DUE: Sun. 9/20/15 @ 7:00p
This is the first of three pre-writing (or scaffolding) exercises for Essay #2 (e2 prompt) that I usually assign together (1-3a, 1-3b, & 1-3c). Please plan to do them in sequence: 2-3a →2-3b → 2-3c
This first part, 2-3a, is the most inchoate of the three.
Think: leaves swirling in the wind in late autumn.
Yeah, kinda hard to follow, but that’s the idea.
Best to ditch any writing you’ve done up until now, and start with a fresh notebook or word doc, and have at it!
A few guidelines and requirements for this exercise:
√ 150-300 words (±)
√ posted to our site (pls log in and use comments function at the bottom of this page)
AND
√ submit via Web Form Here (to ensure course credit!)
AKA: Review and Brainstorm (pre-W)
For this essay, I plan on writing about where I grew up, my family, and softball. These three things have played a major and important role in my life. I grew up in Virginia Beach, which has played an important part into who I am today. I’ve grown up with amazing opportunities and places surrounding me, as well as my best friends and my education. My family has supported me through everything I’ve done, and are huge influences of who I am. I’ve grown up close to all of my family, I live on a street named after my mom’s side. Yeates Lane has been home to many of my mom’s side. I grew up on this street with my grandma and great aunt down the lane and cousins next door. They’re all great people who I’m very thankful to have grown up with. Lastly, softball has been another major part of my life. Softball wasn’t my first sport of choice, but I’ve kept with it since I was in 3rd grade. I’ve traveled all around the country for this sport and has given me the opportunity to meet so many wonderful people. It’s made me get through things I never thought I could, it’s helped build character. Softball is currently still in my life, now here at Virginia Wesleyan. I’m thankful to be playing the sport I love while attending college.
For this writing prompt I plan to write about basketball, family, and role models. These three subjects connect in many ways so I think it’ll be pretty easy explaining the importance of them and writing them in a well tied paper. Basketball has been the center of my attention since I was young and I have much support from family members including my role models. Basketball teaches me lessons off and on the court. The sport mainly teaches me what hard work and dedication consists of. My family also has a huge impact in my life. We’re a huge family and we spend a lot of time together. My family teaches me what is right and what is wrong. My role models also teach me what is right and what is wrong too. They influence me and my ideas while giving me a positive way to look at life and an example of a successful lifestyle.
For the personal essay, I plan to talk about how living in Catonsville has drastically changed my life, and has shaped who I am as a person. Catonsville is more than the place I grew up, it is a huge part of who I am. It is where I got my education, my first job, my best friends, my favorite memories, and basically everything that makes me, me. My major points will be my schooling, my summers at Rollingwood pool, cheerleading in Catonsville, and my favorite memories from Catonsville. These all have helped me grow into the individual I am today, and all of these experiences and places are in Catonsville. If you’re not from Catonsville you will never understand my connection to it, words cannot describe how much Catonsville means to me. It will always be a part of me in so many different ways, and I could never forget how much I learned there.
For this essay I plan on discussing my life and how I got to where I am, talking about how aside from gaming and the internet I am the most indifferent person in the world. I would talk about my hardships through life and my future goals, but I don’t really have any, so I will instead be focusing on personal ideas and the things I am truly interested in, primarily gaming, either video or board, as well as someone who has been my role model for a while, though I forgot about him during the interview: John “Totalbiscuit” Bain, a prominent YouTube personality who reviews games, as his ideas have had a large influence on my own for the past several years.
Over the course of my life and being put through very interesting situations I find myself being abnormally cynical. Every time I got to into to political science the teacher says I am extremely cynical at least twice, but it’s completely justified. Through things like religion, family and modern media I find myself getting progressively more cynical to modern society. This is what I plan on using the opportunity we were given to write a personal essay on to write about. This is something that has been going on for some time so I figured why not use this for the grade, and also for a personal reflection. The key points as to not spoil any of my ideas would be things along the lines of, my parents divorce and the diversity of each respective household and family. Almost every year I get further and further from my mom’s side to my dad’s side, even though in most cases it’s more fun to be with my mom’s side. With religion it would be which is something that keeps me up at night, if everything happens for a reason, why is the message so convoluted. And for media the biggest thing is the difference in just how society can function nowadays, why is one person’s life supposed to be more important than someone who can’t sing or has the moves like jagger.
When I think of a personal essay, I think of a family story that we tell over and over again that never gets old. After that train of thought, I automatically thought of our 2004 summer vacation, or rather summer disaster! We took a trip to Texas, and it was literally our own version of National Lampoon’s Vacation. We started by taking our brand new camper and vehicle to get us there and keep us housed while there, and as we pulled out of the cul-de-sac, our neighbor yelled to my father, “Have a nice vacation Chevy!”. Little did we know, with that one sentence she gave us the luck of the Griswold’s, and it all went downhill from there. We ended up having to go back to the car dealership after driving for a while because we were getting 4.9 miles to the gallon! Needless to say things kept getting worse and worse. Breaking the axle and ripping the steps off our brand new camper can sound as bad as it gets, but it still continued to get even worse! Once we actually got to Texas, more bad things happened. We swore that our horrid luck was nix between our neighbors jinx and that we watched Lemony Snicket’s: A Series of Unfortunate Events on repeat the entire trip. On top of the traveling troubles, there was a lot of throwing up, we lost a lot of money, the car windshield got cracked, we almost got hit by a bull, and many more “unfortunate events”. Although the vacation itself did not go too well, I feel as though it taught me a lot. If it was just another normal vacation, we wouldn’t have anything to look back and laugh at. Life is all about the ups and downs, and now I have something hilarious to write about!
In my personal essay, I plan on writing about my high school experiences, how I have ended up where I am today, and where I hope to be in the future. School has always been something that I have been hugely committed to. Sometimes It was extremely hard to balance school, volleyball, and my social life. Even though it was a struggle for me to stay focused at times, I would say that It has payed off greatly. I plan on including my career goal which is Meteorology and how I plan to fulfill my goals as well as why I chose this career path to take. It took a lot of hard work, dedication, and time to end up where I am today. Over the years, God has blessed me in so many ways through the opportunities that he has sent my way. I have learned so much from the chooses that I made and I plan on including that in my essay as well. I will begin by starting off with my interests as a child and end with my goals for the future.
In writing this, I want to address the times in my life I felt the most alone, but not stopping there. Lately, it feels as though all of my writing has been wrapped up in wallowing, simply mulling over what I had and what I lost, and the struggle that came with that loss. When prompted now, however, and seeing how that loss is seen as a defining “characteristic” of myself, I want to change that. Instead of writing solely about this loss and how it made me feel so alone, I want to go further, and explore what helped me push past that loneliness. However, part of myself does not want to be completely truthful in what it was that helped me. It would make a much moving tale to describe someone coming into my life and changing me forever, or talk about how I poured myself into volunteering to fill the void. Those would be blatant lies, and for the first time I want to share how I moved on, even if it seems pathetic and materialistic. The truth is, I found comfort in video games. It seems silly, or even something someone could roll their eyes at, but it is the truth. The sparkling fantasy worlds that I dove into helped me forget what pain and loneliness felt like for a while, and the friends I found in the fanbases of each game made my life so much better than it was before.
For my essay, I would like to provide a better picture of who I am as a person. I want to explain the different struggles that I endured that helped shape me into who I am today. I would also like to talk about my parents and how they are one of the biggest inspirations in my life. They have been my greatest support through all of my hardships, and all of my successes. Life is not always easy, but it helps when the people you love the most are always by your side; constantly giving you encouragement, and providing every possible reason why you shouldn’t give up. I also plan to describe my childhood and how I grew up. I want to show how I transitioned and grew from the struggles that I faced in school, at home, and life in general. I have been through many ups and downs that have instilled courage, strength, and independence in me. My essay will end with me talking about where I am today, in college.
The purpose of my essay is for me to explain the story of my life. I feel like in order for someone to truly understand who I am, they need to understand my background history. When I was younger I was labeled by the state as “gifted”. While this was great news to my parents, it was an increasing anchor of pressure on me. While I finished high school with a 4.0 gpa, unlike what most people might believe, I worked super hard to get there. I had to deal with going back in forth between my parent’s houses. I also kept my grades on honor roll while having a part time job and being the manager of my school’s drama club. I’ve also been very blessed and been on multiple conferences for my leadership skills. I even attended a case competition. I think the struggles that I’ve gone through is my motivation to become a teacher. I want to be the one that students who are “gifted” can come and talk to since that label alone can be a stress builder.
For my personal essay, what I want to talk about is what I went through growing up. I did not have the most perfect life or the best childhood. My parents weren’t the best parents in the world and were in and out of my life most of the time. My grandparents are the most important people in my life and my inspiration. They are the people who already raised their three kids but took it upon themselves to raise another child, me. Though they are just my grandparents, I consider them as my mom and dad because they took me under their wing and raised me as their own. Because they are my grandparents, we don’t always necessarily see eye to eye because we are two different sets of generations but I can honestly say that if they did not raise me and make me the person I am today, I would not be alive.
My goal in writing this essay is for me to give a greater depiction of who I am. I wish to portray my ideals, goals, and values that I think are important to success in life. I will do this by placing an importance on family values, friendships with the right people, and having strong connections with family. I believe that these core concepts epitomize who I am, and allow for me to have somewhere to go when things get tough. Life can be hard at some points, and I believe that it is important to have people there to help; especially at the lowest moments. Additionally, I will place a strong influence on hard work and how it is important to love the job that you are doing. Commitment to whatever it is that one is doing is important to me, and I refine myself everyday to make sure that I am upholding this concept. This essay will reveal who I am as a person and why I place importance on certain values.
For my essay I would like to personally tell my story of who I am as a person. I would like to talk about what hardships I went through as a child to the success I am currently having in my life right now. I would like to talk about those who helped me get through tough times in my life and helped me have the will power to continue living, people such as my father my other mother, my brother, my family, and all the friends that I have made strong connections with over the years are the people. I would love to talk about my big brother and how he was the biggest inspiration in my life who helped me want to continue to always be optimistic and feel as if life does get better. I would also like to talk about how the transition from high school to college is like and what I wish to achieve as the years go by until I graduate from college, even life after college and what I want to do to better my life and the lives of others, and finally I would also like to talk about the things I would like to do to help better my school as well.
The purpose of this essay for me is to be able to express my personal life and how my life has been changed and shaped not only by the people around me but as well as from my own actions. During my interview between my classmates I was asked questions to answer that involved my future that I have never really thought about before. I would like to mainly discuss how I didn’t always value and agree with my parents and the aspects they had while raising me. I would also like to focus more on my parents and how they influenced me with some of the
decisions I had made throughout my life. I also like to include my involvement within my religion and the inspiration it has created in my life and how faith has always came first in my life. Religion and my family have been two biggest importance’s in my life which is why I will include them in my essay deeply.
What is my story? My story is a story that people may be a little surprised about. Some people want to know more about it when I tell them this shocking news. When people ask me how old my siblings are it begins the story of what happened to me when I was younger. Telling people that I have four other siblings, three sisters two being forty-five and the other forty-three and a brother who is nineteen. People always ask well how old are your parents? They are sixty-seven and sixty-five, everyone is always surprised after I tell them. It’s sometimes hard to tell my story but it has gotten easier as I have grown to be a young women. I am hoping to write a book about it someday to inspire kids that have been in my situation that it gets better. I can say that I am an adopted child abandoned by my biological mother at the age of six along with my brother.
For my personal essay, I would like to focus on how I became the person I am today. I want to mainly focus on how I overcame my internal struggles and recognize the important people who helped me along the journey. I would like to specifically talk about my ROTC teacher, SGT D, who has influenced my life the most. Besides my family, SGT D has ultimately been my rock ever since I met her my freshman year of high school. SGT D is not only my mentor, but my best friend. She is always there for me when no one else is. I would also like to talk about how different it’s been not seeing her everyday like I’m use to. I would like to focus on how my faith and family have supported me and shaped how and why I do certain things. In my personal essay I will also be highlighting milestones in my life that mean the most to me. I plan to speak briefly about my childhood, but mostly focus on my high school career. I feel as though my high school journey has been the most important time period of my life. It is where I truly blossomed into something special. High school is where I was on top, where I had the best grades, the most friends, and where I was always active in school functions. I would like to also talk about the transition from high school to college, because that is a topic that has just recently affected my life, which I think is essentially to my essay. I want to talk about the recent clubs I have joined and the differences between how class was taught in high school versus college. Overall this essay will show my growth throughout life.
For my personal, non-fiction prose essay that I was assigned to complete in my English writing class for professor Weinstein, I plan on expressing my ideas and experiences throughout my life in an engaging way with examples and illustrations. The main topic I plan on discussing throughout my essay will be talking about my biggest role model in life and how and why this person is my role model. My Aunt Dianne has changed my life and my perspective on life in many ways and not only that, but she has constantly been there for me since I was a little girl up until she passed last summer. Not only did I look up to her growing up, but now, I literally do look up to her and she is my guardian angel watching over me, still and forever. So this essay will be talking about a great deal of her as well as my family life and how I grew up to get to where I am today, attending Virginia Wesleyan College.