HUM 103 is killing me...

[ExistentialCrisis]

All I have read on here are tales of how HUM 103 was such an easy A, but here I am with one week left in the term and just got my paper kicked back because it wasn't "academic enough". The professor is Frusciante and I know that is not the professor that I have seen other people writing about... I was pretty much told that my opinions and ideas don't matter unless I can support them with other people's published opinions and ideas, and the solution to the problem isn't a solution unless someone else has tried it and published something about it and I can cite it (not to say I didn't cite anything)... This makes my "problem" (aka topic) incredibly difficult to write about considering it's a very specific topic about my town... At this point, I think I'm going to have to scrap the entire thing and start all over again and just hope that it's what she wants. The topic was the most difficult part for me because I live in a bubble, haven't had a job in 9 years, and most topics given for examples in the instructions aren't relevant to my life. I'm sure I'm overthinking this whole thing... Does anyone have any helpful tips or examples of the topic they chose?    I guess I'm just looking for inspiration... ugh.