In Seeing by Annie Dillard and This Is Water by David Foster Wallace, both authors address the themes of perception, connection, and attention. In this essay, you are going to examine their ideas through the lens of the COVID-19 global pandemic.
Locate at least one current outside source that discusses the experience of living in the COVID-19 global pandemic. Use that outside source, along with Dillard and/or Wallace, to answer this question:
How does the global pandemic affect our experiences of perception, connection, and/or attention?
Consider focusing on specific aspects of coronavirus-inflected life: stay-at-home orders, social distancing, wearing masks, commuting, working (or working from home), distance learning, grocery shopping, personal care, personal relationships, etc. You may also choose to include your own perceptions of COVID-19 or interview friends or family for their perception.
(After you have completed your final draft, you may consider submitting it to Brooklyn College’s COVID-19 Archive, which is included in the “Potential Outside Sources” subfolder.)
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Reference Dillard and/or Wallace and your outside COVID-19 source in your response. You may use one of the sources from the Potential Outside Sources subfolder of the 4/26-5/2 folder or choose your own.
After you have figured out a preliminary thesis statement, take 5-10 minutes to plan your essay around your thesis statement.
After you have planned your essay, write a rough draft and submit it here. Though the due date is listed as Sunday, May 2nd, 11:59pm, you know from the syllabus that you may take extra time on your assignments as needed. (See the Deadline Policy section of the syllabus.)
Your rough draft can be as rough or incomplete as youd like; you will get full credit on the assignment as long as you complete it. Some students like to develop an outline but to write out one section completely as a full paragraph. Others may write one body paragraph completely but for another just put placeholder text until they figure out what to write later in their final draft. (You could write something like, This is where I would put an example of x.) The purpose of the rough draft is to get some of your ideas out on paper generally in the order that you believe that you would like to discuss them.
After you receive my comments and have asked questions about those comments as needed, you will be revising your rough draft into a final draft. This is a separate assignment with its own set of instructions.
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