And by the way,
everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it,
and the imagination to improvise.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
~Sylvia Plath
December 8, 2009
Dear Ms. Berry,
Once upon a time, I was Lane, an academic writer ready to take ENG 217 in order to complete a graduation requirement. I didn't really know what "Writing Reflective Essays" would entail, but shoot, I'm a good writer, shouldn't be too hard.
Ha. First thing we were asked to do was write, just write. About what? About anything. Um…can I have a list of thesis topics? I was lost in a world of ideas and words and really, nothing. Or so I thought. Weekly free writes allowed me to reflect and think, without actually thinking. I didn’t worry too much about editing or spelling, I just wrote. About gum on my butt, about play doh, about my friend Cassandra. Things I hadn’t spent too much time thinking about and questions I had never asked myself were now reflected on paper, the answers to these unasked questions unfolding word by word.
For Assignment #1, I chose to write about love lost (Relationship Obituary) and love found (Brief Essay). The Relationship Obituary was an interesting assignment especially at this point in my life. I tried to break down and analyze the greater part of two years in a play-by-play summary that really didn’t do it justice. A couple rounds of review and your own editing forced me to get past the telling and start showing. I needed to show the love and the romance in order to convey the pain of the letdown. It wasn’t enough to tell the reader that the breakup had upset me, I had to let the reader, a peer I had never spoken to, into the heartache that was my first love. This was risky, but it was worth it, and the final product was more than an essay, but a renewed sense of self and satisfaction with my place in life since the relationship’s death. I then hurdled into my Brief Essay about falling for my current boyfriend, Justin, which presented some of the same difficulties. I wanted to show the fear of the fall, both physically from an airplane and emotionally in love. I tried to move away from summary and generalization, but addressing a topic so familiar in my own heart and mind made it difficult to focus on tiny details I took for granted. Through peer edits, I was forced to reflect on these tiny details and was better able to convey the significance of the fall into this relationship.
When I started the “Nature/Spirituality” piece for Assignment #2, I really had no idea what to write about. To be honest, I forgot about the Dimitri situation until later that week and then I thought maybe it’d be a good place to start. Many of the emotions and conclusions I explored in that essay I discovered while writing it. This made the conclusion extremely difficult, because I was still trying to figure out the complete effect of Dimitri’s influence on me. The end result of this essay was my first real sense of accomplishment in this class, as I played around with a new structure to draw the reader in.
And then there was the Memoir, even more daunting than the last assignment (notice a trend?). I had no idea what to write about because my life is boring. Then, once I found something to write about, Christmas at Mom’s, it was such a broad topic I was again lost in summary. I had to break down an experience I hardly remembered and relive it through my mom’s memory with snippets of my own. I was satisfied with the result of this work and of the joy it brought my mom to help me with my homework for the first time since Kindergarten.
Although I didn’t know what topic to address with my Rant, I couldn’t be happier with its turn out. I took the opposite approach from my previous essays and tried not to dig too deeply. I found a topic that annoyed me enough to actually rant about, but not enough to actually make me angry. I actually looked to my mom’s own humor writings as an influence on the tone and style of this piece, and I think I was able to emulate her style in my own way.
Now I’m here, at the end of my semester, ready to submit a portfolio of my growth. Look upon this website as a time line of change that has allowed me to grow and see a side of my abilities that I didn’t previously know I possessed. I’m appreciative to you for giving me the opportunity to explore my self, my emotions, and my creativity by challenging my previous works and forcing me to move in a totally different direction.
Yours truly,
Lane Gallett
Once upon a time, I was Lane, an academic writer ready to take ENG 217 in order to complete a graduation requirement. I didn't really know what "Writing Reflective Essays" would entail, but shoot, I'm a good writer, shouldn't be too hard.
Ha. First thing we were asked to do was write, just write. About what? About anything. Um…can I have a list of thesis topics? I was lost in a world of ideas and words and really, nothing. Or so I thought. Weekly free writes allowed me to reflect and think, without actually thinking. I didn’t worry too much about editing or spelling, I just wrote. About gum on my butt, about play doh, about my friend Cassandra. Things I hadn’t spent too much time thinking about and questions I had never asked myself were now reflected on paper, the answers to these unasked questions unfolding word by word.
For Assignment #1, I chose to write about love lost (Relationship Obituary) and love found (Brief Essay). The Relationship Obituary was an interesting assignment especially at this point in my life. I tried to break down and analyze the greater part of two years in a play-by-play summary that really didn’t do it justice. A couple rounds of review and your own editing forced me to get past the telling and start showing. I needed to show the love and the romance in order to convey the pain of the letdown. It wasn’t enough to tell the reader that the breakup had upset me, I had to let the reader, a peer I had never spoken to, into the heartache that was my first love. This was risky, but it was worth it, and the final product was more than an essay, but a renewed sense of self and satisfaction with my place in life since the relationship’s death. I then hurdled into my Brief Essay about falling for my current boyfriend, Justin, which presented some of the same difficulties. I wanted to show the fear of the fall, both physically from an airplane and emotionally in love. I tried to move away from summary and generalization, but addressing a topic so familiar in my own heart and mind made it difficult to focus on tiny details I took for granted. Through peer edits, I was forced to reflect on these tiny details and was better able to convey the significance of the fall into this relationship.
When I started the “Nature/Spirituality” piece for Assignment #2, I really had no idea what to write about. To be honest, I forgot about the Dimitri situation until later that week and then I thought maybe it’d be a good place to start. Many of the emotions and conclusions I explored in that essay I discovered while writing it. This made the conclusion extremely difficult, because I was still trying to figure out the complete effect of Dimitri’s influence on me. The end result of this essay was my first real sense of accomplishment in this class, as I played around with a new structure to draw the reader in.
And then there was the Memoir, even more daunting than the last assignment (notice a trend?). I had no idea what to write about because my life is boring. Then, once I found something to write about, Christmas at Mom’s, it was such a broad topic I was again lost in summary. I had to break down an experience I hardly remembered and relive it through my mom’s memory with snippets of my own. I was satisfied with the result of this work and of the joy it brought my mom to help me with my homework for the first time since Kindergarten.
Although I didn’t know what topic to address with my Rant, I couldn’t be happier with its turn out. I took the opposite approach from my previous essays and tried not to dig too deeply. I found a topic that annoyed me enough to actually rant about, but not enough to actually make me angry. I actually looked to my mom’s own humor writings as an influence on the tone and style of this piece, and I think I was able to emulate her style in my own way.
Now I’m here, at the end of my semester, ready to submit a portfolio of my growth. Look upon this website as a time line of change that has allowed me to grow and see a side of my abilities that I didn’t previously know I possessed. I’m appreciative to you for giving me the opportunity to explore my self, my emotions, and my creativity by challenging my previous works and forcing me to move in a totally different direction.
Yours truly,
Lane Gallett
