My Story Concept Map and Essay

Directions – My Story Concept Map and Essay

The goal of the assignment is to explore your personal values, and connect your values with your identity. As you learned in the readings and videos, the individual is an important element in the study of morality. Mill tried to save utilitarianism by “invoking a moral ideal of human dignity and personality independent of utility itself.” Underlying this is the importance of the individual identity and values – which Mill recognized as a critical part of moral reasoning.

With that in mind, you will explore your personal values and connect them with your self-identity in a concept map.

Step 1: Identify your five key values by completing the Carnegie Mellon Values Exercise. This exercise is available at: https://www.cmu.edu/career/documents/my-career-path-activities/values-exercise.pdf

Step 2: Think about your personal identity. The Elevator Speech you created as an introduction in Week 1 provides a good place to start. The optional Crash Course videos in this weeks Reading and Videos provided information to help you think more deeply about identity – if you have some time, you may want to go back and watch those. In her Nobel Speech, Malala provided examples of different ways that identity tell the story of a person. Malala shared her self-identity, and also her identity as described by others. She then connected these to her values and dreams.

Step 3: Develop a My Story concept map, connecting your identity and the five key values you identified in Step 1 of this activity. In concept maps, the goal is to discover relationships between things. And being a creative assignment, it is all about process. Process is really more important than product. In other words, your Concept Map may or may not be the prettiest thing, but creating one may lead you to new discoveries. The resources below in the ‘Concept Map Information’ section provide ideas about creating a concept map. You may keep it simple and use technology you’re familiar with, or you may use a new concept mapping tool. Please choose a method which appeals to you. You will submit your concept map (along with the My Story essay described in Activity #2 below) in this week’s Assignment Submission due Sunday.

Step 4: Write a two-page essay, reflecting on your values, identity, and the concept map you created. In an approximately two-page (double spaced, standard 12 point font, and 1 inch margins), well-written document, respond to the questions:

How do you identify yourself?
What are your five key values?
How do your identity and values connect to shape your story and worldview?

One of the most important things this My Story Concept Map and Essay assignment does is ask you to view your Story from the outside, as an audience might see it. And it asks you to do it in a creative way. What are the highlights of your personal story and how do they link with your values and identity and the world around you. Did you discover some new connections?