Tutorial Session
Date: August 27, 2001
| Question or Document Submitted
-- (Name) Chelle (Assignment) college essay about someone who has influenced my life, also showing the reader who i am (Title) my mentor, lois (Assigned Length) 400-500 words (Question) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -clutter or too detailed description -organization -thesis--is there one--do i need one? -creativity and painting a picture of who i am -overall impression--any personal suggestions? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Writing Issue) Word Usage (Document) Gazing out the window, raindrops splatter on the windowpanes after they’ve fallen down the striped hunter and eggshell awnings. Cinnamon perfumes the air and I exhale as I glance toward the matte black and white photographs that Lois, a local photographer, inspired me to take. Lois had once said that emotion is best captured and then released through a camera’s lens—similar to the heart’s capture of feelings and it’s fight to let go of them later. Ella Fitzgerald sings in the background and it seems as though my emotions have all left me and entered the subjects I had been photographed—people, nature, inanimate objects All seeming to radiate auras of simplicity, complexity, euphoria, despair—and everything in between. I pick up the pictures of Sarah a girl aged ten, after her parents separated. The sadness and distance in her eyes takes me back to the day I overheard my father tell my mother that he was in love wit! h a woman: a woman who was not my mother. I pick up another picture. This time it is of one of my girlfriends, Krystal, who, like myself, became the victim of a sexual assault. Her face screams out at you as if to ask why this had happened to her and what had she done to merit that happening—Did God not love her? Why did she feel so bad for “him”? Time will heal all wounds, and she will be made stronger because of this…melancholy subdues as I reach for the next picture in the stack. I sigh as I look at the picture of my youth group at a youth gathering in New Orleans. One man gave His son to die for all thirty-seven thousand of the youth in attendance with me. How awesome! The room seems to brighten up. I pick up the rest of my photographs to put them away. There is one black sheep in the bunch—a single color photograph. My mother and father surround me as I prepared for my prom. The grins on our faces were priceless. Love is such ! a precious thing. I can see this by the rekindled emotion tha! t my parents have as they hold onto each other, and myself, as I prepared to leave that evening—and even now as I prepare to spread my wings and leave them once again. The feelings of my life, flying right past me, seem to escape my mind and soul and become captured through my camera’s lens and transposed onto the filmpaper my photographs now reside on. Lois was right. For the moments my camera and photographs are in my hands, I am content and subdued—just as the clouds outside my window appear once the rain stops and is no longer hitting my window panes. (agree) yes
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Tutor's Response
-- Although your questions are a bit vague, your intuition is pointing you in the right directions to help improve your essay. First off, is your style too cluttered or flowery? Sometimes. Overall, you have managed to use an abundance of descriptive imagery while maintaining a tone of sincerity. However, the sentence that delivered the most heartfelt emotion in this composition was also the shortest: "Lois was right." It's direct. It's revealing. It's well timed. Don't fall into the trap of believing longer is better. You've constructed an essay that flows very well from each mental scenario and memory. This is a creative way of letting the audience glimpse into your life. The question of thesis is another good question to broach. It is unclear to me, the reader, if you've actually answered the question for your assignment. Is the most influential person/thing in your life your camera? Or is it Lois, the photographer who inspired you to take the photographs? It may even be confused that the photographs themselves are the answer to the question. Try to make your point more directly. Good writing is accomplished when
the author is willing to be honest with his/her audience. A little
(and sometimes a lot) of the writer's soul is bared to the reader.
You have demonstrated an amazing willingness to communicate true emotions
in your writing. Often that is the hardest step to take. I
applaud your ability to take risks and your genuineness.
Ann C. Jan
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