General instructions for doing Weekly Reaction Papers

TITLE

General instructions for doing Weekly Reaction Papers

SUMMARY

Follow these instructions for how to draft, turn in Weekly Reaction Papers, and to find out in what ways they count re final grades. (Plain text of the document posted in body of announcement.)

BODY

1.     Weekly Reaction Papers will generally be required every week of the semester, beginning in Wk 3 up until (and including) the week before Thanksgiving week.

2.     A Weekly Reaction Paper is simply a 1-2 page double-spaced, informal “reaction” – comment, description, summary – on either some WSJ business story during the week before or the week it is due. It does not have to be elaborate, but should be about some story related to business, markets, or finance in the WSJ. It does not have to be about law; part of the purpose is to give you an opportunity to think about business concepts in general.

3.     If you are given a specific assignment, the format is the same as 2 above, but on whatever assignment is given.

4.     Assume that you should turn in a Weekly Reaction Paper every week (see 1) unless affirmatively canceled in a given week by Professor Anderson.

5.     If you are not given a “specific” Weekly Reaction paper assignment for the week (and the Weekly Reaction Paper has not been affirmatively canceled), by you should do a “default” Weekly Reaction Paper on any business story in the WSJ (2 above).

6.     Weekly Reaction Papers should be turned in on the class Mywcl Dropbox, in the folder for that week. Please do not email them to Professor Anderson – use the Dropbox.

7.     Submit the Weekly Reaction Papers to Dropbox in pdf format – not Word (the pdf document opens for Professor Anderson in one step; the Word documents require 3 steps). This is important.

8.     If for some reason you wind up missing submitting your Weekly Reaction Paper when it is due, go ahead and submit it anyway, and submit it to the Dropbox weekly folder when it was due. In this case, send Professor Anderson an email letting me know it is there and explaining why it was late. (Professor Anderson will be able to see the date it was dropped into Dropbox, but the email is mostly to ask you to explain why it didn’t come in on time.

9.     The Weekly Reaction Papers are not “graded” and so do not affect your final course grade directly. They are intended to be a chance for you to learn (or extend your knowledge) about topics in business you might not know much about. Even though they are not graded, they are required and if you substantially fail to do them or write them in a way that doesn’t appear to take the assignment seriously, it will have an effect on your grade. Think of this as a “good faith effort” standard.

10.   If it appears to me that there’s a problem with the effort put into the assignments, or with turning them in on time, Professor Anderson will be in touch with you directly. Otherwise, there will not be feedback given individually on the Weekly Reaction Papers. If you don’t hear from Professor Anderson about your efforts on these assignments, assume that you’re doing fine on them. No news is good news, other words.

11.   Other Weekly Reaction Paper instructions will be given on an as-needed basis.