Essay Assignment

Rebecca Cox disrupts the conversation around student success in college by suggesting that the significant impediments students face are non-cognitive. She specifically argues that most college students experience great fear and anxiety around the transition to college. Moreover, she suggests that for many students this fear and anxiety provides the primary impediment to their academic success.

This essay assignment asks you to use your experiences at OCC to test Rebecca Cox's argument. Do you agree or disagree with Rebecca Cox's main ideas? Why or why not? How do your experiences support, challenge or complicate her argument? Has the fear that she writes about led you to self-destructive academic behaviors in the way that she describes? If not, why?

As a place to begin you might start with this template to point you on toward a provisional thesis: "While Rebecca Cox argues ___ about college, my experience at OCC supports/challenges/complicates this because______." Your essay should:

• Revolve around a clear thesis that makes a single arguable claim that adds to the current conversation about education as outlined by Rebecca Cox

• Explain the germane parts of her argument about education

• Explain and connect quotations from the reading

• Provide a clear and concrete description of your experience at OCC

• Explain, and connect this concrete evidence to support your thesis Nuts and Bolts:

• 4-5 pages (1200-1500 words), 1" margins, 12 pt. readable font, double spaced

• Proofread for sentence and word level clarity and adherence to MLA conventions

• Follow MLA conventions for in-text citations (we will go over these in class).