I am interested in applying to Reed, but the writing supplement is strange. I am not sure what to write. The previous Reed “why us” writing supplement is easy, but the new Paideia writing supplement is as hard as the question by Pomona (’ Imagine you were hired to design and teach a Critical Inquiry course. Describe the title of the class, its contents, and why you chose it.). And I can’t get any sample courses online. The schedule on http://www.reed.edu/paideia/ requires login. :- (
Any suggestions on the structure, content, and style? Thank you
Reed Writing Supplement: For one week at the end of January, Reed students upend the traditional classroom hierarchy and teach classes about any topic they love, academic or otherwise. This week is known as Paideia after the Greek term signifying “education” – the complete education of mind, body and spirit. What would you teach that would contribute to the Reed community? (200 words minimum, 500 words maximum)
This is basically an invitation to talk about one of your interests in a way that other people can relate to/get excited about.
Paideia courses can really be on absolutely anything. Off the top of my head I remember Paideia courses on Tolkien’s Elvish languages, BDSM, ingenious ways to secure extra income (temp work, selling blood plasma, participating in medical studies, etc.), policy consulting, role-playing games, cooking cheap, portrait photography, etc. It could also be something more academic like a specific genre of poetry or a recent scientific discovery or whatever. There are no rules.
Just discuss a topic you know well in a way that makes it sound like a thing worth knowing about.
In fact, I just logged in with my alumni account and looked at the schedule for the first day of Paideia. I don’t have the patience to go through the whole week, but these are the classes available on that day:
Tabletop Game Design Jam
Pilates Matwork
Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing
C.C Stern Type Foundry Field Trip
D&D 101: Adventuring for Beginners
Overcoming Performance Anxiety
Samba no Pé (samba dance like you see in carnaval)
Wool Dying and Ball Felting
MIT OCW-centric wiki World University and School: How Reedies can wiki-teach here and eventually develop WUaS as interns
Irish Whistle for Beginners
All About Rooster Roasting
Kimchi Making
Belief Systems of the Religious Right
The Zombie Apocalypse and You
Campus-Wide Capture the Flag
Some are taught by students, some by staff or alumni. I don’t see any professors on this list, but they teach Paideia classes too, though more rarely (since they’re usually busy preparing for the real classes they’ll be teaching in the spring).
And what structure is recommended? Should I simply write a typical course description shown in college catalog, or should I go into the details like materials to use, questions to discuss, essays to write etc? And should I include the way my topic relates to my personal experience, even when the supplement does not require it?
LOL mine was very interesting. I was working on a previous application as I was starting the Reed application, so I basically wrote about diversity. It ended up being a very compelling essay. Honestly, I would recommend talking about something obscure or something that you value to such a large degree within your life.
For example, you could talk about the importance of honesty, humbleness, avoiding judgment, being down-to-Earth, etc. However, I would warn against any topic that might be consider innapproprate. For example, I would advise against talking about affirmative action, as this university is on the far end of the liberal spectrum. However, luckily, this college is all about free speech, so most topics should be considered satisfactory, creating a wide spectrum of possibilities for the essay topic.