Write a letter to a friend you graduated with.
Be sure to include researched details about A, B, and C below, and perhaps D (any other subject(s) your teacher or professor suggests).
A. Choose a specific place that you have never visited. Be sure that the spot you choose is small enough; if it's too large, there will be too much information and you'll get lost in the details. For example, the place below is a voyage on the Queen Elizabeth II.
B. Describe what your life is like (by projecting into the future and explaining your new career and the part of a city you'd like to live in.) Obviously, don't pick your hometown. This is a research assignment.
C. Choose a hobby you know nothing about, research it, and write about it as if you are an accomplished (archer, go player, iron-man or iron-woman competitor, novelist). Choose any hobby you have ever wondered about. Again, don't coose something that is an actual hobby at this time.
D. Teacher or student-generated research topic.
E. About five to seven double-spaced type-written pages. Have fun with this!
Partial example of what assignment should look like:
June 30, 2015
Dear Pam,
It has been a long time since I’ve seen you! The last time was that weekend at Rough River in August, a few months after we graduated, when we all got together before going our separate ways. . .
Our reunion aboard the Queen Elizabeth II was fabulous. You remember how I’ve always loved fine foods, don’t you? Well, there are four restaurants on board this ship: the Columbia Restaurant, the Princess Grill, the Queen’s Grill, and the Tables of the World Restaurant. The fanciest is. . .
When I moved to Seattle after college I went to work for Boeing in their computer division. I’ve been working my way up the Boeing ladder and have been doing quite well. Recently I went to China as part of a scientific exchange program in which an American company sends some of its scientists and engineers to China to work on a particular project while some Chinese scientists and engineers come here to do the same. Since it is Boeing’s turn to do this, I volunteered and was selected. We flew to Beijing and from there to Chungking in the Szechwan Province. It is about nine hundred miles from Beijing and rather provincial. We worked on a dam being built on the Yangtze River and were there about three month. I was able to get out on weekends and sightsee a bit. One weekend we flew to Hsiang in the Tsinghai Province to see the Great Wall, and it is absolutely phenomenal. It extends about 4,000 miles across northern China and was built to repulse invaders from central Asia. I wonder how long it took to build.
When working on the dam my co-workers and I had to eat the local food, of course, and much of it in this province is spicy hot. My favorites are. . .
After my worker-exchange program was finished, we flew back home via Tokyo, where we had a two-day layover. While window shopping in Tokyo I stumbled across an antique Go board and inquired about it. An interpreter with our group helped the owner of the store to explain the fundamentals of the game to me. I became fascinated and bought the board, along with two sacks of playing pebbles, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Go is a Japanese game played with black and white pebbles on a board of nineteen horizontal and vertical lines. It is incredibly complicated. The object of the game is. . .
Note: Integrate into your letter the most interesting facts you can find. The best papers will include a large number (perhaps twenty or thirty) of specific researched details and proper nouns (names of people, places, and things) in each section. Your letter, however, should not sound like an encyclopedia entry. Speak in your own voice while incorporating your researched facts into the letter. Double space.