Before going to Florida we did a novel study on Alice in Wonderland and as a result of that study we had to write an in-class essay. We were given two topics: 1) How does Carroll create a real imaginary world for his reader?
2) How are readers/viewers drawn to imaginary worlds?
I chose the second Prompt because that gave me the ability to discuss more examples other than Alice.
For a week before Mr. Featherstone went over different parts of essays and MLA formate. We also discussed how to integrate quotes.
We then were given a page to do our point planning two days before the essay was going to be assigned.
On the first night I brainstormed some ideas and decided on the top three that I could get good examples for and I understood the most.
The first one was being able to escape from the real world into an imaginary one. The second was anything can happen in imaginary worlds from flying pigs to talking dogs. Last was the appeal of a hero in many fantasy stories there is a hero that could be a symbol of rebellion against the evil ruler or the ruler fighting a dark force, hero’s give us a role model no matter how real they are.
Some of the examples I used include; “Eragon” By: Christopher Paolini and “The Lion, The Whitch and The Wardrobe” By: C.S. Lewis to name a few.
The stress build up, in the two days, was almost unbearable. Being a perfectionist I get really nervous before any test or project because I want to do well. That usually means close to sleep less nights and last night I even had a nightmare about the upcoming SLC’s.
When we came in to write the essay everyone seemed to be nervous to some degree and almost everyone was stressed. It took me almost 40 minutes to write the essay and go over it for any grammar errors. After writing it all the stress left me and I was actually content with what I had.
The next day we did a peer edit and I was with Claire, she gave me some good points to edit on and I then went home and edited some of the priciest of the essay.
Then about a week before Florida Mr. Featherstone wanted us to turn it into an IBook. So we used the app IBook Creator to create a book that had one paragraph on each page which was also accompanied by a photo that related to the paragraph.
That was what seemed like the end of the essay but it wasn’t. About a week after we got home from Florida Mr. Featherstone went through everyone’s essays and graded them. I pretty much got a B on it and I revived some critique that I need to take into account the next time I write an essay.
I learned a fair bit about writing essays because of this, I had only written one essay before and it was a persuasive essay while for this one we had to write an analytical essay. So I definitely have room for improvement and I know what I need to work on in the future.