Select anything that you consider to be a problem worthy of your audience's attention. Write an essay (500-750 words) to convince your readers that they should be concerned about the problem.
Audience: a publication of your choice.(This essay may also be written as a letter of complaint addressed to a specific company, government agency, etc.)
Required Organization: Natural Division
Research Required: None. (Do NOT use books or the library; you may want to use a few interviews to get other people's ideas about the problem.)
Early humans had their problems, but they were big and few in number: finding food, shelter and clothing; hiding from lions, tigers, and bears. As technology has increased the complexity of life, it has also changed the nature of the problems that we face. For most people, the problems of our earliest ancestors no longer exist. Instead, we face a world of hundreds of small, irritating problems. Before we can get those problems solved, we have to be able to make other people understand what the problem is and why it is a problem.
By this point in the semester, I should have told you about the complaint letters I wrote concerning the ShirtTails, our stove, my 82 Escort, and the hospital bill for my son's birth. (If I have not, and you want to know, ask in class.) But there are literally hundreds of problems that I could respond to. Not long ago, we bought a name-brand phone that is supposed to hang on the wall. There is even a picture on the box of the phone hanging on a wall. But there is no way in which the phone can hang on a wall. I know because I took it to a different phone store, and then I took it back to the store where I bought it. Since they could not tell me how to get the phone to hang on the wall, the store took it back, but the time and frustration wasted was a pain, not just for me, but for everyone else who bought one and wanted to hang it on a wall. Other consumer-related problems that come to mind offhand are: a VCR that I cannot figure out how to program (The directions don't make sense.); a magazine company that is claiming we owe for a subscription which we never received; phone bills (and tax bills) that are so complex that they don't make sense, and grocery store cash registers that don't ring up prices correctly.
Another whole area of problems involves personal and professional relationships/activities. Sexual harassment, mutliculturalism, laws (or the lack of), a stop sign (or the lack of), school policies, methods of teaching, required courses, school boards -- the list could go on, and all are rich areas for finding things which you may consider to be a problem.
I have often said that 90% of your grade is determined before you start writing the draft of your paper. It will be determined in your favor if, instead of writing this paper just to do the assignment, you find a problem that you really care and know about and write the paper to show an audience why it is a problem.
Several semesters ago, some students complained that parking on this campus is a problem. They wanted the school to build a parking garage. I put them to work, writing about the problem. As they talked to various administrators, faculty in construction, other students, etc., and learned more about parking at other schools and about the costs of building a garage, they decided that parking here is not really a problem. There is nothing that says that your paper cannot conclude that the problem is not a problem.