In your essay, do each of the following:

1. introduce the ways in which inherited and/or informed assumptions, beliefs, and values make up a worldview (you can be creative: use definition, analogy, a famous person, a TED Talk, a song or poem, a personal story, an imaginative scenario, and/or one of the many resources from this unit);
2. briefly identify and summarize the essential assumptions, beliefs, and values of your worldview, their influences (if religion factors into your worldview, do not focus on it only, and please refrain from excessively quoting scripture);
3. choose ONE of the major beliefs from “b” and expand on it, explaining (aka, narrate the story of) its existence, from origin until now. Include how it is inherited, informed, and/or influx, and the ways in which it does and/or does not manifest in actions you take in your life. If acting more on this belief in the future is something you hope to do, you may speculate on that as well;
4. relating to the major belief covered in “c,” utilize the Opposing Viewpoints database or the editorial section of a newspaper to find ONE culturally relevant perspective with which you disagree (you may integrate what you used in the discussion forum) and do each of the following:

1. 1. introduce and summarize the text and include why you selected it;
   2. offer your response to the source, including both believing and doubting points (Ramage 24);
   3. discuss the ways in which your informed/inherited assumption/s, belief/s, and/or value/s affect your position.
   4. discuss how this source contributes to your understanding of the issue, your belief, and your worldview.

E.     finally, reflect and evaluate yourself as a critical thinker in general and based on what you have written in  “d,” utilizing one or more of the Valuable Intellectual Traits to help illustrate your evaluation. Were you able to be dialectical with the alternative view?

Guidelines:

• Make sure to comprehensively respond to ALL parts of the task, letters a-e.
• Use your unique voice to make this an essay only you could have written. Take risks; you get to revise it based on feedback and a grade you will receive from me. When you revise, you can only improve your grade, not bring it down. In other words, the highest grade will remain.
• The essay should be a minimum of 6 pages in length, though there is no page limit on this assignment. It is difficult to comprehensively cover all that is asked of you in fewer than 6 pages, but some students have written as many as 18! With that said, more pages do not automatically mean a higher grade, especially if the essay lacks control and focus.
• Overall, your essay should be cohesive, with a clear beginning, middle, and end, and should not be an individual response to each letter.
• Be sure to create focused paragraphs and use effective transitions between them.
• Give your essay a unique title, not “My Worldview,” or worse, “Essay 1.”
• Use MLA format and style, including a Works Cited page, as a minimum of one source, is required. If you are rusty on MLA, please visit the MLA page which you can find a link to on our homepage.
• Proofread carefully so that sentence-level errors do not harm the readability of your essay.