Cameron's Personal Essay Ideas

Reflect: I think that writing the experiences I’ve had over the course of this class in segments has taught me that I can take a very short moment in time and expand it into a large and descriptive paragraph. This tactic draws the reader into the scene, but must be careful not to include too much information/info dump. I’ve learned that I must not be didactic but that some of the best learning comes when a reader can make assumptions for themselves, therefore, writing to a general audience usually works better to reach more people. I want to convey meaning in this personal essay, yet not be too symbolic in what I want specific things to mean.

Select: I plan on writing about my experiences as a boy with a loving, but contentious father, who always desired the best for his children, but somehow couldn’t quite convey it in the right way. I’m not sure if I want to model the fictitious, yet realistic example that Martine Leavitte uses in My Book of Life by Angel or the strikingly realistic stories of Hoiland.

Comment: Hoiland talked about getting to know her sister when she was a young girl but said, “I’m embarrassed now to think that I ever questioned the happiness of another because it did not match perfectly my own but my young heart was not ready to understand that the threadd between my sister and me would not ever waver, let alone break, in the years to follow, even when our lives looked different” (Hoiland 41-42). I love this sentence, because there are layers of meaning, not only with the content, but also style and form. It is very telling of her experience, yet does not make any didactic statements about what one must now believe. It simply relays her experience.

Plan: I want to tell of experiences of a young man, what discipline has looked like for him, what belief systems looked like in that household, the motives behind the “why” they did things and the reasons he was given. I want to show the good intentions of this young man’s father, the feelings of the love he experienced, and contrast those with moments and conversations of fear and doubt with his mother and brother. Then flash forward to the perspective of an older, wiser man, seeing his parents as flawed, how they too grow, learn, and change, ending with a similar connection to that of Hoiland’s as mentioned above.