• Write about the first time you were confronted with an aspect of life that you had never faced before. (e.g., poverty, wealth, drugs, life-threatening illness, extreme kindness, or violence)
Review the steps of the Writing Process, and jot down a brief schedule for yourself. Set tentative dates for completing each step of the process. The exercises at the end of this document may help you approach this essay assignment.
Essay Requirements
1) The essay must be a personal narrative that involves you as a major character. A substantial part of the narrative must involve you.
2) The essay must be about ONE moment or ONE significant event in your life. (It cannot be an autobiography about your whole life or a series of events in your life.)
3) The main event or moment of the essay must take place in approximately one twenty-four-hour period or less, and most of the essay should focus on the main event or moment. 4) Create a clear explicit thesis.
5) Reflect on the importance of your experience in a well-developed conclusion. Discuss what you learned, discovered, or gained from the experience.
6) Incorporate story elements, including plot, setting, and characters. 7) Appeal to the five senses. The essay should incorporate some of the work you completed in the Five Senses, Five Sentences exercise. 8) Give your essay an interesting title.
9) Use MLA format and type the essay. Information on MLA format is available in the course web page. Essays that are not MLA-formatted will have points deducted.
10) Use between 800 to 1500 words in the essay. The minimum word count matters; use at least 800 words. Essays that do not meet the minimum word count requirement may not be graded (resulting in a zero for the assignment) or will have points deducted accordingly. For example, an essay with 800 or more words will have a starting grade of 100, but an essay with 400 words may not be graded or will have a starting grade of 50 (= 400/800). 11) Write at least six major, well-developed paragraphs.
12) Write the essay in the first person point of view. 13) Write in formal English to an audience of your college peers and instructor. Do not use second person pronouns, contractions, or slang unless they are necessary parts of a dialogue. Place dialogue in quotation marks. 14) Research: Do NOT do research for this essay. An essay that uses sources or an essay that has information that needs to be cited may earn zero credit.
