Hi. I’m Avery Trendel and I want to welcome you here to an unfamiliar place: my brain.  It can be a bit wild in here so just be aware that this ride may not be suitable for children, women who are nursing or pregnant, or others prone to nausea and dizziness. 

     Today in the lab, we’re checking out my “This I Believe” essay; all shapes and forms that it ever existed in.  Personally I hated this assignment because it played to a weakness of mine by capping the word count at 500.  I suck at keeping it short, especially with this essay asking me to get so in depth and personal.  I thought even the finalized version I’m receiving my grade on deserves to go in the trash, if only because it doesn’t do the real story justice.

     “Everything happens for a reason.”  That was my title and my “belief” at the beginning. The paper started with a fifty-plus word Marilyn Monroe quote that, for some reason,  I thought was just so freaking awesome at the time.  I told a tragic story from my family’s past with plenty of details to describe it. Getting lost in explaining the story itself, I forgot to establish my “belief” or explain how it related.  750 words later, I had a rough draft with way too many words, way too many details, and no clear structure.

     After a quick lesson in class teaching us how to cut our paper’s word length down, I felt super intelligent and ready to make something out of nothing.  First things first, I knew I should get rid of the quote, but like I mentioned before: I thought it was the bomb.  Still feeling super intelligent, I decided “Hey, let’s go ahead and just shorten the quote, change my belief based on the shortened quote, and then take that damn quote and shove it into the conclusion instead of the intro.” 

     My “belief” under this new master plan became “why good things go”.  I shortened many parts of the essay, deleting unnecessary comments and unimportant details.  A newer, flashier introduction took its place at the beginning. I thought surely it would hook readers in like a school of fish.  Then came time to turn it in for feedback…

     As it turns out, the new intro received a nice review from you Ms. Andrews, but the rest of the essay, eh, not so much.  It didn’t get torn apart, but it was clear I still had a lot of work to do.  As cool as the new intro was, there was still room to shorten it. This way, more details could make their way in to the later parts.  Some other sentences needed to be re-worded, and the structure still made no sense as it pertained to my “belief”.  The conclusion included a simile that didn’t really apply (life plays with our mind like play-doh) and of course my stupid quote to close it out.  I had to go back to the drawing board one more time to try and fix this mess.



   Quote-less. A word I came up with at the drawing board. It's also the same word I’d use to describe my finalized, graded copy of the essay.  I manned up, grew a pair, and decided to drop my girl Marilyn from the story.  That shiny, new intro with the good reviews? Scrapped and shortened.  An editing spree took place.  The structure was modified to fit a new belief: “the way one night can affect the rest of your life.”   I describe the night in question, and how the lives of my older brother and I change before and after that night.  The conclusion was fixed to fit with this new essay structure and belief.  No more quotes and no more stupid similes.  I decided to replace them with pure dramatization of a real life situation.  Yes, the events were emotional, but with a word limit, things need to be exaggerated.  I make a comment about how I don’t want to speak negatively about my parents that makes it sound like there's not many good things to say about them. My mom and dad would kill me if they read it, but it makes the conclusion stronger.

     This is no different than going onto the “This I Believe” website and checking out some real entries on there.  You could read someone’s entry about adopting an African child where they gush in the conclusion about “the tears that come to their eyes every day when they look at little Kinte”, but in reality they probably don’t actually cry every day they see Kinte, they just throw that in their essay for emotional effect.

     I’ve rambled on enough.  The ride should come to an end here soon.  I hope this gives an insight into how I put together my “This I Believe” project.  Links are provided at the top of the page to Word Document downloads containing: the original rough draft, my second revised draft with teacher comments attached, and my finalized, graded version of the essay.  Check them out.