Essay About My Personal Life Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

Philosophy is defined as a pursuit of wisdom or a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means philosophy, n.d. We were not the perfect family by any means but i’d like to think i had a good balance, a hard rock father and a nurturing mother. Religion was instilled in me at an early age to form a basic foundation to build upon. Having the responsibility for another life put me on a entirely different wave length. The idea of having to mold another human life was an awesome responsibility, and i did not have a guide book.

If someone asked me to use two words to describe the path i have lead in my life till now, i would have to say it has been one of hardship and perseverance. I have never been naïve i realize that growing up in this day and age is difficult for anyone. Rather, i welcome it i strived to be better than i was, to understand those around me and myself. I wasn’t born in canada rather, my parents emigrated here from punjab, india when i was still a child. If someone were to step in my shoes they would merely have a glimpse of the culture shock i experienced when i first came here.

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In india i felt at home on our narrow streets roaming on bicycles and using slingshots on unsuspecting friends. Here in the wide open spaces of british columbian society, i felt lost and alienated quite quickly. The city itself was undoubtedly beautiful to my eyes, but my heart found it difficult accepting my new surroundings. My family were having financial problems as they just moved to a new country and were still settling in. When i began high school there i was referred to as the dumpster kid by my classmates and often bullied and picked on. Although this made me feel even more alone, my close relationship with my father helped greatly in expanding my view of the world and myself.

Working as a civil engineer, i still cherish those times my father spent with me teaching me how to construct 3d models and blueprints of building. It was there i believe that my mind was first opened to the possibilities of designing and perceptual thinking. Although i never found myself begrudging my classmates for their attitude towards me, my newfound understanding of the world around me helped me to understand their motivations. My differing outlook and accent made me an easy target for them since they did not wish to know or understand me.

I began to emulate their accent, their behaviour, their attire, until their attitudes towards me slowly changed. Their gradual acceptance of me not only allowed me to be a teenager, but also allowed them to come to me for guidance and advice. Not only was i a confidant, but my proficiency in my studies allowed me to tutor and help them as well. Term papers, thesis, dissertation, case study, assignments on this essay topic. i remember well the self doubts of my early writing career, when i felt completely unsure that i could ever write anything that was worthy of notice or publication. One particular evening a few decades back, firm in my memory even now, i turned toward my wife, renita, and moaned, oh, i’m just so average. Who wants to hear my story? my wife closed the book she had been reading and asked, what do you mean? i whined some more, about an author who had just landed a big book deal.

Ethnic memoirs were all the rage at that point in time and this writer had been raised by parents who once lived in japanese internment camps. Then i complained a bit about another writer: her father had been a diplomat, so she grew up all over the world, and at one point even survived a dangerous escape during a foreign coup d’etat. My life is just about identical to every other catholic white kid raised in the 1960s. At this point, renita, bless her generous heart, nodded, smiled and said, well, then you should write about that. I was undervaluing my own singular nature and experience: each person, each life, is distinctive, even if you didn’t grow up in a family of acrobats or spend 10 years sleeping alongside lions on the african veld.

It’s not what happens to us in our lives that makes us into writers it’s what we make out of what happens to us. the concept of persona is crucially important for writers of creative nonfiction to understand. Although the personal essay is a form of nonfiction, and thus the self you bring to your essay should be an honest representation of who you are, we are in fact made of many selves: our happy self, our sad self, our indignant self, our skeptical self, our optimistic self, our worried self, our demanding self, our rascally self and on and on and on. But in truth, if we attempt to bring all of these selves to every essay that we write, we run the risk of seeming so uncertain, so indecisive, that we merely confuse the reader. Consistent and engaging personality on the page is often a case of choosing which self is speaking in a particular piece and dialing up the energy on that emotion or point of view. Henry david thoreau likely had days when walden pond did not fill him with wonder and inspiration, but he knew enough to not share those tedious moments.

Or, to put it another way: dithering is best left to first drafts, and then carefully edited away. The goal is not to deceive the reader, to pretend to be someone that you are not, but rather to partially isolate a part of who you are, the you that you are today, as you meditate on a particular subject and sit down to write. The slogan of the literary journal creative nonfiction is, you just can’t make this stuff up. The second meaning reminds the writer that in nonfiction, you are not just making stuff up. But you can highlight a particular trait, if it is in fact true to your nature, and shine a bright light upon it for a few pages, letting it take center stage. Look at robin hemley’s introduction to his essay no pleasure but meanness: i have a mean bone in my body.

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