• First Draft Due September 12th
• Second Draft Due September 19th
• Individual Conferences September 24th and 25th (No class meeting this day!)
• Final Draft Due September 26th

Keep in mind our readings and discussion of speech acts, the Who Am I story, “the personal is political,” and descriptive writing. (Take another look at Ramsdell, Anzaldua, and the speech acts handout if you need to.) Think of a specific institution, moment, identity, issue, circumstance, or community in your life that has impacted you. Tell us about it, giving your readers enough descriptive details to understand your story. Describe the issue or community and your connection to it, what that means for you as a person today, and how you feel it affects you moving forward in your life. What do you want your readers to take away from the story of your experiences? Remember that you can interpret this creatively, but that you should try to stick to a small, localized setting in order to maximize the impact your composing can have this semester. Whatever you decide to write about, follow your interests.

The only topics “banned” for this assignment are discussions of “group(s) of friends” or “family” without any clear definition of a specific community or broad issue. This does not mean you cannot talk about friends or family in any context; it just means you have to be more specific. We can talk this through if there’s a topic you really want to pursue.

We will be drafting this several times. You will receive feedback from me as well as from your peers, meaning that as you revise your writing should change as new ideas are incorporated. .

In your essay, make sure that you:

• clearly identify the community/issue/ etc. you’re choosing to discuss
• explain and describe the issue/community – remember, not all your readers will know what you’re talking about
• give reasons to support all your claims
• give details to paint a clear picture for your audience
• Use descriptive writing – remember that you are telling, essentially, a Who Am I story, and should show, not tell, your audience what’s going on
• keep in mind the genre in which you’re writing (think of Tan and Anzaldua) – be creative

Feel free to incorporate different languages, different media, and/or different forms in your essay. Just remember that everything you do is a rhetorical choice or act that impacts your audience. You should be able to explain those choices when we talk about them in class or conferences, and they should make sense to your readers in some way.

First draft requirements:

• At least three pages
• Can be messy (e.g. questions in the margins, missing paragraphs that you’ll fill in later, undeveloped ideas, etc.)
• Should try to focus on a unified main idea

Need help? Take a look at this sample first draft. Or maybe this one!

Second draft requirements:

• Include working title
• At least 5 pages
• Main idea should be clear
• Can still be messy, but less so than Draft #1
• Details and descriptions should be more apparent
• Organization should be clearer
• Incorporate suggestions from peer review

Third draft requirements:

• Include creative title
• Include heading (name, date, class, professor’s name, assignment title – Personal Narrative – in addition to creative title)
• Main idea or purpose is clear and developed throughout the essay
• Necessary background information is included
• Essay is organized
• Descriptions are detailed and paint a clear image for the audience
• Introduction works to grab audience’s attention
• Conclusion closes out story and helps audience understand the importance or purpose of the essay
• Questions and notes removed from margins
• Sentences are clear (read through draft out loud before submitting to help with this)