Close description report
A rigorous descriptive-phenomenology essay on one experience from the first half of the semester
Due: 15 March 2027 · Weight: 15%
The brief#
Describe one experience so precisely that a stranger could recognise it in themselves.
Choose one experience from unit 1 (cold shock, uncontrollable laughter, the earned ache) or unit 2 (unstructured boredom, the drift into sleep, the spark of intuition) that you actually underwent during that week’s practicum. This is not a summary of the practicum brief — it is your own account, written with the discipline descriptive phenomenology demands: bracket your assumptions about what the experience “means,” and describe only what was actually present to you, in the order it arrived.
The room this brief leaves is in which experience you pick and how deep you go. The judgement it tests is whether you can hold description and interpretation apart on the page, not just in principle.
What you submit#
A single written report, 1200–1800 words, as a page in this repo or a linked document. Cite your own practicum log as primary material — quote your in-the-moment notes directly rather than paraphrasing them from memory months later.
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.
- submitted by the deadline, as a written report between 1200 and 1800 words
- it describes one experience from units 1 or 2 in enough sensory and temporal detail that a reader who has never had it could recognise it if they did
- it distinguishes, explicitly, the sensation itself from your interpretation of it
How it is marked
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Descriptive rigor | 50% |
| Use of course concepts | 30% |
| Clarity of writing | 20% |