My New York

In two to three pages, give your reader a sense of how you experience New York City. You can do this in a variety of ways. For instance, you can tell a story about yourself, interview an older family member and report on your family history, describe your neighborhood and how you navigate it, or explain something unusual that happens to you in a typical day.

Some questions to get you started: What does the view look like from your window? When you’re walking around your neighborhood at night, where is your favorite place to go? Where do you sometimes go out of a sense of obligation? Are there any places in your neighborhood you’ve never been inside, and why? When did you move to the place where you live and why? If you’ve lived there your whole life, when did your family move there? What does your apartment or block look like? What does it smell like? What do you hear? What gets cooked most often in your house and who cooks it? If you commute into the city, where do you hang out if you need to kill time before your train/bus/car? When was a time when you felt like “a New Yorker,” and what on earth does that mean? When in your commute do you know or feel that you’ve entered the city, and how?

Nuts and Bolts:

• As with all papers for this class, this one should be written using MLA formatting: Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced. 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 Friday, February 7th. Everybody’s paper will be workshopped.
• The final paper is due via turnitin.com on Friday, February 14th. We will not have class that day, but it is still due before 12:25 pm.