ASSIGNMENT PROMPT FOR FIRST STUDY REPORT
You have been asked to consider the question, "What is the most important issue or problem facing your generation?" Because we began the course with a search for issues, your first "report" should be an informative discourse on the issue you have selected. Please write a well-organized and enlightening essay which introduces the reader to your issue/topic. Your goal is to provide a general description of your issue which gives the basic outline of the issue, and brings the reader towards a contemplation of whatever complexities, elaborations, and refined and appropriately nuanced distinctions are necessary for really understanding your issue.
A further agenda of your work might include an approach to these questions as well: Why is this an interesting or important topic? What is at stake for society at large with this issue - how and why will it matter in the future? What other important issues or topics is your issue connected with? What are the major problems or dilemmas associated with your issue?
Again, this First Report does not have to contain any dazzling display of economic logic. For this particular work, you don't have to describe in detail all the "economics" of your issue - that will come in your later writing. Your goal at this point is merely to describe your issue and to provoke an interest in the issue in the mind of the reader. Assume that your audience is a general public, and that, they are going to give you their attention in reading your somewhat lengthy essay. Imagine that your reader is perhaps a person who is looking at a magazine while waiting for their flight at an airport, or is reading an online article in a somewhat relaxed fashion; so that, they are precommitted to actually reading flowing text which is not just bullet-pointed or overly truncated.
Your Study Report should be approximately a 4-8 page typed work. My personal preference is for 1.15-spaced lines in a 11- or 12- font, with 1-inch margins.