Narrative 1: Personal Piece on a Significant Experience

At every stage of our lives, we're able to look back and identify experiences that shape our lives. This first piece is a chance to think back on one of those experiences and explore its significance by writing about it.

The question you'll answer is, "How has this experience changed me?"

You're answering it for yourself. Of course, your tutor will also read it. Eventually, you'll use the same information to write an essay about the experience for an academic audience. But for now, you're just using writing as a way to get your thoughts down on paper.

The goals are (1) 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), (2) to remember as much about that experience as you can, and (3) think about what significant change this experience caused, and try to describe that change in writing.

If you're having trouble getting started, you might try some of the "Generating Ideas" exercises in the back of your resource packet. Your tutor can suggest additional ways to help you get going on this - feel free to ask!