Personal Essay Due September 23rd Assignment Overview Personal essays are an exploratory essay where you discuss something about you (a past experience, your thoughts on a subject) that you personally want to know more about and something that also attracts an audience. Personal essays are a great place to start practicing composition as they cover all the basics of writing that could be used later in composition courses and college classes in general. They act as a warmup for new writers to get into the groove of writing. These essays can take any shape or form but, for our class, it can be pretty basic in structure. At its essence, a personal essay is a narrative that explores something you want to know. It is “narrative” in the sense that you typically tell a story – such as describing a childhood memory or a journey of emotional growth. Because of the narrative nature of personal essays, it isn’t uncommon to use creative elements in the essays (describing the five senses, using dialogue, building a plot to a climax). Narratives can make it easier for readers to understand the essay and empathize with the writer, something that can be difficult given the self-absorbed nature that personal essays have. There are a lot of benefits that a writer gets through writing a personal essay. Our textbook for the course, The Curious Writer, believes on pg. 65 that they will encourage writers to emphasize invention, practice dialectical thinking, expose the drama of coming to know, and establish your role as a narrator. Personal essays will also help writers understand audience awareness, importance of description, use of personality or voice, and creativity. Rhetorical Situation Task You need to write a personal essay on a topic of your choice. This topic can be anything but try to make it something that is distinctive to you and something you earnestly want to explore more. Reflecting on an event you experienced, a certain time of your life, or even a viewpoint or philosophy that you’ve been developing over time. Considering the process-oriented nature of the course, expect that your essay will be read by other students during the revision process. Try not to write about a topic that you feel will make yourself or your fellow students uncomfortable. A common element in personal essays is a narrative flow. Alongside being an easy way to structure your paper, a narrative flow helps an outside reader understand your thoughts better and helps them empathize with your essay. Narratives typically have a similar structure: introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion. Your essay isn’t required to look like this but it can be a guide if you need it. While this is an essay, with a focus on text, feel free to add things like photos to your paper. If you are writing about an event, having some photos of the event may help readers understand your essay better. Caution! If you do plan to use photos or another media in your text, try to make them something that you have access to yourself and not something found online. If you bring in anything from a website or a book, then you will need a Works Cited in your paper to show the reader where you obtained those photos. This is an extra step that we will get to in a later essay. If you just use your personal photos, you need only mention that they are yours and the problem is solved. Things to watch out for: There are a few things that you need to watch out for when writing a personal essay. Most importantly, you need to keep the reader in mind to ensure your essay is meaningful to an outside audience. Here are a few things to look out for when writing your essay: 1. Generic topics, like “Why I chose X major in college” or “Why I love X sport” are the types of topics to avoid. They can be so generic that many other students can think up the exact same topic. Not only that, but readers may then read the same content over and over. It would be better to think of a specific event or memory that is unique to you – which also brings more personality to your essay. 2. Avoid a self-centered feel in your paper. If an essay’s end message feels like it only applies to the writer, then it feels pretentious or can bore an audience. While it is a personal essay, there should be some things that readers can connect to – a great essay can find a universal message in any human event. Sometimes it helps to frame a beginning and an ending in a way that clearly shows how this can relate to the reader. 3. Shallowness or lack of depth. As much as you can, value quality over quantity. A shallow essay may have a lot of description of a memory or a viewpoint, but fail to articulate how that is important. It misses a “So what?” in its message. It may help to add bits that relate the event to something else – to show how your topic is more far reaching than what the reader may believe. 4. Lastly, avoid a generic voice. This is a personal essay, not a research paper. If you can, make the voice of your paper something that can clearly be identified as you and not a neutral “academic” voice. The more personality it has, the more human it appears and the better chance that it will be positively received from readers. Adding humor and adding photos are two ways to give your personal essay some personality. Lastly, it may be obvious, but being honest is an effective way to write a personal essay. Why would I mention this? Because sometimes students think that there needs to be a clearly defined answer, which isn’t always the case in a personal essay. It is sometimes better to say, “What does this all mean? I’m not entirely sure but I’ll do my best to describe it” than force an answer in the concluding paragraph. Sometimes being honest about not knowing can prompt more writing, which helps give meaningful content in your paper. Asking yourself, “Does this sound pretentious? Kind of, so how can I fix that?” can create more meaningful content and less obvious filler. Audience & Purpose Audience should be you, your classmates, your instructor, and a generic audience. The purpose of the argumentative essay is to give you some experience writing papers. This is the first of four assignments that will scale in difficulty as the semester progresses. This first essay should be an introduction to writing, and the experiences writing this essay (including the revision process) will help you later on. Requirements 1. For a strong chance to get a “B” paper, a 1200 minimum word count is recommended. This provides enough material for the reader to understand a topic. 2. The paper should be in MLA format. Rubric Criteria Standards for this Performance Essay analyzes a specific topic in precise detail, giving the reader a strong understanding of the subject matter (25 points for fully met) Personal Essay is organized to provide readers with a coherent and complex understanding of the topic (25 points for fully met) Write has a clear, distinct voice and identity that guides the reader through the text (25 points for fully met) Articulates how and why this topic is important for a general audience (20 points for fully met) Uses strategic moves to add personality (12 points for fully met) Writer represents him- or herself as fair, credible, and knowledgeable on the topic (12 points for fully met) Demonstrates careful attention to language through correct spelling, grammar, citation, and formatting (12 points for fully met) Exceptional Work or Original Thinking (12 points for fully met) Criteria Topic Analysis Points /30 Organization / 30 Clear, Distinct Voice / 30 Importance to a General Audience / 25 Personality / 15 Credibility / 15 Language / 15 Exceptional / Original Thinking / 15 TOTAL /175
