Paper #1 Assignment (see below for MWF/TR due dates)

Paper #1: Traveling to ECU

For your first paper, I want you to become part of the “conversation” of travel that we’ve read about in our first four essays.  However, I also want you to contribute your own travels and experiences in a way we can all appreciate.  To do this, I want you to write about your first experiences exploring ECU (or another college, if you have attended elsewhere), when you were still an “outsider” looking into a foreign culture.  Discuss what you saw before you understood the culture of classes, studying, dorms, clubs, games, Ada, etc., and how you learned to understand this strange new world.  Try to limit your paper to a few specific events so you can examine and discuss them in the same way as our other travel writers.

When writing, consider some of the themes each essay explores and relate it to your own experience becoming part of the ECU culture (even if you’re still learning it):

• Swick A Moving Experience: the importance of the “bad” travel experience; the loneliness and sadness of travel; the importance of being a “camera”
• Key, Fifty Shades of Greyhound: the idea of “Bus People”—how a specific space or environment can create a culture; how we acclimate to this culture even against our will
• 460 Days: how stereotypes cause resentment and misunderstanding; the implications of traveling to another culture for yourself and others; the importance of finding freedom even in prison
• Power, Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky: exploring worlds that other people don’t know or care about; making your own path in the world, even when others consider it off-limits or undesirable
• Shoutmatoff, The Last of Eden: learning the value of marginalized people/cultures; seeing the world through another pair of eyes; the conflict of opposing cultures  

Besides telling your own travel story, I want you to respond to at least 2 of the essays we read for class (or another essay in the book we didn’t read): use these essays to support or expand your ideas.  Imagine that you’re at a round table discussion of travel, and you story is a response to the other authors sitting and speaking beside you.  How can their travels and ideas complement your own?  Or how might you respond or even disagree with theirs?  Remember, writing is always a conversation of ideas, so you can’t just write about yourself—you have to respond to the other writers/thinkers out there.  When you write about travel, you’re entering into an old and very vocal conversation. 

REQUIREMENTS

• 3-4 pages double spaced
• Use at least 2 essays from Best American Travel Writings 2014
• Quote and cite essays according to MLA format, along with a Works Cited page’
• For TR class: Due Tuesday, February 3rd by 5pm [in my office—no e-mails]
• For MWF class: Due Monday, February 2nd by 5pm [in my office—no emails]