Write a narrative essay of about 300 words in which you tell the story of a good choice (or a bad choice) you've made and its results in your life and the lives of others. Use a standard 12 point font and MLA style; first person narrative style is acceptable, but avoid second person. I expect this essay to demonstrate a mastery of the skills from ENGL 1101, as listed in the ENGL 1102 common course outline.
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In life, we often face hard choices; in school, those choices often come in unexpected ways. When requested in the guise of a simple essay assignment, do we share our hopes, tribulations, and dreams with people who know nothing of our lives, all for sake of a grade? Do we risk opening ourselves to scrutiny of those difficult times and tough decisions, clinging to the hope that whatever grade we receive is based solely on mechanics and form, or do we surrender to the pressure for academic excellence and lay out those very personal matters in spite of the trepidation felt doing it? The trick of this particular choice is to find a point of compromise that addresses the needs of both instructor and student.
One method to make a choice easier is to attempt an objective understanding of the level of investment for each person involved. On one hand is me, the student, being required to draft an essay detailing something private and personal; on the other hand, is my instructor with a very legitimate need to evaluate my proficiency with the written word, and the essay format specifically. The assignment was to provide an essay response that details a choice made in our own lives, a topic that each student can expound upon with passion and authority. By embracing the understanding that our instructor seeks to provide “easy” subject matter, some of the outrage I felt about the topic requirements dissipated.
I am not comfortable sharing intimate details of my life with someone I have never met face-to-face, so my options for completing this assignment are to (a) bare my soul on a topic that was stressful in the first place, (b) write about the topic of personal choice from the most neutral stance possible, or (c) take an F. I cannot afford to “take the F”, and I know that my instructor does not create stress for her students purposefully, but her judgment has a direct result of success/failure on my future, and that alone triggered the flight-fight response where the topics for this essay are concerned. When instructors prove through their classroom interactions that they are worthy of basic trust, it becomes easier to admit, “This assignment is hard for me.”
Put in a position where I knew my grade rides on doing something I do not feel comfortable doing outside of intimate friendships, I chose to trust in my instructor’s purpose and to share in my essay the personal quandary of writing it. In facing this choice, I have learned that I am far more comfortable analyzing and responding on non-personal matters, and I look forward greatly to doing more of that in this class.
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