ENG 101 Fall 2018

Writing Project 1- The Personal Essay

Background and Overview:

Everyone has a set of rituals, practices, and customs
which help define that person as unique. These
practices are closely tied to personal identity, but also
tell us a lot about how we relate to others. You can
explore this relationship between activity and identity
by asking several questions:

• What rituals, practices, traditions, behaviors, and/or

objects have influenced your understanding of your
identity?

• What rituals, practices, traditions, behaviors, and/or

objects have influenced your understanding of your
relationship to others?

To explore these questions and others related to them, you will compose your first major writing
assignment—a personal essay. To write this personal essay, you will select a specific ritual, practice, or
behavior (what sociologists call “cultural phenomenon”) that you participate in and investigate it. Doing
so will help you discover what this action says about you, your personal experiences, and the ways
those personal experiences connect to the experiences of others.

The personal essay is both an easy and a difficult form of writing. It is easy because, we are writing
about what we know: ourselves. It is difficult because we must communicate the significance of our
experience to our audience, making a connection between our own experiences and those of our
readers. We must confront the hard truth that an event is not significant just because “it happened to
me.” The event must offer some take-away value to a specific audience, and the writer who writes
about an event must be able to answer the question “so what?” and “why should someone care?” The
answer to these questions become the primary insight offered by the personal essay and the ultimate
point that you are trying to make. Personal essays are not just chronological narrations of events; they
communicate a practice’s, tradition’s, or behavior’s meaning and leave readers with a dominant
impression of what it might have been like to experience it themselves.

Process and Style: In your essay, you should select one ritual, practice, or behavior and reflect upon
this “phenomenon,” articulating why and how it has been significant for you. Consider how you have
been shaped as a person within your larger community by this activity?

Whatever your topic--whether it is a ritual, practice, or behavior--your essay should be informed by

close observation and provide a level of detail through example, anecdote, and explanation, which
enables a reader to relate to your understanding of the action and its significance. It should provide
significant insight into what has made/makes you who you are by including detailed descriptions of
places and events while explaining the significance of these events to the formation of your own
beliefs and behaviors.

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Your essay should be written with an audience in mind: it should be organized in such a way that a
reader can follow your thinking and reasoning from paragraph to paragraph and within each
paragraph. This organization should lead your reader to your primary insight or ultimate point in a
clear manner; in other words, your primary insight should help structure your paper.

Topics: For this project, avoid overused, generic, or common practices (i.e. drinking coffee, going to
the gym, walking the dog, watching sports, wearing make-up). Unless you have more than a causal
connection to a practice or can bring a unique insight on that practice to the reader, do not engage in
mundane topics, as they regularly do not promote innovative ideas on part of the writer, nor may they
engage your audiences interests. Instead, challenge yourself to explore a belief or practice that is
unique to you, or one that you have unique insight about.

Requirements
• The essay should be APA formatted and submitted as a formal document.
• The essay should be digitally formatted with your portfolio in mind.
• The essay must be between 1200-1500 words in length.
• Your essay must include 3 photographs, preferably one you yourself have taken. Appropriate
photographs are ones that you have taken, or that you have selected from a family or historic archive;
images pulled from the internet may not be suitable. Make sure that your reader understands why
these photos are included and why including them enriches your essay. Think of this essay as a
“photo essay.”

Due Dates
MWF
Peer Review Group 1 9/14
Peer Review Group 2 9/17
Peer Review Group 3 9/19
Polished Draft 9/24

TTh
Peer Review Group 1 9/13
Peer Review Group 2 9/18
Polished Draft 9/25

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Rubric for Project 1

Criteria Expectations

Assignment Requirements The essay is 1200 - 1500 words in length

General professional writing conventions are used

A cover page and page numbers are included

Rhetorical Situation An intended audience is explicitly or implicitly identified

Voice, tone, and diction appropriate for the situation

The essay’s purpose is clear

Genre Conventions Demonstrates awareness of genre conventions including but not

limited to first-person perspectives, narrative, reflection

Opening Grounds readers in the author’s personal experiences

Introduces the practice, routine, or behavior

Experience Tells a story displaying personal struggle

Explicates the practice, routine, or behavior

Balances "showing"/description and "telling"/exposition

People, places, and events are described succinctly

People, places, and events are described with concrete detail

Insight Insight is clearly stated

Personal belief/practice is related to larger cultural traditions

Insight challenges the author’s preconceptions/assumptions

Closing Brings essay to an effective close

Multimodality Includes at least three images (or other non-textual media)

Media is relevant and incorporated within essay

Quality of Writing Free of grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors

Organization has purpose and enhances the argument

Topic sentences and transitions used

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