Short Paper #1 Prompt:

How I became a Democrat, Republican, or Independent….

The purpose of paper #1 is to get you thinking about your political identity, particularly your party identification. You have several “identities” (your name, your ethnicity, your gender, your favorite sports team, music, etc). Each of these “identities” comes from your life experience. Your political identity (or lack thereof) developed from somewhere, something, or someone as well. Your mission for this assignment is to identify (pun intended) how you stumbled on, fell into, or were persuaded to adopt, your political identity. Once you have done this, use the literature (your books plus a couple of outside sources), to determine if you “line-up” with the literature and be sure to tell me how you do/do not match up, and why you think (no wrong answer here) you were different (or not) than other groups that have been studied.

*If you do not have a political identity, this does not get you off the hook for this paper

Instead, your paper should focus on two things: 1)what your identity might be (based on research and your books and what we have covered so far in class); 2) why do you think you have not yet developed a political identity because the lack of one is the same as accepting one in this case.

This paper should be: 4-5 pages of text

Outline:

1. Cover page (including a title, your name, date, and class)

2. Body of text (this should be the 4-5 pages part; 12 point Times New Roman, with one inch margins)

3. Reference page (including the book from class that you reference in your paper as well as the outside sources you use).

4. **Do not plagiarize, if you have questions about this…come see me!!!

5. Do not use contractions

6. Watch for where you need punctuation

7. Use spellcheck

8. Pay attention when Word alerts you that something is wrong in a sentence and fix it before you turn it in

9. Proofread your papers!!!