Reflection Paper 5
Reflect on the following prompt, and write a paper in response:
By way of your understanding of Camus and Ellison, explain the relationship (if any) between absurdity and the meaning of life. Does perceiving existence as absurd make life less worth living? Or can one find the worthwhileness of one’s life while still acknowledging its absurdity?
The goal of a reflection paper is to present your own considered and clearly articulated beliefs alongside your understanding of the philosophical material we have read in the course. To that end, be sure it is always clear whose views are being expressed—yours or one of the authors whose works are included in our textbook. Be sure to address yourself not only to an answer to the question, but also to providing your reader with an account of why you believe your answer to be correct. What are your reasons for taking one position or another? On what basis do you say the
things you say about the readings? In order to justify the claims in your paper to your reader, when discussing material from the textbook you must offer substantiation for your claims with quotations from the text. Quotations are absolutely required; papers that do not use direct quotations to support the claims they make about the readings in the textbook will receive a failing grade.
Do not consult any sources or resources other than our textbook. (This includes the scholarly introductions to each thinker and the footnotes in each chapter by the textbook’s editor, as well as anything written by me in the daily lessons.) Any paper that quotes from any other source will receive a substantial grade penalty; any paper which can be shown to be reliant upon any other source without citation will receive a failing grade and its author will be subject to the appropriate disciplinary procedures, detailed in the UHD Academic Honesty Policy (or in the UHD Student Handbook).
The paper should be 2–3 pages long, typed and double–spaced. Use an 11– or 12–point font with reasonable margins. Citations should be in either the MLA or Chicago Manual of Style formats (information on both of which is available on the UHD Library website, under the heading, “Citing Sources”), and as such must give full bibliographical information for the text in either a “works cited” (MLA) or bibliographical footnotes (Chicago). Quotations should be set off from the rest of the paper (typically by quotation marks), and you should cite the page numbers in the text where the quoted passage appears. The paper is worth 15% of your grade for the course, and is to be submitted online via Blackboard by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, July 8. Late papers will not be accepted unless you have arranged an extension with me before the stated due date and time.
Please remember, you are only required to submit four of the five assigned Reflection Papers this semester. The paper with the lowest grade will be dropped, so that it does not impact your grade in the class. You may write all five Reflection Papers, and then I will drop the lowest one; or you may choose to skip one of the Reflection Papers, in which case the missing paper will not impact your grade.
Although I will not read drafts, if at any point in the writing or revising of this paper you have questions as to what you should or should not do, please ask me. The more in advance of the due date you ask your questions, the more use my answers will be to you. This is especially pertinent regarding matters of academic integrity and plagiarism. Plagiarists will be dealt with as harshly as is possible, and so, if you remain unsure as to what constitutes plagiarism in this course, you are strongly encouraged to consult with me.
