Writers Memo
I’ve probably spent about 4-5 hours putting a lot more of detail and information into my
essay since my first draft was turned in. John looked over my essay and he didn’t hold
back on his thoughts. He mainly told me that I needed to add a lot more detail to really let
the reader understand my transition throughout the essay. Also he said he had some
trouble following along my sentences so he told me to work on making it flow better. I
needed to reference a reading to my essay as well. The “global” aspect I am most
confident about how I demonstrate my transition over time. I bring up the main things
that happened in my life that made me question my religion and lead to the change. The
“global” aspect I am most concerned about is that I don’t really have a very broad range
of vocabulary so I feel like my essays always tend to be at a basic level. I am most
confident on how each paragraph introduces a new scene in my “local” aspect. The
“local” aspect I’m mainly concerned about is that even though I tried to work on my
essay flowing better that it still doesn’t. If I had more time I would definitely try to add
more variety in my word choice throughout the piece. The other thing I would work on is
making the essay flow really well. It’d probably take a couple more hours and help from
other people to read it in order to get feedback on how to make it easier to read and what
to add. From you I would like all the feedback you can possibly think of in order for me
to really improve myself on my next essays. I’ve always had trouble when it came to
writing essays therefore any feedback I get will point out key things I need to work on in
the future. I would say I followed the rubric and the guidelines pretty well, I wouldn’t
expect anything higher than a “B”. Although I feel I followed the directions I know I
could have been more specific in parts of my essay.
Samantha Olin
Unit 1 Essay
There was a time where I used to pray every night, go to church every Sunday,
and believed that God had a plan for everyone. Having a Hispanic background I was
raised learning all the catholic beliefs and practices. As I started getting older, I started to
have a lot of questions towards the religious practices. In the more recent years I realized
that I no longer believe in the Catholic practice or any religious practice really. I do
believe that there is something greater than us out there, but that doesn’t mean that we
have to follow certain rules and practices in order to meet good judgment.
I grew up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia, where there were not many
difficulties in my life. I had my mother, father, and my brother and we’d go to church
every Sunday and all I knew was that life was great. I was about 8 years old when my
parents got separated and my father moved away. I didn’t really think it was a big deal,
the only real issue was that then there was obviously a financial shift. My mom never lost
faith, she thought asking God for help would help her through the tough times, which
nothing ever changed. It seemed like it was only obvious to me that to get these moments
there just needed to be hard work done instead of praying for help. Even though I could
understand what her motives were, it started to bring up a lot of questions to my mind. I
feel like I could relate to Jeremiah Goulka in “Confessions of a Former Republican”
when he talks about how he was raised to follow a certain belief until situations happened
that made him question it. For a long time I had no room to question my family’s beliefs
up until I started to go through situations and came across different ideas and thoughts in
my head.
Then what mainly started the shift in my religious beliefs was when I was around
12 years old and my aunt had passed away. I didn’t even understand what was going on.
She was very ill with a brain aneurism and my mom would tell me to pray and things
would get better. But they never actually did get better; things just got worse and worse. I
kept asking myself why, why do bad things happen to good people? How come even
though I prayed nothing changed? Then I started to think back on how whether or not I
pray or go to church religiously nothing ever changes. At the time the questions that came
to me were so young; it almost took no effort to change my mind about anything. The
smallest thing could trigger it. It was mindless to think that I started to question my
religion just because I thought praying for things didn’t “work”. Eventually it did lead me
to look into different religions and do some real thinking onto my transition.
I started high school and I began doing research and looked into all different kinds
of religions and what exactly the beliefs were. I attended multiple Christian church’s,
even went to an Indian temple with friends that followed the religion to see what its like.
There was nothing wrong with the beliefs; I just lacked interest in any of them. I found it
sad how almost all of my close friends were hiding at least one big secret from their
parents because it was against there religion. I never liked the idea of not being able to do
something just because it wasn’t acceptable behavior to a religion. If a person is going to
go ahead and do something they know would be considered a “sin” or they would “go to
hell” for it, in what position do they stand for?
The transition to kind of detach myself from any religion was apparent. My mom
never really forced it upon me so there wasn’t really an issue with it. She understood that
the situations that occurred in my life pushed me away to lose faith in what I once
believed. She respected my decision and trusted that I’ll be ok no matter what I’m into.
In the end, I believe that situations are going to happen no matter what religion
people are a part of or how much they practice the religion. Its good to believe that there
is something out there but at the same time we have to be realistic about things. The only
person that can change the way your life is is yourself. The transition that occurred in my
life was just the way I reacted to things that lead me to becoming agnostic. Ill always
respect everyone’s beliefs around me, a specific religious practice just isn’t for me.
Citations
Goulka, Jeremiah. “Confessions of a Former Republican.” Confessions of a Former
Republican. The Nation, 10 Sept. 2012. Web. 25 Sept. 2013.