Your Own Personal Walden: Extra Credit Assignment Quarter 2

Extra Credit Assignment

10 points possible; can earn a BONUS two points by responding to question/challenge #6!

Your task: You will turn in your cell phone (and any other texting device) to your parents before school on Monday, November 17, 2014, and receive it back after school on Friday, November 21, 2014. Each day, I ask that you reflect IN WRITING for at least ten minutes. I have provided some questions for you to write about below. You can write on each, or go with the first one until you have exhausted your thoughts on the topic, and then move to the next question. QUESTION 6 is the five point SUPER-BONUS!

1. Do you have any fears or resignations about this extra credit assignment? Do your family members? What kinds of emotions run through your mind at the thought of not being able to answer a text for the next 104 hours (ish).
2. Solitude: What does it mean for you to be alone? Do you enjoy silence when you are alone, or do you seek noise? Do you ever feel crushed in by people, or do you come alive in the presence of people in a way that you cannot while sitting in the stillness of your room?

Silence: What do you think about silence? Is it necessary? Useful? Scary? Sit in silence, and reflect on the experience.

1. Spend some time out in nature; it may be in your backyard, on a nature trail, or at a park. Do you find the experience peaceful, or are you distracted by the cold, dirt, bugs, etc? If you are distracted, what do you think this says about how often you spend time outside? Do you find that, like Hopkins, you experience the grandeur of God in nature?
2. Free-write on a topic of your choice, maybe something that has been bugging you or sitting at the back of your mind but has been drowned out by the text messages of your day.
3. Do you think that setting aside your cell phone has made you more relationally connected? Has it given you more “imaginative space” for empathy? How so, or why not?

6.****When was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter to a relative, parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, etc? WRITE ONE. Let them know how you are doing. Let them know that you were thinking of them. Then, put it in an envelope, with a stamp and an address, and bring it to class on Friday. I’ll drop them in the mail for you. (2 points bonus, making this 10 point extra credit assignment worth 15)

Bring this handout, your journal reflections, and your letter in on Monday, November 24th.

Student Signature: ______

Parent Signature: ______