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Personal Reflection Essay on Risk Taking & Decision Making Assignment

Overview of Assignment for Library Session next Tuesday. Sept. 23rd in 003 Skillman Library

This writing assignment involves assessing your personal risk taking and sensation seeking behaviors associated with activities that you have undertaken in the past, reflecting on how what you know about your risk taking and sensation seeking tendencies helps you understand more clearly your past risk-taking decisions and experiences, and projecting how your approach to risk taking and your decisions regarding taking risks may change in the future. The paper will require you to critically examine past experiences; pin down your existing risk-taking behaviors, your attitudes towards risk, and your decision making processes; and contemplate your future risk-taking behavior.

As in any assessment, this is a chance for you to discover and learn more about yourself and why you do the things that you do. This paper will allow you to assess your experiences through the lens of risk-taking and decision making and give you the opportunity to convey your personal understanding of the impact of these issues have had on your actions. Although you will want to find a balance between feelings, opinions, and conclusions drawn from personal experience and those based on fact, the primary voice in the paper should be yours. This will not necessarily make it easier to write a clear, concise paper. In assessing and reflecting upon your risk-taking experiences you will need to try to understand the behaviors, decisions, and emotions involved – not merely identify them.

To help with the assessment and reflection process, the class will be taking a field trip to Dorney Park (you have the option between several Friday nights, 6 pm – midnight, in October). This trip will provide a focused experience in deciding to take risks. This will provide you with the opportunity to evaluate your decision making processes, provide information on the types of risks you prefer, evaluate the feelings you have in taking risks (before, during, and after), define the benefits/drawbacks of risks you take, assess acceptable levels of fear and risk (Friday nights can be #*%&! Scary for some), etc.

In assessing past behaviors and experiences with risk and risk-taking decisions you may want to consider the following questions that relate to past experiences you have undertaken:

What are a few specific experiences you have had with taking risks? Why were these experiences risky to you?

What were you thinking/feeling during these experiences?

How did you find yourself in these experiences? What decisions did you make? How did you deal with uncertainty?

What influence did peer pressure have on your decision to take risks?

Who was with you as you had these experiences? How did you interact with them? What support did they provide?

Did your family/friends agree with the risks you took?

Did any experiences make you want to take greater risks? Make you want to take less risk?

In reflecting on how your recent knowledge of risk taking and sensation seeking tendencies helps you understand to a greater extent your past experiences and decision you may want to consider:

Can you explain your decision making process in deciding to participate in risk-taking?

Are there common ties between the types of experiences you seek out and the types of experiences you avoid?

Would you be able to clearly explain to your family/friends why you decided to take these risks?

Is it important to you that your family/friends understand why you are taking these risks?

Can you describe what benefits you receive from these experiences and taking risks?

Are there any negative consequences that you are willing to accept in order to have these experiences?

Does the sensation seeking survey results help you understand your past decisions to engage in risk-taking?

Does reading about other people’s experiences help you understand your past decisions to engage in risk-taking? What comparisons/contrasts can you identify?

In expressing your opinion concerning how your approach to risk or risk-taking may change in the future you may want to consider:

What types of risk-taking experiences do you see yourself deciding to take on in the future?

Do you believe that the knowledge of your sensation seeking tendencies will impact your future decisions?

Do you believe that what you have read (or will read) about the experiences of othesr impact your future decisions?

Who do you want to accompany you when you take risks in the future? Why?

Additional information that could be helpful in identifying useful information to aid in supporting your personal assessment and reflection:

Discuss past experiences with family/friends that were there with you. Ask them to discuss why they decided to participate and also how they view your decision making processes and risk-taking behaviors.

Have family/friends who were involved in past risk-taking experiences with you take the sensation seeking survey that we took in class. Their results may give some contrast/comparison information to help you define more clearly your own personal assessment of risk.

Discuss your past experiences with people who would be hearing about them for the first time. Their responses may help you identify specific characteristics of your experiences, common links between experiences or behaviors, or help you clarify to yourself why and how you make the risk-taking decisions.

Note that the purpose of posing the questions above is to help you explore and gather experiences, ideas, and emotions about the topics being explored. You do not need to (and should not try to!) directly answer every question in your paper. Your paper must consider all three major parts – assessing past experiences, reflecting on how your knowledge and information collected helps you understand these past experiences, and projecting about the characteristics and activities of your future risk-taking self. Your paper should also integrate opinion and fact and transition between the ideas presented in each part. The paper should not be written as three isolated answers (one for each part mentioned above).

You will need to cite each reference that you use in your paper in the text and provide MLA formatted citations on the Works Cited page. You should cite at least three sources of information in your paper; you may of course cite more as long as the primary voice in the paper is yours. The most important detail of using cited references in a draft is to collect accurate information on the origin of sources that you are using at the time that you find those sources. If there any questions about specific MLA formats for any cited source we can discuss those in class. You can also investigate specifics concerning the MLA format on pp. 300 - 347 of your St. Martin’s handbook, which covers how to cite every possible type of source material.

The audience for this work is your peer group – either fellow students in class or students at Lafayette. The choice of voice is most likely first person.

Insight, thoughtfulness, and careful organization are all important in evaluating the effectiveness of your written paper. Clear, precise language, description, and examples are critical. A few, detailed examples, counter-examples, and connections are better than many, general statements.

Length: Around 4 pages (double-space; 1-inch margins all around)

Tentative Timeline of Assignment Due Dates:

For Thursday, Oct. 7th – Draft Paper due = Email a copy of your draft to me and bring one copy of your paper to class.

For Thursday, Oct. 16th – Final Paper due – Email me a copy of your final papers and works cited page.

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