ESSAY #2: PERSONAL STATEMENT
PERSONAL WRITING: THE REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Memoir is how we make sense of who we are, who we once were, and what values and
heritage shaped us.
(William Zinsser, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir)
INTRODUCTION
Memorable events and vivid impressions shape the people we become and give us a
sense of self. Often when we reflect upon these events, we discover ideas and meanings
that illuminate our lives. When we write about our memories and reflections, we might
employ a type of personal essay called the memoir. Your memoir will dramatize a
truthful story that contains a narrative structure, vivid description, dialog, and reflective
commentary. Your essay should contain a “universal truth” that will let readers connect
with your essay. You want to intertwine these elements as if in a woven fabric.
WRITING ASSIGNMENT
Write a first-person point of view personal essay in the form of a memoir. Focus on a
specific, single, focused experience that caused you (even forced you) to think because
it taught you a significant lesson, gave you a new understanding, or left a lasting
impression. Perhaps the event triggered you into thinking about yourself in a different
way or questioning your values.
Your purposes are to reflect by looking back upon and to express a tone (attitude,
feeling, or mood) about that specific experience. Also consider your reader—you want to
entertain the readers in the sense that you want to engage them in your memoir. Your
audience is the college admissions officer. This officer reads hundreds of essays from
equally qualified candidates.
Your essay should be thesis driven as you reveal a main idea that unifies your essay,
clarifies your purpose, and suggests your primary strategy of narration. Set your plot
into motion: after a brief exposition (revealing setting, characters, point of view, and
thesis), establish conflict or adversity (the heart of a story), create suspense, let the
rising action build to a climax, and maybe offer an epiphany (sudden understanding),
resolution and/or denouement. Your essay might also include irony.
In your essay, offer narrative commentary on your experience. Comment on emotion,
meaning, significance, universal truth. You might unroll your narrative commentary
throughout your essay or save it for you conclusion (your denouement).
Description is your secondary or supporting strategy as you sketch in your setting and
characters. Use figurative language (metaphor, simile, hyperbole, and
personification), vivid and concrete diction, and imagery appealing to the five senses
where appropriate.
In addition, give these characters speaking voices with dialog and let these characters
help move your plot forward.
Our motto for Essay #1 is “Show, don’t just tell, your story.”
NOTE: This first essay should NOT look like a five paragraph essay (introduction, three
body paragraphs, and a conclusion). The sample essay that we will read in class certainly
don’t look like five paragraph themes!
Langston Hughes’ “Salvation”
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”
Jhumpa Lahiri “My Two Lives”
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS/DOCUMENT DESIGN
Type your 750 word essay in 12 point Roman times.
Double space it (about two and a third pages).
Also submit your creating activities any (listing/freewriting), planning page, rough
draft(s), and self/peer critique response behind your final draft. (Final draft goes on
top.) Follow the manuscript mechanics discussed in class concerning your name,
instructor, course, and date. Use headers (your last name, no comma, and the page
number). Check your syllabus for your due dates on the rough draft (for peer critique)
and final draft.