Personal Essay
If there's one thing you've had a lot of experience with at this point in your life, it's our class topic--education. You've been through at least twelve years of formal schooling, and you've probably had plenty of other life experiences that could be considered educational. This first piece is informal. Think of it as a chance to reflect on one of those experiences by writing about it.
The key question you'll answer is "How has this experience affected the way I think/feel about school or education?"
You're answering the key question for yourself and other members of our class. Think of this piece as your contribution to our conversation on the topic of education. Keep in mind the kinds of things your readers/classmates will understand already and what you'll need to explain and/or describe in greater detail.
Your goals as a writer include:
- to decide on a single experience you want to write about (maybe by trying out two or three to see which one is most interesting to you),
- to remember as much about that experience as you can, and
- to think about what significant change in your attitude toward school this experience caused and try to describe that change in your writing.
Strategies for completing the essay include these:
- Use some of the prewriting strategies we've discussed in class to help you remember specific experiences to write about.
- Select the experience that's most interesting to you to focus on in your essay.
- Continue to prewrite to develop as much detail about that experience as you can.
- When you've generated enough detail, select the detail that best demonstrates the significance of that experience for you.
- Write a first draft in which you concentrate on getting out your ideas and explaining them, without worrying too much about smaller issues like grammar and punctuation.
- Revise and rewrite your draft using ideas from your reading and peer workshop.
