critical reading
  • informal writing 5 - topic for paper 4
  • informal writing 6 - rhetorical situation for paper 3
  • informal writing 7 - assessment of sources for paper 4
  • informal writing 8 - practice run on the conversation of sources for paper - CANCELLED
  • informal writing 9 - presentation on happiness
  • informal writing 10 - Writing Center visit
  • informal writing 11 - grammar workbook
• 2 revisions (20% for revision 1; 25% for revision 2). Unlike first drafts, the first revision is subject to my Policy on Grammar and Mechanics. (The second revision is not, since the due date was extended.)

The above will be graded on a 100-point scale, where 90-100 is an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60-69 a D, and 0-59 an F (missing work is worth 0). The lowest 3 percentage points in a grade range are equivalent to a minus grade (e.g. 90-92 = A-); the highest 3 points in a range are equivalent to a plus grade (e.g. 87-89 = B+).

Final grades will be determined according to the same scale, except that in accordance with university policy there is no A+ grade and there are no plusses or minuses in the D and F ranges.

Late work. I will deal with late work on a case-by-case basis, but in general you should expect me to abide by the following guidelines:

• Every student gets one free late paper without question or penalty. The free late paper must be completed within one calendar week or it will counted as late. Depending on the time of the semester, turning in a paper late may reduce your options for revisions or increase the time it takes for me to get the paper back to you. You may turn in the first revision late instead of taking a free late paper, but not the second revision.
• Each late paper or revision beyond the freebie will be docked 4 points for each calendar day it is late, up to a maximum deduction of 30 points.
• See the Guidelines for Informal Writings to see how late informal writings will be treated.

Note that in almost all cases it is to your benefit to turn in a paper, even if deductions for lateness will bring your grade to an F. An F at 50% will not hurt your grade nearly as much as a 0.

Attendance is required in this class. I will evaluate attendance on a case by case basis, but in general you should expect that more than four absences for any reason, including illness and university-sponsored activities, will lower your final grade by as much as 4% for each class missed beyond the 4 course limit. Extremely poor attendance will result in a failing grade regardless of your grades on papers and exams.

Participation in discussion is important in this class. Although there is no separate grade rubric for participation, active, thoughtful participation in class will raise a borderline grade, while passive or disruptive participation will lower one. A borderline grade is defined as a grade within .9 of a point of the cutoff between two grades. For example, 90 is the cutoff between B+ and A-; 89.1 - 90.9 is the borderline range between the two grades.

Plagiarism will affect your grade in one of two ways. If you turn in a paper which is plagiarized in minor or unintentional ways (e.g. you use the language of the source you are writing about without quotes), the paper will receive an F, and we will discuss plagiarism until it is clear that you understand what it is and how to avoid it. In most cases, you will be able to rewrite such a paper for a higher grade if there is enough time left in the term. If you turn in a paper which is plagiarized blatantly, at length or with apparent intent to deceive, you will receive an F in the course regardless of any other grades you have received, and I will file an Academic Dishonesty Report on you with the Associate Provost.

Feel free to argue grades with me. Be forewarned that I argue back. Non-argumentative discussions of grade are also welcome.