• Our Week 8 Seminar will be devoted almost exclusively to academic planning and working on Academic Statements.
• This session will be on Mon. Nov. 16 from 10:15 – 11:45 in CAL West, immediately following the weekly Quiz (and in place of Math Lab).
• There is no direct reading assignment. There is a fairly substantive pre-seminar writing assignment in lieu of a reading assignment (this writing assignment does have some small reading associated with it), described below.

Week 8 Seminar Pre-Seminar Assignment: Academic Statement Workshop I – to be completed before Seminar

One primary goal of your Academic Statement is to make sense of your academic trajectory. This might involve framing your past work (highlighting certain elements, minimizing others) to impose sense on (or reveal the sense of) that work. For most of you, it should also involve making thoughtful and informed choices about what makes sense to do next, and how best to prepare for that. This workshop is designed to help you look back on your academic work, talk stock of your current work, and look ahead to your future work. By completing these activities, you should develop significant raw material for our future Academic Statement workshops. You should complete Part A and Part B as described below as a pre-class assignment, bringing it with you to our Week 8 Seminar session.

Pre-Seminar Part A: Looking Back. (suggested 30 minutes) What previous decisions, pressures, accidents, dilemmas, serendipity, etc. have brought you to this point in your academic trajectory? Brainstorm and free-write on this question. In addition to whatever you might brainstorm up right now, also pay particular attention to other artifacts of your academic path: in particular, any drafts of your Orientation Essay, Academic Statement, past Self-Evaluations, or other written work in which you discuss how you got here. As possible, assemble any brainstorm writing you have just completed along with relevant portions of any of the written artifacts mentioned into a single document under the heading “Looking Back”.

Pre-Seminar Part B: Looking Around. (suggested 30 minutes) What are your goals for your current academic work, including your work in Matter & Motion and your work at Evergreen in general? How do your goals align with program-level and institution-level goals? Review the expectations and outcomes from Evergreen and Matter & Motion by reviewing/investigating Evergreen’s Five Foci of Learning and the Expectations of an Evergreen Graduate, reviewing Cronon’s essay “Only Connect” and your notes and recollections of our Week 4 Seminar discussion on this essay, and by re-reading our Program Learning Goals (which you can find in the Syllabus). Note any of the Foci, Expectations, and Learning Goals for which you have made satisfactory progress (it’s important that you be able to articulate that progress as specifically as possible using concrete evidence), those which you are dissatisfied with your progress towards, and any which you are not interested or able to pursue (for these, it is particular important that you can articulate a defensible position; it’s within your agency to reject any of these expectations but such a choice should be thoughtful). Assemble your responses and add to your previous document under the heading “Looking Around”.

Make sure you have access to this electronic document, with both “Looking Back” and “Looking Around” portions included and that you can access this document during our Week 8 Monday morning session. You will add a section “Looking Ahead” to this document during that class session.