An Analysis of My Feelings Towards My Analysis

I really enjoyed writing the rhetorical analysis paper. I never really read many of Obama’s speeches because I went on my mission before elections and so didn’t really pay much attention. I did listen to a few. I found the speech quite engaging! My favorite part was writing the paper with as much fun language as possible. I figured if Obama could use fancy words, so could I in the analysis.

Reflections on a Personal Narrative

I enjoyed writing the personal narrative. As with any time I’m given an open topic paper, the hardest part was figuring out what I would write about. I had many options, but some I felt were too personal, some I felt I could hardly remember enough to write about. I finally thought about one experience that I had as a child that I thought was quite funny. I decided I would start with that.

For the first time I sat down and just started writing. I’d never done that before. I had always been the more laborious, painstaking writer who edits each bit as he writes. This new way of doing things turned out wonderful! I was able to write four and a half pages in no time! All I needed to do then was go through, link ideas, edit some errors and I was good to go. First draft in less than an hour. That was unheard of in my history as a writer and it made the process so much easier.

The peer reviews were great! I loved having people read my narrative and being able to read and comment on theirs. I found the advice given extremely helpful in most cases. I enjoyed being able to see what other people had written about and how they had approached the same assignment.

I loved that the assignment allowed me to be casual and really use whatever voice I wanted. I didn’t have to be formal or persuasive. I didn’t have to feel forced or feel like my words were contrived. I enjoyed remembering times past and being able to share those memories with my peers. It was a great assignment and a great start to the semester.

I’m excited now for the rest of the papers that we will write. I feel like I’ve learned writing techniques that will help the next assignments be less laborious and more enjoyable. I’m excited to learn about rhetoric and to improve my writing abilities again and again.

Personal Narrative: Small Children At Large

When I was around eight years old, the thought of a burglary stole away my young sense of security.  I’m not sure what started the idea in my head, but the thought of someone taking all I owned, and myself as well, consumed me. I needed a plan to neutralize the threat.

My family lived in Pennsylvania at the time, and there were five of us: Mom, Dad, Matthew (the eldest), myself, and Joseph (our little brother). Matt and I shared a room on the top floor of the house. The top floor may seem a safe haven to the untrained mind, but the front door opened to reveal a staircase leading directly up to our room. Matt and I knew the burglar’s first move would be to go upstairs. We were targets.

Our first line of defense came as an epiphany to both of us. Burglars had a tough job. They needed a lot to drink to keep them going. Therefore, if we were to create a drink for them that would kill them, we would have the upper hand in any confrontation. We began mixing appalling  concoctions. Hot sauce, spit, vinegar, mud, snips, snails, puppy dog tails, and whatever else we  could find all combined together to create a noxious sludge that would surely fool any unsuspecting burglar. Our mother steered us away from chemicals usually, and we knew that sugar, spice and anything nice was out of the question unless calculated to mask the potency of the drink.

These brews were then taken to our room and placed in obvious locations. Any burglar who entered the room to steal us away or prematurely end our innocent lives would see the drinks, be overcome by his thirst, and indulge to his death. It was fool proof, or so we thought.

One night, Matt and I were up late talking together. I suddenly had the thought, “What if a burglar were to realize what the drinks were and get past them? What if they somehow resisted the urge?” Unlikely, yes. Impossible, no. We needed a better defense, and there was no time to waste. The brainstorming commenced. To escape an attack, we first needed to be aware of an attack. A burglar would attack while we were asleep. Not an ideal state of awareness. To alert ourselves to danger, we decided to create our own burglar alarm. Collecting every noisemaking item in our room, we constructed a mound of clutter against the door that would topple at the slightest provocation.

Once the door was rigged, we realized that our device was ingenious yet insufficient. A burglar would be grown-up. He would be able to move as fast as mom or dad would. The thought was unsettling. There wasn’t enough time for us to wake up and get out before he could get to us. There needed to be yet another layer of defense. We needed something that would wake us up before the burglar reached the door. If he were to slip outside the door, that would definitely be loud enough! But how to make him slip? Matt had the perfect answer. We gathered together some smooth, hard-backed books and carefully opened the door without setting off our precarious pile.

By placing the books all over the floor in front of our door we created quite a slippery surface, but it wasn’t enough. There needed to be something else...soap! That was my idea. Soap makes everything slippery! We darted downstairs without waking the parents and grabbed the dish soap from the kitchen sink. Squirting the soap all over the top of those books created a slippery surface that was formidable for even the most agile of burglars.

We felt certain that our door was secure. We would now last through the night for sure. But what about Joey? Our little brother’s room was across the hall from ours at the top of the stairs. If the burglar were to somehow notice our carefully prepared traps, couldn’t he simply sneak into Joey’s room and steal him away? That was unacceptable! We put our heads together again and realized that if the burglar never made it up the stairs in the first place, there was no way he’d get to either of our doors.

Our next idea was ingenious. A simple marble placed in the center of each stair. Easy, inconspicuous, and quite effective in the movies. We felt sure that any burglar who came in the home and began to ascend the stairs would fall prey to at least one of the many marbles, and that’s all it would take. Not only would he have quite the bruise forming, but we would be awake and ready to escape before he could even get up.

Feeling certain that we had foiled any future attempt to burglarize our home, we again retired to our room. Matt and I carefully rearranged the noise pile behind the door, and we were off to sleep.

CRASH! Our last line of defense was shattered before we knew what happened! It was over! Our two lives, so short and incomplete, were about to end! The covers were pulled over our heads as terror shot through our bodies! How could the burglar have breached so many of our carefully laid fortifications? He made it to the door without a single mishap! For all we knew, Joey could be dead and gone by now and we were simply the next event!

“Matt? Tanner? What on earth is going on!?” It was Mom and Dad. The only thing worse than burglars that late at night.

We were dragged out of bed to explain the whole situation. What is this pile of junk in front of the door? To make noise in case the burglars got to the door, Dad. What were the books doing on the floor? To make the burglar slip. Why on earth is there dish soap on these books? To make them slipperier, Mom. Why the marbles on the stairs? So that he couldn’t get up here to get to Joey, Dad. Where did you get all this from? We thought of it together. Don’t you know that these books are probably ruined? Oh, we hadn’t thought of that. Do you realize how dangerous this is? But the burglars would have come, Dad! What if your brother had to go down the stairs to the bathroom? I guess that would be pretty dangerous...

Mom and dad talked to us for a while that night. They explained that the Lord was there to take care of us. They did what they could each night to keep us safe by locking the doors and leaving some lights on. We didn’t need to worry about burglars because we would be protected by the house, by mom and dad, and, most importantly, by God. I hadn’t considered any of that throughout the night. My fear of a burglary had simply taken me from one idea to another. Their testimony that night of the Lord’s power to protect eliminated my fears.

Cleanup lasted a while. We had to wipe the dish soap off the books, clean up the marbles and clean up our room. But needless to say, there were no burglaries at the Christensen home that night.