Exercises — Week 29: Week 29 — Writing the Personal Essay
2 hands-on tasks. Do them in order; each one feeds the Canvas item it names.
45 min · written
1. Personal Essay Draft
- Write the first two paragraphs of a personal essay. Begin with a specific, observable detail from your own experience — not an argument, not a general claim, but a thing you have seen, heard, or been inside.
- Paragraph 1: render the detail. Paragraph 2: begin to move — toward a memory, an idea, or a question the detail triggers.
- End paragraph 2 with the essay still open, not resolved.
- After writing, add one sentence identifying what the essay seems to actually be about — which may differ from what you thought when you started.
- This companion enhances — it does not replace — Mr. Gray's instruction.
Turn in / bring: Two opening paragraphs plus one sentence identifying the essay's emerging subject.
20 min · analysis
2. Voice and Authenticity Check
- Review a paragraph you wrote during Weeks 25–28.
- Identify one sentence that sounds most like you and one that sounds like a writer you were imitating.
- For each: write one sentence explaining what makes it sound like what it sounds like.
- Revise the imitation sentence to make it more idiosyncratic — more specifically yours.
Turn in / bring: Two labeled sentences plus revised version of the imitation sentence, with one sentence explaining the change made.