Here's an example of the Comprehensive Critical Essay assignment, the final essay you will write for the course. You are required to submit TWO things: the essay, and a short self-assessment. With the permission of the author Jordan Globerson, I'm sharing his assignment from Fall 2019.  If you'd like a second example, here's a sample essay by Victoria O'Donnell based on chapter 10 of our textbook. 

Self-reflection 

The purpose of the self-assessment is NOT to grade yourself. Instead, I am looking for an explanation of how you developed the final essay. I need to know what parts of your earlier work were included in the final essay, what ideas you used from our course in your essay, and (if there's any room left) what your process was to arrive at the final essay. Here's what Jordan wrote: 

After watching the entire first season of the series, I changed my mind about which episode I would analyze for the final essay.  The final episode of the first season held a lot of meaning and after watching it multiple times I discovered how much there was to actually write about that was relevant for this class.  I started my final essay from scratch because what I ended up writing about I had not written about before, because these elements weren’t as relevant in the earlier episodes.  There was a lot about this episode that I had to cut out because of word-limit constraints, so I focused on the points of the show that really stuck out to me regarding ethics and meanings that the audience would discern from watching this show.  While editing my essay, I realized how much critical analysis was possible with all of the concepts that we have learned throughout the semester.  Some of the concepts that I thought were appropriate ended up being cut from the final essay.  I liked the idea of the show being a social commentary about violence and bullying, and I decided to focus on ethics and how the audience would feel after finishing this first season of the show.  I was delighted with how good the show ended up being, because I wasn’t expecting it to be that good.  A pleasant surprise, and a well crafted show with plenty of material for critical analysis.  I am glad that I decided to start all over, because I am happy with the outcome and it was worth the extra work.  While writing the other assignments before was helpful, after talking with Prof. Cecil about the final episode, I received clear guidance on the route I should take, and followed through with that guidance.   

Comprehensive Critical Essay

Here's Jordan's final essay.  Honestly I felt for a long time that he hadn't found much of critical interest to say about Cobra Kai, but when he found the right episode and the right theory from our course (clearly, Rhetoric) he came up with a strong thesis. He was able to include sections about narrative, character analysis, and power derived from his earlier essays by editing them and taking only the parts that supported his main perspective on Cobra Kai, which used rhetorical theory.