Essay #1 Examples

INTRO:

111 Country Club Place has been an amazing address for me growing up. I spent 15 years in this house and have experienced some of my best memories. What makes a home a home? Is it the location? How big it is? Maybe it could be the people you share it with? Family is very important when having a home. Without family a home is just somewhere you go to eat and sleep. My home is so much more than this. A good family is what makes your home special. With a good family comes great memories. “When the entire family sits together over food or some great time, then it is called a happy family. In such families every day becomes a special one, every ceremony becomes blessed. Family reunions become an everyday affair and the chances or opportunities of going on a family vacation increases.”

At the end of the Peace River but not quite to the Gulf of Mexico, lies a harbor dotted with mangrove islands. From there if you know your way around, you can find Bulls Bays and a world fighting to survive the changing times. In the 1900’s my home of Punta Gorda, Florida was a small but bustling fishing and cattle village. Fish shacks occupied the harbor as key way stations for fishermen who needed a place to spend the night and ice on which to keep their catch. For many years these shacks helped to keep the industry alive, until one day my sleepy fishing village woke up and no longer need the fishermen—and that’s where my story begins.

SHOWING vs. TELLING:

Going to my family farm with my dad was always an amazing experience.

It was on my family farm that I really got to know my father. During the humid summers we ran through spider-infested grass that was so tall we could not even see each other until we reached the other side. During the winter, this frozen, frigid grass crunched under our feet. We carried guns across these fields, seeking prey, seeking a spot to hide. My father thought that hunting taught patience and the power of silence.

Tips:

- Start with an unknown, not a thesis to be proven. Start with a question or struggle, something you are trying to figure out. Leave yourself room for exploration. If you pose a question, don’t answer it right away with certainty. Then you are closing off that line of thinking. Instead, pose questions you don’t fully know the answers to. Allow your stories to explore ways of thinking about those questions.

- Catalyst quotes should prompt further reflection. They are not to be used as the end-all, be-all answer. Instead, take that person’s answer and say how it does and does not compare to your own answer. Ask questions of that person’s idea. Also, catalyst quotes will most likely come towards the end of an essay. Why?

- Establish the struggle early. Give some hint of what you’re trying to work through within the first paragraph or two. Look at model essays to see how other writers have accomplished this goal.

- Don’t characterize places or experiences for your reader through “telling;” SHOW them that feeling.

- Only trouble is interesting. In other words, if your piece is an “Ode to _______,” only explaining happy memories and good feelings, it’s tough for you to work through something. Instead, you were asked to choose a place that you hold mixed feelings about, or that makes you think. Many of you can deal with places by thinking of effects of change, and wondering about what benefits change brings, as well as what losses. How can we cope with these changes? What do you learn by thinking about the way places change?