A signature assignment is a unique type of assignment, mostly assigned at the college and university levels, which is meant to have you tie what you have learned to your own personal life experience. Whether it is tied to a specific course or to an entire degree, it requires that you examine what you have learned and think critically about it so that you can then use this knowledge to gain insights into your life or the world around. The whole point of writing a signature assignment is to use critical thinking so as to apply what you have learned in class to the real world that surrounds you.
The personalized nature of a signature assignment is something that you have to take into account when writing your signature assignment. Unlike a traditional essay or research paper, writing a signature assignment means that you have to get personal in relation to what you have learned. This might worry you in relation to your privacy. Don’t worry! If your professor does not know you very well, you can make up significant details about your life when writing a signature assignment. Otherwise, you can connect your signature assignment to broad and general elements of your life, like your race or ethnic background, and avoid going into the type of personal information that you don’t want your professor to know. Writing a signature assignment is personal but you still get to protect your privacy when doing so.
When you are writing a signature assignment, you must continuously reflect on how what you have learned relates to you and your life. This simply means tying the different arguments that you are making to experiences that you have had or things that are occurring in the world. You can write the personal elements of a signature assignment broadly or narrowly depending on your topic and how personal you are willing to get in terms of discussing your life experiences. This is completely up to you. The key to successfully writing a signature assignment is to demonstrate to your professor that you have tied your personal experiences to the course material.
Choosing a signature assignment topic can sometimes be challenging because your major or the course you are being asked to write a signature paper for might have nothing to do with your life. When this is the case, think of how you fit into the world and how what you have studied impacts the world around you. When you write your signature assignment, you can then build some distance between you and the topic. You will still be fulfilling the functions of a signature assignment by taking such a broad approach because you will be respecting the critical thinking component that is essential to writing a signature assignment.