Final project: Was It a Sign?
The capstone — a full, honest account of one moment in your own life that felt like fate, written twice over, as it felt and as you can now explain it.
Case closure 04
Due: 29 October 2027 · Weight: 35%
Every earlier assessment practises one part of the method on borrowed or constructed material. This one asks you to run the whole method, honestly, on the moment from your own life that came closest to feeling like fate.
The brief#
Write a full account of one real moment that felt meaningfully more than coincidental — what happened, what you believed about it at the time, and what you can now say about why, using this semester’s frameworks.
The two halves are not optional extras — they are the whole assignment. The first half has to be honest about how the moment actually felt, without already being explained away; a first half that starts with “of course, this is just apophenia” has skipped past the thing the essay is supposed to be about. The second half has to go further than naming a bias — it should show, with the specific texture of your own case, exactly how the noticing, the linking and the remembering happened, and what (if anything) would have made the moment worth trusting rather than merely worth noticing.
What you submit#
A written piece of 2,000–3,000 words. Workshop 6 is built specifically to help you choose a strong moment and plan the split between the two halves — a choice made in that session tends to produce a far stronger piece than one made the week of the deadline.
The spec
The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.
- one real, specific personal moment is described in enough detail that a stranger could picture it
- the piece is written in two distinguishable parts: what you believed at the time, and what you believe now
- at least three named frameworks from across the semester are applied with precision to this one case
- the piece takes a position on the course's opening question rather than only describing both sides
How it is marked
The final project is judged as a whole against the brief, weighing whether both halves are genuinely present and genuinely honest — the account of what the moment felt like at the time, undiluted by hindsight, and the account of what you can now say about why, using the semester's frameworks with precision rather than as a checklist. A piece that resolves too quickly into "and now I know it was just confirmation bias" is marked down as sharply as one that never gets past "and it really did feel like fate."