Your Minnesota Autobiography

Your Minnesota Autobiography, or

How have YOU experienced Minnesota?

This exercise is worth 2% of your final grade.  It lets me know more about you as a Person in Place (no longer a nameless faceless student) and how much you have already experienced Minnesota.  Hopefully you’ll enjoy this exercise, and perhaps save it to look at in the future (especially question #9, which is worth half the grade of this exercise)!

Short Answers…. Please answer the following questions 

In what Minnesota city and neighborhood (if Minneapolis or St Paul) do you live now?  Have you lived in other cities in Minnesota?  If so, where else in Minnesota? 

How long have you lived in Minnesota?  If you haven’t always lived in this state, where else have you lived? 

How much have you traveled in the state of Minnesota?  What are some places in Minnesota you have visited? 

What types of activities have you done in Minnesota?  If applicable list activities done outside the Twin Cities (camped, fished, hunted, boated, hiked) and those done inside the Twin Cities.

5.  Name something you like about Minnesota and why you like it.  

6.  Name something you don’t like about Minnesota and why you don’t like it.  Try to pick something besides just “hate winter”, although you can certainly include it in your list.

7.  Name a place or some places in Minnesota you especially like and/or don’t like.  Why do you like or don’t like it or them?

8.  Write your opinion about how Minnesota compares to other states.  In what way(s) are we better than most other states?   In what way(s) are we worse than most other states?

Essay Question…. Your Minnesota Experience! 

9.  We all have experiences that are tied to places, where we can’t go to the “place” without remembering the experiences we had there, or remember the experience without also thinking about the “place” where it happened.   This question asks you to write a small story about one (or more) Minnesota Experience, whether it happened in a place like “Duluth” or a place like “my Grandma’s back porch on North Fremont.”  It might have been a good or funny experience, but it doesn’t have to be. Maybe it was a bad or mixed or neutral experience.  All I ask is that the experience have some connection with a Minnesota place (or maybe with Minnesota’s “Culture”, such as “when I first arrived in Minnesota from Togo, I had a funny but embarrassing introduction to Minnesota Culture”).  

Warning:  Some stories might be shared with future Minnesota classes (if relevant to a particular discussion,) but under no circumstance will any names be revealed!  (Unless under court order, so don’t tell me where you buried your last victims!)