Final Project: Reconsidering "Perfect"

A full apology-design report on a complex harm, closing with an argued answer to what "perfect" turned out to mean, against your own Week 1 definition

Due: 28 May 2027 · Weight: 30%

Take a harm complicated enough that no single week of this course could resolve it on its own, and work out what a good response to it actually requires.

This is where the semester’s tools get used together, on something with enough moving parts that no single week’s concept settles it alone. You have two options for the scenario: carry your Constrained Apology scenario forward into its aftermath — what actually happens after the response you designed, including whether it was accepted, whether it repaired anything, whether it should have looked different in hindsight — or choose a new scenario of comparable complexity if your Constrained Apology case has nothing left to say.

What the report has to do#

Diagnose the scenario using the full framework: which components are doing the work here and which are hollow, what function the response actually serves and for whom, how audience and power shape what’s possible, what timing and medium do to the meaning of what’s said, and what repair — beyond any apology — the harm would actually require. Then make an argued decision: whether a response happens, when, through what channel, and what it says, defended against the alternatives you didn’t choose.

Close by returning to where the course started. Quote your own Week 1 one-sentence definition of apology — the one you put your name to in the first session — and argue, using this specific scenario, what it got wrong or couldn’t have accounted for. Then answer the course’s own question directly: for this case, what would “perfect” actually mean? Not a formula that would work for the next case too — an argued position that only makes sense once you know exactly what happened, to whom, and what was possible afterwards.

What you submit#

The scenario (your own, or your carried-forward one), the diagnosis, the argued decision and response, and the closing section reconsidering your Week 1 definition. There’s no required structure beyond that — a report that mechanically works through each week in order, without the sections actually building on each other, has not synthesised anything.