Dear Jacquelyn,

Thank you so much for letting me read your essay. You did a great job crafting it and
combining your message with you personal story. Stories like these are difficult to look back on
and transform ideas into words, but I felt as if I was right there in your story when reading it. I
think this is due to the incredible amount of vivid details and description you used throughout the
entire essay. In particular, the way that you describe sitting in the chair in the office and when
your mom came in with your jeans. These two sections have great detail and I could really paint
a picture of what was going on at those two moments in time. I do not think there are any points
in your essay that need to have more description. You used the perfect amount without going
overboard.
The argument you make is not obvious at all, and it compelling and somewhat surprising
even. After reading the first couple paragraphs, I was assuming the argument would be
something about dress codes and how they discriminate against women, but then I kept reading
and got to the scene about your mom and I began to envision the connection with that and your
true message. This makes your argument very intriguing because readers are not going to
correctly predict even after reading the first half of your essay.
One part that I would consider changing is in between your paragraph about your mom
coming to the school and the final paragraph. I would not delete anything from either of these
two paragraphs, but instead add something between them. Just a few sentences connecting your
mom’s arrival and interaction with the school’s principles and teacher to the idea of women
treating and defending each other would help the two paragraphs flow better. It does not have to
be a huge change like another paragraph. It can be a couple sentences in the beginning of the
final paragraph.
Overall, you did a fantastic job writing this essay and meeting all of the criteria. Although
the story part of your essay dominates the final paragraph about the message in terms of length, I
do not see this as a problem at all. The story section builds up tension and I would not change
anything to it. The use of dialogue is evident throughout multiple paragraphs and is successful
too. Specifically, when you state “They’re just too short,” I heard him saying over the
humiliation overwhelming my thoughts. “I think you look really cute, but the school policy
doesn’t allow shorts that come above the knees.” What separates this dialogue from other uses of
it is that you come back to it a few paragraphs later, allowing your story to flow well and
maintain readers’ attention. Thank you again for letting me read and review your narrative-based
essay. I hope my comments help.

Sincerely,
(Student)