Write an essay that addresses all of the questions below. The essay should be have multiple paragraphs. The essay should not be a list or numbered set of answers. In other words, sometimes students to try write the number one and then answer question one; then they write the number two and answer question two. I repeat, do not number your answers, do not write the questions in your essay when you answer the questions, and do not number/list your responses. Like with any other essay, you should write multiple paragraphs that address all of the prompt, which is the set of questions below. Some of your paragraphs may answer multiple questions while other paragraphs may only answer one question because that question needs multiple sentences to answer it. How many paragraphs you need in order to answer all of the questions in a clear and cohesive way is up to you.
Additionally, this is just a diagnostic essay. A diagnostic essay is an essay that is just seeing what skills you already have. If you are missing any skills, that is fine. You will receive full points as long as you turn this essay in. You have the whole semester to learn skills that are needed to pass the class, so of course you do not need to know everything at the start of the class. Try you best so that I know what skills you do have already and so that we nurture those skills while fostering other skills for you, too. Ultimately, the diagnostic essay helps me help you with your composition skills.
Here is the prompt. Answer all of the questions below in a multiple paragraph essay. Interpret the questions however you like, but be sure to answer them fully, clearly, and in a way that shows you know how to support your own ideas.
What have you learned about how you think?
Did you ever study your thinking?
What information do you have, for example, about the cognitive processes involved in how your mind thinks?
More to the point, perhaps, what do you really know about how to analyze, evaluate, or reconstruct your thinking?
Where does your thinking come from?
How do you define high quality thinking, and how do you define poor quality thinking?
How much of your thinking is of high quality, and how much of your thinking is of poor quality?
How much of your thinking is vague, muddled, inconsistent, inaccurate, illogical, or superficial?
Are you, in any real sense, in control of your thinking?
Do you know how to test it?
Do you have any conscious standards for determining when you are thinking well and when you are thinking poorly?
Have you ever discovered a significant problem in your thinking and then changed it by a conscious act of will?
If someone asked you to teach them what you have learned about thinking thus far in your life, would you have any idea what that was or how you learned it?
(This question is optional.) Is there anything else that you would like to share about your relationship to your own thinking?
Submission Guidelines: Submit a .docx or .pdf file of your diagnostic essay.
