I. Take a few minutes to consider your questions and what you have read thus far, and then write out your opinions on the matter. Here, I don’t want you to hold back. Try to be as strength forward about your beliefs on the matter as you can be, and give any personal accounts that you may have to further accent your thoughts and reasoning.

 

II. Go back through what you have read thus far, and even look at new resources (at this point you should have a min. of five sources), and identify statements that are disputable. This is a “Yeah, but…” approach. Also, find terms of use that need clarification. Include the terms or phrases and what you find to be questionable about their use or what needs to be further explored. Include the statements and what your “Yeah, but…” observation is and then search for resources that focus in the “but” side of the dispute. Include your resources.  

 

For example, take the sentence below, from Ozimek:

 

“So what we see is that examples of decent jobs without a college degree exist, and on the other side of the ledger there are also examples of college degrees that really are a huge waste of money.”

 

Phrase: Here, we might identify “decent jobs” as a phrase that needs to be further explored. I mean, how does one define a job as being decent and for whom? What are the qualities needed to be a decent job? Does it mean that one makes the same or more as the national average? Does money always matter? For example, what about the stress level of a job or the physical demands or, further still, if one makes “good” money but hates their job can we still say it is “decent”? How does age and one’s responsibilities play in here? If there is a sixteen-year old living at home and a single mom of three with the same job, where they are making the same money, would they both have a “decent job”? 

 

The Statement, “there are also examples of college degrees that really are a huge waste of money,” is disputable. According to how one defines “waste of money” this may not always be the case. "A humanities and english degree from Florida International University has a 20-year net return of -$192,000. That’s a lot of money, and there are students choosing these degrees," this statement does not really account for graduates that use their degrees in the humanities, such as with the case of an English, to be more marketable in other fields in which they are employed and monetarily successful. 

 

III. Now turn your attention to what might complicate the issue. Rather than taking an either/or approach, you will be making attempts here to “fill in” the “missing links.” This will require that you think outside of the box and even consider topics that are at first seemingly unrelated to your topic, but which inform the issue all the same.

 

For example, given the same sentence, “there are also examples of college degrees that really are a huge waste of money,” only accounts for the monetary gains of educations. Should we always view the success of a college degree or any college education as being as being equal to how much money one will gain from it? What about the many personal gains that one is not able to measure monetarily?  This makes me think that maybe I should look into the psychology of fulfillment and how those views are informed by or resist notions of success in the American context.