What Makes A Good Life
What Makes A Good Life
Writing Prompt Number One: Exemplification
Write a well-developed, grammatically-correct and substantial essay on the following topic. Your essay should conform to MLA Style guidelines as well as the requirements detailed on your course policy. It should be largely free of grammatical and mechanical problems. This paper should be at least 450 words in length. It should be printed out double-spaced and formatted in MLA Style. Use the Word default font (Calibri 11) in
your essay.
As with all writing assignments, this essay must be unified with a thesis statement placed near the end of the introductory paragraph. Papers must be submitted via the Example Essay assignment portal on MyCourses.
Note: Essays that are not formatted correctly in MLA Style will not be accepted and will receive a failing grade. Essays that do not answer the question below will receive a grade of F. Likewise, essays that do not meet paragraph length requirements of 150+ words for introductions and for each body paragraph and 100+ words for conclusions will receive an automatic grade of F.
Papers cannot use any outside sources at all. Papers that quote or use information from outside sources will receive an automatic grade of F.
Topics for Paper #1:
For the last decade or so, happiness has been one of the primary obsessions in America. The sale of books promising a path to happiness has skyrocketed, and pharmaceutical companies have produced a raft of new pills designed to chase away the blues.
However, recently, there has been a growing chorus of voices arguing that happiness should not be the be-all and end-all of life. There are more important things, these people argue, than happiness when one considers the necessary ingredients for a good life.
In this essay, offer three components necessary for a good life (other than happiness). You should give a specific definition of what you consider a “good life” to be in your introduction and your thesis should list your three components. In the body of your essay, you should spend time
offering examples of these components and offering examples of how they contribute to a good life.
Additional Notes on this Topic:
• You would be well advised NOT to pick cliché components (like family) or to come up with lame components (like money). As your textbook notes, clichés won’t keep a reader’s attention (and family is not a guarantee of a good life, anyway). Likewise, a critical reader will see through lame offerings right away (and, besides, money is not a guarantee of a good life, either).
• This essay cannot use 2nd person (you, your) or implied second person. Essays that use 2nd person writing will suffer significant penalties.
• This essay should use 1st person writing as a means of providing examples. I do not know how you would successfully complete this essay without using 1st person.
Additional Notes on Examples:
• Examples must be specific instances. This means that a suitable example is something that is specific and that happened one time. If something is a regular occurrence, do not use it as an example.
• Examples are instances that happen to real people. They happen to you or to people you know. When you discuss these instances, you name the people to whom these events happened. You give details. Your job is to make the reader feel as though s/he witnessed this instance. If your reader does not feel this way, you are probably not being specific enough for your instance to rate as a real example.
• Examples don’t happen to “you” (refer to the note on 2nd person above). Nor do examples happen to “people” or “a person.” This is all pretend; it is not real and therefore will not rate as a real example.
