#3- My narrative work

I am very glad to have been able to write a narrative. In high school we never got to write personal stories with a meaning and I believe that writing this helped me to become more creative as a writer. All of my previous papers seem to be dull and without much detail to keep my reader interested. Writing a narrative helped me to be more creative and put some stories and details in my writing. I also liked that we needed to use dialogue. I think that using dialogues helps the characters and the entire story to come alive. When I read through my partner’s paper I felt much more involved in the story because the characters were talking and involved. Previously, I was also not aware of exigence. I always was given a problem or something that needed to be changed, but never before was I allowed to pick my exigence and turn it into the point of my story. I liked being able to incorporate a thoughtful meaning into a story that happened in my life. It helped me to sum up my writing and give it some sort of moral. Also my learning of the concept of rhetoric in general helped me to be able to write a more effective and though provoking paper. I followed all of the steps of rhetoric and my narrative seemed to flow much better than any paper I have written in the past. I finally liked having a specific audience. I planned who my audience would be and wrote my narrative to them. I think that by doing this I was able to get down to my point and keep it simple but interesting. Writing a narrative was by far the most fun an enjoyable piece of work I have done in a long time.

#2- telling a story

My last speech that I made in high school was a farewell address. My class was given very vague instructions. At first I was nervous about the speech because I had never done a speech that was about me. As I thought about the speech more, I came to the conclusion that this speech would be easier and more fun that any speech I had done before because it was the story of my life. We were told to write a speech to say goodbye, but to also tell the story of our school careers. I decided to tell a little bit about the stages of my life. I had the typical awkward stage, middle school stage, and then high school. I wanted to tell different stories to create the bigger story. I wanted to evoke emotion from my classmates through these stories. To do that I used a PowerPoint of pictures throughout my life and the song; I will remember you by Sarah McLaughlin to evoke that emotion. I thought that adding extra factors other than just talking would help my story telling even more. After it was over, my speech was a great success. I made my class laugh with the story of my awkward years and my rather large, puffy hair. My best friends and sister were moved to tears when I talked about how important they were and how that would never change. I wanted my speech to be an accurate sum up of my time in school by telling the stories that meant so much to me to my classmates. I used anecdote and satire to make a point and I believe that it worked because my class was moved by the speech. I think overall, it was necessary to tell the story of my life in this situation and the speech would not have been the same without it.

#1- past writing experience

During my freshman year of high school I had to read a book and write a five page response on an issue of the book. I loved the idea of this, because I love to read, pick apart what I’m reading, and think about it in more detail. I was excited to pick the biggest book that I could and pick an issue to write about. When the time came to choose a book I decided to read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It was big enough to find a idea to write about and to discuss it in a lot of detail. After reading the book, I decided to write my essay on love and marriage. Soon I realized that this topic was much harder than I thought it would be. The book has many complex marriage and love situations. These situations were way too numerous for me to write about them all.  I then had to begin narrowing down the many topics and I finally decided to write about the main character Jane and her love interest. Since this was a five page paper, and one of my first major papers, I had to begin with an introduction, have five body paragraphs, and a conclusion. I realized that after I wrote an introduction and conclusion and came up with a topic sentence, the body of the paper seemed to flow quickly from my mind onto the computer. My teacher encouraged us to make many drafts and keep revising until we thought that we had no errors. I asked my parents to proofread, and went to my teacher as often as I could to make sure I had done everything correctly. Before this I had never envisioned myself to be much of a writer. I loved to read, but I wasn’t interested much in writing. After I finished this essay I realized that what I needed to do to write a good paper was pick a topic that I really enjoyed. From then on I chose topics that I was very interested in and had a passion for writing. This helped me to do increasingly better in Writing and English as I went through High School.

Introduction

I'm Rachel and I'm a freshman at Penn State! I'm a Kinesiology major, and I plan to further my education to Medical School in Philadelphia in four years. I am very close with my family and had trouble leaving them to come to college. I have one younger sister who is a senior in high school. I love the town Manyunk on the outskirts of Philly. I want to live there when I finish college. In high school I was a student Athletic Trainer and enjoyed every minute of it. I love to read and have always been fascinated with fantasy books and movies. My favorite books are the Harry Potter series and Twilight series. I like to watch Grey’s anatomy and the Bachelor.  I grew up in Shillington, PA and attended Governor Mifflin High School. I always thought that my town was boring, but since leaving for college I have realized how much I love living there. I played sports throughout high school including field hockey and track. I am an extremely big Philadelphia Phillies fan! I love Raul Ibanez and wish I could meet him one day. I also love football and that was one of the deciding factors when I chose Penn State. The professional teams that I like are the Bengals and the Eagles. I love animals, and my favorite pet choice is a dog. I wish for a chocolate lab puppy every day. I also love elephants, especially stuffed elephants! I love getting dressed up. I enjoyed getting ready for prom and taking pictures more than prom itself. Ocean City, New Jersey is my favorite place in the world. I spend almost half of the summer at the beach with my family and friends. I also love New York City. I have always liked English but I have never written this many papers in such a short time! I am excited for this spring semester.