In the course description, I make the claim that “every part of our lives in common is governed by a set of unacknowledged and acknowledged rules.” In three to four pages, think through the repercussions of that statement for your everyday life. You have a few choices in terms of how to approach this assignment. You may:

1) Tell a story about a time when you failed to abide by the rules, either because you didn’t know them or because you chose not to. What happened, what were the repercussions, and did the incident reveal anything to you that you hadn’t realized before?

2) Explain the implicit rules and/or manners of one aspect of your life. This can be anything–from the way your family eats dinner, to how to use Facebook or Instagram, to how to date at Baruch. Imagine you’re explaining this set of rules to an interested but ignorant party (a new visitor to your home, you uncle who just got Facebook, an adorable, helpless-looking first semester Freshman). Make sure to use details and anecdotes to explain how you know what you know.

3) Try to convince me that my claim (“every part of our lives in common is governed by a set of unacknowledged and acknowledged rules”) is wrong by describing one or more counter-examples in which you feel your interaction with another human being  was not governed by any rules of any kind.

Nuts and Bolts:

• This paper must be between three and four pages, 1080 words minimum.
• As with all papers for this class, this one should be written using MLA formatting: Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced, one inch margins on all sides. Refer to the Purdue OWL website or my MLA mini-guide if you have any questions.
• Here is the rubric by which you will be graded.
• The draft workshop will take place on Thursday, February 5^th.
• The final paper is due via turnitin.com by midnight on Thursday, February 12^th. Please submit the file as a word document.

* This assignment title is a reference to John Irving’s amazing novel The World According to Garp, which you should read immediately if you haven’t yet.