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©All the material in this website is copyrighted to Kathleen L. Fowler unless explicitly indicated otherwise.  Permission is granted to use and distribute this material freely but please attribute properly by retaining the full header information. 11/16/99 Page revised July 20, 2006

MMET 314 01 and 02 Death and Dying, Life and Living
Writing Guidelines

Return to Syllabus http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~kfowler/d&df06syllabus.html

Writing Tasks and Guidelines:

In all written work footnotes and bibliography must be included.  Page numbers from course materials (as well as research materials must be included.)

a. Grief/Caregiving essay Guidelines:   You have three alternatives for this first paper: Grief; Illness or Caregiving. 
1. Grief: describe "An Experience I Have Had with Death and/or Grief."     Use the  Loss Assessment sheet completed the first class and the Loss History completed for the second class  to help you in thinking about and drafting the Grief Essay the first draft of which is due in Class 3.  Describe in 3-4 pages drawn from your own personal experience (no research is necessary at this point) an encounter that you have had with death or loss or grief.  You may describe any experience that you have had with loss or grief or death that has had a strong impact on you.  It could be a death or the life-threatening illness of yourself or of someone you love, or  the loss of an ability, or a relationship, the loss of a pet, etc.  Grief takes many forms. 
2. Illness: Describe "An Experience I Have Had with living with a life-altering illness."
3. Caregiving:  Illness is to describe "An Experience I Have Had with Caregiving for someone who is dying or living with a life-altering illness." 

Note:  Keep a copy for yourself.  When you receive this paper back with my comments make a xerox immediately to attach to the final revision which is due Class 13.  The revised version will need to incorporate insights -- and be reshaped through the lens of the course and will need to demonstrate clearly and convincingly (with appropriate documentation) where reading, a/v, discussion, and experiential materials from the semester  have helped further your understanding and thinking about this experience -- or have led you to explore in detail an entirely different one.  (Let me know if you expect that your focus will change dramatically on the second version of the essay!)  You must use either Robert's Death Without Denial; Grief Without Apology or Housden's Hannah's Gift or Lorde's Cancer Journals among your sources.  You must also use another 3-5 sources which can include one of the other books, some of the articles assigned for the class, and/or some of the videos we have viewed as a class.  The second draft of the essay must be appropriately documented with parenthetical citations and a bibliography page.  Please follow MLA or APA style for your documentation.  Attach a copy of your first version with my comments to the revised version.  Your grade will in part depend on how well you address suggestions made at the earlier stage, Due Class 13.   Worth 20% of the overall semester grade.

b.  Quizzes and brief writings in class. There will be a quiz every class on the readings.  These quizzes will collectively be worth 10% of the semester's grade.  I will drop the lowest quiz grade from the final average.  If you are absent your quiz grade will be a zero for that class.  You may make up one missed quiz.

c.  A take-home midterm exam  between 5-10 pages in length (guide distributed Class 7, paper due Class 9).  The midterm is worth 10% of the overall semesetser grade.

d.  Group Panel research, Annotated Bibliography AND Presentation: Note: In lieu of a full-scale research paper for this class you will be asked to do a limited research task as a part of a group working on a common theme.  The group will pursue a research project which will result in a collective annotated bibliography and a panel presentation on the date of the assigned topic.  Group A: End of Life Issues Due Class 5;  Group B Children and Grief Due Class 7; Group C: Children: Illness and Death. Due Class 10; Group D Caregiving  Due Class 11;  Group E Sudden Grief/Traumatic Loss Due Class 12.   See http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~kfowler/d&df06panelguide.html
e.  Individual Journal Article Abstracts (3)     Each member of the group will research one particular aspect of the group's topic and will identify 3 key juried journal articles on the topic (not the first 3 -- the best 3!)  -- ideally from the perspective of the individual's particular professional field -- i.e. a social work major should be looking at social work articles on the selected aspect of the group topic e.g. "social work interventions in caregiver burnout."  The individual member will prepare a full formal abstract of these three articles (see guidelines from LEO at http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/bizwrite/abstracts.html or the University of Toronto Abstract Guidelines).  These abstracts will be submitted along with copies of the original articles and the abstracts provided by the databases -- for  individual grades on the day that the Group presents.   The abstracts are worth collectively 10% of the semester's grade.

f.  Experiential Projects (2 of these) EP1 due Class 6; EP2 Class 111.  Click here for options.  Each EP2 is worth 10% of the overall semester grade.

g.  A final exam due Class 14  --  details will be announced later.  The final is worth 10% of the overall semester grade.

h.  Please read the "Reflections" entries which will be used in microlabs during the semester and which you may also want to draw from in your various work.