The "Sowder" final is named after its inventor, Kate Sowder `03.

    The key thing to grasp about it is that if you do better on the Sowder final than on one or more of your four papers, I will substitute the Sowder-final grade for your lowest paper grade.

    The Sowder final will be designed as follows.  20 questions, 5 points each.  Letter grades to go by the traditional scale: 90-100 A, 80-89 B, 70-79 C, 60-69 D.  Short-answer questions, two sentences max.  Nothing tricky, just a straightforward test of knowledge of the issues.  (Examples: “State one objection to theory T”; “What is the point of the so&so example?”; “What is the difference between theory X and theoryY?”   Nothing more specific than such.)

    Material covered:  Everything discussed in class and everything in class handouts.  Nothing about any of the readings that has not been discussed in class.

    The Sowder final will require studying, since you will need to know all the major theories, arguments, examples etc. we have covered.  Whether it’s worth it for you to do that studying in hope of replacing your lowest paper grade is, of course, up to you.