More handpicked essays just for you.
Stories about my personal narrative
Lessons learned from writing a personal narrative
Stories about my personal narrative
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
“The inside of the shell looks to me like a sore throat mouth,” is the sentence I wrote on paper eighteen years ago. It was my first day of an expository writing class and I was a freshman in college. Assorted objects were placed in the center of a table, around which twenty students and I sat around. Professor H asked us to describe the objects. What I saw was a seashell, a piece of driftwood and a black and white framed photo of an old man and a silver pocket watch. I wanted to sketch the still life in opposition to writing. I looked around me and observed all the students writing. At the end of our allotted ten minutes, I finally scribbled down my single sentence. Professor H asked us to read aloud what we had written, and as I listened to each student’s long prose, I was amazed. They drew the objects using words. When it was my turn I read,“The inside of the shell looks to me like a sore throat mouth.”
The class laughed as I blushed.
“Brilliant”, exclaimed Professor H with his Welsh accent.
I looked down at my single sentence with relief. That was the beginning of my understanding that everyone’s perception of something, may it be an inanimate object or experience is unique. The end of class he assigned us to write an essay about a personal experience, to be due the following week. He also asked us to bring copies to distribute to all the class.
The days prior to the due date, I recalled many experiences, but when I attempted to write them down on paper, I was not able to portray them successfully. The sharpest memories I could recall were incidents I was ashamed to write about, much less to share with the class. I feebly tried to write about a family trip to Arizona. When I read over what I had written, I was disa...
... middle of paper ...
...and waved her hands frantically and shook her head like a crazed Beatle fan.
As I continued to write, I once again became an eight-year-old child who sat with her older sister in the back of our Dad’s station wagon.
When I was finished and read the essay several weeks later, I understood how profoundly the experience of having a sister with disabilities has affected my life. That experience affects how I write and interpret others’ writing. If I had not written this particular essay, I am not sure how clear my understanding of this reality would be, even today. Today, as I pull out this essay, I see on the bottom H’s comment. He wrote,
“Once again Liza, with remarkable verbal precision and economy you evoke rich layers of meaning, feeling, and suggestion. There is not a word wasted in this piece-all comes over with the stated immediacy of a flash-photo.”
The experience changed her life, she learned to rethink her own attitude and self determination. I learned that people with mental retardation are not to be separated from society or even treated with less respect because of their disability. “Riding the Bus with My Sister” taught me to never neglect people with mental disabilities. Readers learned that people with mental retardation, just like everyone else, have families, desires, and determination. They cry, they laugh, they have emotions just like the rest of us. We can learn new things from those suffering from mental retardation. ‘Riding the Bus with My Sister” taught me that civil rights apply to
“I felt I could do good for other persons with disabilities precisely because I had authority from that medical degree.” This line makes the reader stop for a moment and really evaluate what has been said, due to the contrary effect that was intimated from the beginning. The switch from negativity to positivity demonstrates the change from the author’s feeling has changed and how society has changed.This revelation brings us to the end, how she said she hopes the next generation will see things differently, “Disability right thus aren’t something we seek only for others. We must also seem them for the ones we love and for ourselves.” The author stating this at the very end reflects people who have the disability need to help themselves and have disability right, not just looking for help from others.
The blunt honesty in My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me—“I have inadvertently yet perfectly re-created my own eighth-grade homework conditions: getting stoned, attempting math, and failing at it.”—shows simple passion for writing the essay, and it’s funny. If I was to rewrite my memoir, I would have used more blunt honesty, and mentioned something along the lines of “I’ll admit, part of my problem was me not caring about art” or “I guess I shouldn 't have taken the class”.
Writing 6.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, an...
The first essay given in this course was about our whole composing process. This essay was hard to write about and I remember having several grammar mistakes. Sitting down and writing my process on paper,
‘I am going to fail’ was the very first thought that crept into my mind on that very first day of class. Before I stepped into the classroom on the first day, I felt pretty good about my writing. I had done previously well in English, and didn’t think this class would be much of a challenge. This all changed on the first day of school, when my professor talked about the level of reading and writing expected for this class. I remember thinking ‘I don’t read, why couldn’t I have been born someone who likes to read?!’ Since this moment on the very first day of class, I have grown immensely through hard work. In this essay, I will explain what I have learned over the course of this class about myself, and about writing.
Throughout the many forms and language of literature, responders are able to create and visualise images within their mind. It is through the power of the images one creates, that enables reader’s understandings to be questioned and furthermore, structures meaning towards the array of experiences being evoked. This is, ‘The Distinctively Visual’.
...eft for writer’s anxiety, my instructor explain to us that it was our writing assignment and that she would not do it for us. Generally speaking, her hard core style of teaching was in the least inviting, thus ended up being my favorite class. Most all of our class time was spent learning in a much assorted variety of styles that it was never boring. Each assignment plan and process brought me into the focus of writing allowing time to etch some learned values into my college agenda proving that my anxiety had been overcome and English 111 has made its mark on my life.
The time has passed so fast since WRITE101x. I have been improving my writing skills in English. According to the Second writing assignment, I am writing about what I have learned this week. I have learned Adjectives and determiners by my story. This story I want to share is about my orientation in college.
One of my main weaknesses in my writing was developing a strong introduction, particularly the thesis. English 1101 helped me realize that my thesis statements were too vague and never clearly answered the prompt. In the first essay of the process exhibit, I first started writing about the picture’s elements. My initial thesis started off as “At the instance of a click, the essence of a person can be described by the many pixels printed.” The assignment required that I describe my relationship with the people in the picture. My initial thesis was too vague
What happens when one has an epiphany about something, years after it has happened? The essays “Some Notes on Attunement” by Zadie Smith and “Highway of Lost Girls” by Vanessa Veselka are personal essays that at first glance seem disconnected from each other as they touch on completely different subjects. However, it is evident that both have a common theme: realization. Zadie Smith comes to appreciate an artist named Joni Mitchell a decade after she first refers to her singing as “just noise” (Smith, 2012, p. 189). Vanessa Veselka hunts for more answers as she discovers the possible identity of the truck driver who threatened her life as an adolescent. Yet, it is important to note that the theme of realization covers a multitude of ideas expressed in these essays. Smith and Veselka in telling their individual stories, also utilize stylistic choices of their writing to enhance these ideas.
Some of the difficulties and challenges I faced in the classroom were regular everyday occurrences. The first aspect of college life I had trouble adjusting to was be...
“Why don’t you use your locker? You’re going to have back problems before you even graduate”. These are words that are repeated to me daily, almost like clockwork. I carry my twenty-pound backpack, full of papers upon papers from my AP classes. The middle pouch of my backpack houses my book in which I get lost to distract me from my unrelenting stress. The top pouch holds several erasers, foreshadowing the mistakes I will make - and extra lead, to combat and mend these mistakes. Thick, wordy textbooks full of knowledge that has yet to become engraved in my brain, dig the straps of my backpack into my shoulders. This feeling, ironically enough, gives me relief - my potential and future success reside in my folders and on the pages of my notebooks.
My first day at college had a great meaning to me. It was the beginning of my dream to go to college and to pursue a higher education.I had so many emotions running trough me , it was the first time being in this level and the first time paying for education myself. I always wanted to be a college student, a serious student who would decide what to be in her life. The first day at Truman College was on August 25th, 2005. The first year of my freshman year and Fall semester. That day I had so many things on my mind, from what I was going to wear to figure out where the class number and the floor it would be located at. It was actually a day full of new experiences. I had just turned 28 years old. By the time I had a full-time job in downtown, which I had to go after school. I had to find the time to study and to do homework, specially after class meetings, I was exited and scared at the same time. I noticed that the class was not the same versus the ESL and GED classes that I took at Truman. Although, it was the one I wanted to take, I was nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. However, I was impressed to see a wide diversity of student from other countries and I thought that the class would be very interesting by meeting new people. The purpose of this essay is to tell the main experiences about being in college for the first time.
Before entering this class, I thought I was prepared for college English. I had incredibly capable high school English teachers, who taught me detailed mechanics, creative writing style, and of course, the necessity of practicing good grammar. On entering this class, I quickly realized how little I had actually learned in my high school English classes. While most of my high school English essays I wrote were based on literature, the majority of the essays I wrote in this class have been more experiential and centered on real-life issues. I expected to be writing essays on books I read and articles I analyzed, but that was not the case. This class showed me in a variety of ways that things are often very different than they seem originally