What Does Home Mean To You Essay
Mackenzie Boulter
Jake Syersak
September 25, 2013
English 101
Essay #1 - Part Two
In my creative piece, I used Lassel’s technique of depicting photographic moments to convey what home means to me. Just the topic of the southern lifestyles comes as a sensitive yet powerful subject for me. In my essay I decided to thoroughly develop strong mental pictures of the place I was raised and explain what it is that makes that friendly community of Lake Travis, Texas so special to me. Pinpointing the things that jog my memory of what it’s like to be from the welcoming town of LT in Austin, Texas. My main goal of the creative piece I wrote was to make everyone from different origins and hometowns, think about where they’re from and discern what having that place to call home means to them as I so passionately specify what it means to me. When reading my paper aloud in my head, precise pictures of the rolling hills covered in deep greens, the still lake water that breaks as the boat cruises along and the over the top weird souls that roam 6th street keeping Austin’s reputation play in my mind form. Relating to the statement that I mentioned in my creative piece, “Where …show more content…
everyone embraces the fact that were a weird city filled with weird people who thoroughly enjoy doing weird things.” To people who aren’t from Austin, the details that perfectly describe the memorable parts of the weird city are all jumbled together on a sheet of paper. However, to those who are accustomed to the one of a kind breed of oddity and share the deep-rooted love for the hills surrounding the Heart of Texas, read my paper as a taste of home in every short description. They would mentally hear the adoration in my voice and be able to perfectly visualize every image down to the “Graffiti murals… cover[ing] the walls of downtown.” To that true Austinite reading my paper, they have memories rolling through their head as I mention the many places that form the Violet Crown. However, if you are not from the community that I describe, my hope is that you saw my piece as a way of remembering your home. While home to me may be spending late nights watching the bats fly out of the South Congress bridge and spending days out on the lake with the people I grew up with, yours may consist of something totally different - whatever it may be equally as unique. In using this style of writing I was able to express my feelings for the place that is home to me in a way that came straight from my very own memories. I was closing my eyes and remembering every characteristic of every picture that came to my dome. Making a list of elements that form Austin, Texas and Lake Travis that mean home for me. I also dug deeper into it and incorporated my personality along with a passionate tone. The tone I used in the writing of my creative essay is that of meaningful expression. I used the photographic style of writing to lay out on paper pictures in the form of words allowing the reader to clearly imagine what a day in the life of a typical Lake Travis kid looks like or the description of restaurants that makes your mouth water, whether it is of familiarity to them or not. In conclusion, the overall focal point of my creative essay is that everyone has a place that they call home and a place that they could paint pictures of into paragraphs. Everyone has their way of deciphering what home means to them and what makes it so unique.
Bibliography
Lassel, Michael. "How to Watch Your Brother Die." Writing as Revision. Decade Dance, 1990. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.
Mackenzie,
You have strong thesis statement that responds directly to the essay prompt. Great! However, I think you may want to focus on paragraph development—specifically using the PIE method. There are times that you are employing good topic sentences, but you’re not proving those topic sentences to me through well-developed illustrations and explanations. Also, there are points in your essay when you tend to lose track about talking specifically about the literary technique you used and its conveyance of meaning, instead opting to talk narratively about Texas. You might ask yourself after writing each paragraph, “is this paragraph proving something specific about my thesis?” If the answer is no, you may want to revisit its intentions. I strongly recommend the PIE method as a tool to organize your thoughts.
Grade: 70/100 C-
Mackenzie Boulter
Jake Syersak
7 December 13
English 101
Essay #4 – Revision of Essay #1 In my creative piece, I used Lassel’s technique of depicting photographic moments to convey what home means to me. Just the topic of the southern lifestyles comes as a sensitive yet powerful subject for me. In my essay I decided to thoroughly develop strong mental pictures of the place I was raised and explain what it is that makes that friendly community of Lake Travis, Texas so special to me. Pinpointing the things that jog my memory of what it’s like to be from the welcoming town of LT in Austin, Texas. My main goal of the creative piece I wrote was to make everyone from different origins and hometowns think about where they’re from and discern what having that place to call home means to them as I so passionately specify what it means to me. In the city of Austin holds many features that, for me, paint the most precise illustration of what a hometown looks like. Detailed images of the rolling hills covered in deep greens, the still lake water that breaks as the boat cruises by and the unbelievably weird souls that roam 6th street keeping Austin’s reputation alive are what comes to mind when I think of home. Relating to the statement that I mentioned in my creative piece, “where everyone embraces the fact that were a weird city filled with weird people who thoroughly enjoy doing weird things”, to people who aren’t from Austin the descriptions that so perfectly pronounce the memorable aspects of the weird city are nothing but unnecessary details. However, those who are accustomed to the one of a kind breed of oddity and who share the deep-rooted love for the hills that surround the Heart of Texas, read my paper and are reminded of their homeland with every short description. They would mentally hear the adoration in my voice and be able to perfectly visualize every image down to the “Graffiti murals… cover[ing] the walls of downtown.” To that true Austinite reading my paper, they have memories rolling through their head as I mention the many places that form the Violet Crown. If you are not from the community that I described, my hope is that you saw my piece as a way of remembering your home. Hearing the adoration in voice as you read what I wrote about my hometown that I love so dearly should remind you of that place that you feel the same connection to. Imagine yourself driving on the roads that you know so well surrounded by all you have ever known as home. While home to me may be spending late nights watching the bats fly out of the South Congress bridge and spending days out on the lake with the people I grew up with, yours may consist of something totally different, whatever it may be it is equally as unique. In using this style of writing I was able to express my feelings for the place that is home to me in a way that came straight from my very own memories.
The illustrations were precisely drawn in my head as I laid them out exactly as I remembered. It was as simple as reliving the days I am so familiar to. I was closing my eyes and remembering every characteristic of every picture that came to mind. For example when I stated that “Lake Travis is wearing a swim suit all day, drinking beer underage out on the lake with your friends, where its common for kids to get boats before they get cars and where football is what everyone’s lives revolve around” these were nothing but effortless memories. I was also able to dig deeper into it and incorporate my personality along with a passionate
tone. The tone I used in the writing of my creative essay is that of natural expression. While reading my piece one can see that each description is genuine and unforced. I used the photographic style of writing to lay out on paper pictures in the form of words allowing the reader to clearly imagine what a day in the life of a typical Lake Travis kid looks like. In the descriptions of restaurants that make your mouth water, whether it is of familiarity to you or not you can picture it and you are hopefully reminded of places that have the same influence on you that the places described have on me. For example, when describing Hopdoddy’s as having the juiciest and best burgers in all of Austin, you are probably imagining the burger joint from your stomping grounds that cannot compare to anything else. In conclusion, the overall focal point of my creative essay is that everyone has a place that they call home and a place that they could paint pictures of into paragraphs. My illustrations are just examples of how one can find their own turf so rare and comfortable. Using Lasells technique I was able to describe perfectly the images I could see from my memories. Everybody has their way of deciphering what home means to them and what makes it so unique.
Lassel, Michael. "How to Watch Your Brother Die." Writing as Revision. Decade Dance, 1990.
24 Sept. 2013.
Mackenzie Boulter
Jake Syersak
8 December 13
English 101
Reflection
Over the course of this semester in my first college English class, I have found that both my writing style and paragraph development skills have drastically improved. For this final essay, I choose to revise Essay #1 because it was the first college essay I had ever written and I felt that it would be the paper that called for the most corrections and overall revision. I found out quickly just how right I was when I looked back over the essay I wrote just around three short months ago.
One of the main problems that I found in the essay was in paragraph development. While the topic sentence I choose for a passage may have been strong, the content of the paragraph lacked sufficiency. I often left out the details that could so easily be filled in and make for a strong paragraph. As I went back through and continued to revise this issue, I added in examples from my creative piece such as, “everyone embraces the fact that we’re a weird city filled with weird people who thoroughly enjoy doing weird things”, and followed by presenting clarification of how it conveys to the theme being discussed.
The topic of home is one that is dear to my heart because of my adoration for the town in which I grew up. I feel that when I initially wrote the analytical portion I wasn’t quite sure how to attack the thesis I created. While I was able to put forth a few solid topic sentences I could have improved the paragraph as a whole by focusing more on the build of the PIE method.
There were a couple instances as well where I would get off topic and start forming more of a narrative paragraph than one that is proving my thesis. For example, one paragraph in my essay started with, “When reading my paper aloud in my head, precise pictures of the rolling hills covered in deep greens, the still lake water that breaks as the boat cruises along and the over the top weird souls that roam 6th street keeping Austin’s reputation play in my mind”, which doesn’t stand as a topic sentence and instead stands as insignificant evidence. I revised this by forming a topic sentence that states, “The city of Austin holds many features that, for me, paint the most precise illustration of what a hometown looks like”, and then I preceded to prove this statement with detailed imagery. When I found where this was happening throughout my essay I didn’t fully erase what I had written, but instead found a way to use it as evidence that supports my thesis and the newly formed topic sentence.
My main focus for the paper was to describe how I used the writing technique of Lassel to convey what home means to me. Being that this is my thesis, I found that giving explanations and detailed illustrations such as “I was closing my eyes and remembering every characteristic of every picture that came to mind” was of extreme importance. I was also able to provide evidence for the topic being discussed by pulling quotes from my creative piece and using them to prove the message then proceed to explain how it justifies the matter.
Throughout the entirety of my essay I found a few grammatical errors however this wasn’t exactly where I found the most obscene need for revision. One grammatical error that I have struggled with in the past is proper comma punctuation and there were a few of these amongst the paper but like I said, nothing too explicit. When I came across these mistakes I went over the lessons on comma placement that we covered in class and I was able to quickly repair them and move on to more ample revisions.
In conclusion, I believe that choosing this essay to revise benefited me mostly in that I was able to apply the skills I have acquired throughout the entirety of this course into the essay that I wrote before I had these skills. When I finished revising the paper, I read aloud first the original analytical essay that I had written around three months ago and then preceded to read aloud the revised copy. Not only could I hear an improvement in the paragraph structure and a clear use of the PIE method, but also I was able to hear a significant improvement in the voice of my writing. Being able to hear such improvement in my own writing was definitely rewarding and proved that the many weeks of hard work in English 101 have paid off. I strongly believe that all the practice we have had in writing both narrative stories and analytical papers has made for clear improvement in my writing. Through all the work shopping and peer editing I have learned skills from how to build a strong thesis to how to correctly cite poetry. I feel that I have become an all around better writer whether it is a creative narrative piece or an analytical essay and also that I have acquired writing skills that I will be able to use in the future.
Jake Syersak
September 25, 2013
English 101
Essay #1 - Part Two
In my creative piece, I used Lassel’s technique of depicting photographic moments to convey what home means to me. Just the topic of the southern lifestyles comes as a sensitive yet powerful subject for me. In my essay I decided to thoroughly develop strong mental pictures of the place I was raised and explain what it is that makes that friendly community of Lake Travis, Texas so special to me. Pinpointing the things that jog my memory of what it’s like to be from the welcoming town of LT in Austin, Texas. My main goal of the creative piece I wrote was to make everyone from different origins and hometowns, think about where they’re from and discern what having that place to call home means to them as I so passionately specify what it means to me. When reading my paper aloud in my head, precise pictures of the rolling hills covered in deep greens, the still lake water that breaks as the boat cruises along and the over the top weird souls that roam 6th street keeping Austin’s reputation play in my mind form. Relating to the statement that I mentioned in my creative piece, “Where …show more content…
everyone embraces the fact that were a weird city filled with weird people who thoroughly enjoy doing weird things.” To people who aren’t from Austin, the details that perfectly describe the memorable parts of the weird city are all jumbled together on a sheet of paper. However, to those who are accustomed to the one of a kind breed of oddity and share the deep-rooted love for the hills surrounding the Heart of Texas, read my paper as a taste of home in every short description. They would mentally hear the adoration in my voice and be able to perfectly visualize every image down to the “Graffiti murals… cover[ing] the walls of downtown.” To that true Austinite reading my paper, they have memories rolling through their head as I mention the many places that form the Violet Crown. However, if you are not from the community that I describe, my hope is that you saw my piece as a way of remembering your home. While home to me may be spending late nights watching the bats fly out of the South Congress bridge and spending days out on the lake with the people I grew up with, yours may consist of something totally different - whatever it may be equally as unique. In using this style of writing I was able to express my feelings for the place that is home to me in a way that came straight from my very own memories. I was closing my eyes and remembering every characteristic of every picture that came to my dome. Making a list of elements that form Austin, Texas and Lake Travis that mean home for me. I also dug deeper into it and incorporated my personality along with a passionate tone. The tone I used in the writing of my creative essay is that of meaningful expression. I used the photographic style of writing to lay out on paper pictures in the form of words allowing the reader to clearly imagine what a day in the life of a typical Lake Travis kid looks like or the description of restaurants that makes your mouth water, whether it is of familiarity to them or not. In conclusion, the overall focal point of my creative essay is that everyone has a place that they call home and a place that they could paint pictures of into paragraphs. Everyone has their way of deciphering what home means to them and what makes it so unique.
Bibliography
Lassel, Michael. "How to Watch Your Brother Die." Writing as Revision. Decade Dance, 1990. Web. 24 Sept. 2013.
Mackenzie,
You have strong thesis statement that responds directly to the essay prompt. Great! However, I think you may want to focus on paragraph development—specifically using the PIE method. There are times that you are employing good topic sentences, but you’re not proving those topic sentences to me through well-developed illustrations and explanations. Also, there are points in your essay when you tend to lose track about talking specifically about the literary technique you used and its conveyance of meaning, instead opting to talk narratively about Texas. You might ask yourself after writing each paragraph, “is this paragraph proving something specific about my thesis?” If the answer is no, you may want to revisit its intentions. I strongly recommend the PIE method as a tool to organize your thoughts.
Grade: 70/100 C-
Mackenzie Boulter
Jake Syersak
7 December 13
English 101
Essay #4 – Revision of Essay #1 In my creative piece, I used Lassel’s technique of depicting photographic moments to convey what home means to me. Just the topic of the southern lifestyles comes as a sensitive yet powerful subject for me. In my essay I decided to thoroughly develop strong mental pictures of the place I was raised and explain what it is that makes that friendly community of Lake Travis, Texas so special to me. Pinpointing the things that jog my memory of what it’s like to be from the welcoming town of LT in Austin, Texas. My main goal of the creative piece I wrote was to make everyone from different origins and hometowns think about where they’re from and discern what having that place to call home means to them as I so passionately specify what it means to me. In the city of Austin holds many features that, for me, paint the most precise illustration of what a hometown looks like. Detailed images of the rolling hills covered in deep greens, the still lake water that breaks as the boat cruises by and the unbelievably weird souls that roam 6th street keeping Austin’s reputation alive are what comes to mind when I think of home. Relating to the statement that I mentioned in my creative piece, “where everyone embraces the fact that were a weird city filled with weird people who thoroughly enjoy doing weird things”, to people who aren’t from Austin the descriptions that so perfectly pronounce the memorable aspects of the weird city are nothing but unnecessary details. However, those who are accustomed to the one of a kind breed of oddity and who share the deep-rooted love for the hills that surround the Heart of Texas, read my paper and are reminded of their homeland with every short description. They would mentally hear the adoration in my voice and be able to perfectly visualize every image down to the “Graffiti murals… cover[ing] the walls of downtown.” To that true Austinite reading my paper, they have memories rolling through their head as I mention the many places that form the Violet Crown. If you are not from the community that I described, my hope is that you saw my piece as a way of remembering your home. Hearing the adoration in voice as you read what I wrote about my hometown that I love so dearly should remind you of that place that you feel the same connection to. Imagine yourself driving on the roads that you know so well surrounded by all you have ever known as home. While home to me may be spending late nights watching the bats fly out of the South Congress bridge and spending days out on the lake with the people I grew up with, yours may consist of something totally different, whatever it may be it is equally as unique. In using this style of writing I was able to express my feelings for the place that is home to me in a way that came straight from my very own memories.
The illustrations were precisely drawn in my head as I laid them out exactly as I remembered. It was as simple as reliving the days I am so familiar to. I was closing my eyes and remembering every characteristic of every picture that came to mind. For example when I stated that “Lake Travis is wearing a swim suit all day, drinking beer underage out on the lake with your friends, where its common for kids to get boats before they get cars and where football is what everyone’s lives revolve around” these were nothing but effortless memories. I was also able to dig deeper into it and incorporate my personality along with a passionate
tone. The tone I used in the writing of my creative essay is that of natural expression. While reading my piece one can see that each description is genuine and unforced. I used the photographic style of writing to lay out on paper pictures in the form of words allowing the reader to clearly imagine what a day in the life of a typical Lake Travis kid looks like. In the descriptions of restaurants that make your mouth water, whether it is of familiarity to you or not you can picture it and you are hopefully reminded of places that have the same influence on you that the places described have on me. For example, when describing Hopdoddy’s as having the juiciest and best burgers in all of Austin, you are probably imagining the burger joint from your stomping grounds that cannot compare to anything else. In conclusion, the overall focal point of my creative essay is that everyone has a place that they call home and a place that they could paint pictures of into paragraphs. My illustrations are just examples of how one can find their own turf so rare and comfortable. Using Lasells technique I was able to describe perfectly the images I could see from my memories. Everybody has their way of deciphering what home means to them and what makes it so unique.
Lassel, Michael. "How to Watch Your Brother Die." Writing as Revision. Decade Dance, 1990.
24 Sept. 2013.
Mackenzie Boulter
Jake Syersak
8 December 13
English 101
Reflection
Over the course of this semester in my first college English class, I have found that both my writing style and paragraph development skills have drastically improved. For this final essay, I choose to revise Essay #1 because it was the first college essay I had ever written and I felt that it would be the paper that called for the most corrections and overall revision. I found out quickly just how right I was when I looked back over the essay I wrote just around three short months ago.
One of the main problems that I found in the essay was in paragraph development. While the topic sentence I choose for a passage may have been strong, the content of the paragraph lacked sufficiency. I often left out the details that could so easily be filled in and make for a strong paragraph. As I went back through and continued to revise this issue, I added in examples from my creative piece such as, “everyone embraces the fact that we’re a weird city filled with weird people who thoroughly enjoy doing weird things”, and followed by presenting clarification of how it conveys to the theme being discussed.
The topic of home is one that is dear to my heart because of my adoration for the town in which I grew up. I feel that when I initially wrote the analytical portion I wasn’t quite sure how to attack the thesis I created. While I was able to put forth a few solid topic sentences I could have improved the paragraph as a whole by focusing more on the build of the PIE method.
There were a couple instances as well where I would get off topic and start forming more of a narrative paragraph than one that is proving my thesis. For example, one paragraph in my essay started with, “When reading my paper aloud in my head, precise pictures of the rolling hills covered in deep greens, the still lake water that breaks as the boat cruises along and the over the top weird souls that roam 6th street keeping Austin’s reputation play in my mind”, which doesn’t stand as a topic sentence and instead stands as insignificant evidence. I revised this by forming a topic sentence that states, “The city of Austin holds many features that, for me, paint the most precise illustration of what a hometown looks like”, and then I preceded to prove this statement with detailed imagery. When I found where this was happening throughout my essay I didn’t fully erase what I had written, but instead found a way to use it as evidence that supports my thesis and the newly formed topic sentence.
My main focus for the paper was to describe how I used the writing technique of Lassel to convey what home means to me. Being that this is my thesis, I found that giving explanations and detailed illustrations such as “I was closing my eyes and remembering every characteristic of every picture that came to mind” was of extreme importance. I was also able to provide evidence for the topic being discussed by pulling quotes from my creative piece and using them to prove the message then proceed to explain how it justifies the matter.
Throughout the entirety of my essay I found a few grammatical errors however this wasn’t exactly where I found the most obscene need for revision. One grammatical error that I have struggled with in the past is proper comma punctuation and there were a few of these amongst the paper but like I said, nothing too explicit. When I came across these mistakes I went over the lessons on comma placement that we covered in class and I was able to quickly repair them and move on to more ample revisions.
In conclusion, I believe that choosing this essay to revise benefited me mostly in that I was able to apply the skills I have acquired throughout the entirety of this course into the essay that I wrote before I had these skills. When I finished revising the paper, I read aloud first the original analytical essay that I had written around three months ago and then preceded to read aloud the revised copy. Not only could I hear an improvement in the paragraph structure and a clear use of the PIE method, but also I was able to hear a significant improvement in the voice of my writing. Being able to hear such improvement in my own writing was definitely rewarding and proved that the many weeks of hard work in English 101 have paid off. I strongly believe that all the practice we have had in writing both narrative stories and analytical papers has made for clear improvement in my writing. Through all the work shopping and peer editing I have learned skills from how to build a strong thesis to how to correctly cite poetry. I feel that I have become an all around better writer whether it is a creative narrative piece or an analytical essay and also that I have acquired writing skills that I will be able to use in the future.