Dr. Sigler

Essay Topic:

For this assignment, your will write a 500-750 word essay in class on 12 September describing an experience or event in your life that was significant for you and that you remember vividly. Think of the essay as a chapter from your "unauthorized autobiography" (no one is going to make you take a lie detector test). You may write about yourself at any age. In the essay compare your experience to that of one of the other writers we have read during the previous week.

Essay Requirements:

• Have a strong statement of purpose (a thesis) at the beginning of the essay that describes why this experience was significant, and a strong conclusion that suggests how this experience has affected you, what you learned, what readers might learn, etc.
• Bring blue book(s), dictionary, Rules for Writers, Making Literature Matter, white out, blue or black ink, and this assignment sheet, along with a brief typed outline and thesis statement.

• Any event charged with strong emotions such as fear, anger, jealousy, embarrassment, sadness, guilt, frustrations, hurt, pride, happiness, joy.
• Any turning point in your life when the way you feel, think, or act was challenged or changed.
• Any "first" such as when you first realized that you had a special skill, ambition, or problem; when you first felt rejected or needed; when you first became aware of injustice.
• Any critical moment when you were forced to examine your basic values, attitudes, beliefs, assumptions.
• Any occasion when things did not turn out the way you expected they would: when you were convinced you would fail but succeeded, when you expected to be praised and were criticized.
• Any memorably difficult situation: when you had to play an unfamiliar or uncomfortable role, when someone you admired let you down (or you let someone down who depended on you), when you had to make a tough choice.
• Any event which shaped your sense of yourself in a particular way.

• Your description of your experience (telling a good story). This would include using specific sensory details to help recreate that event for readers, possibly using dialogue, and creating a basic and coherent narrative.
• Your analysis of your own feelings about and reactions to that event.
• Your use of the readings from this week to help explain, support and contextualize your description and analysis.