Personal Experience Essay

Personal Experience Essay

Writing is not just an act of putting some texts on a piece of paper, especially when one has limited information with regards to the subject. Students are subjected to writing not only to develop their skills but also to aid them in communicating effectively. One essay type that shows the mastery and understanding of self-expression is a personal experience essay. The term personal augers on ownership or self-expression, and that is why it is essential to appreciate our experiences by penning them down.

Good Personal Goal Essay versus Great Personal Essays

Whether you are writing for a class assignment or a personal reason, the goal of writing personal essays remains to pass relevant information about oneself and his or her interaction with the surrounding environment. Grades are not the only means through which we can tell of good or great essays. Good is not enough, but great may mean that the personal goals essay we have written will be read beyond the classroom. It is, therefore, important to aim at writing great essays. What then is a variation of the two? First, we must take note of the fact that the personal essay is not based on scientific research. This makes it simple and straight to the point. A great essay is that which transfers the scene of the experience or the feeling to the mind of the reader when they read the article. A good personal essay, on the other hand, is entertaining and may not do as much as a great one does.

Writing about Conflicts

Life is full of surprises and events. It is difficult to claim that we have not encountered some form of conflict in our lives. When writing personal essays that are pegged on conflict, it is important to collect the memories of when such an incident occurred and then knit it to yield to a great article. Also, it is paramount to take note of the fact war exceeds physical confrontation as we think. There is an internal conflict that we can use to create a great essay. The whole notion is to link the outer battle and the inner one to come up with a great article.

How Vital is Our Memory in writing Personal Goal Essays

Given the fact that personal essay writing requires one to think through the past events and the present ones, our memory becomes so critical in providing the information that needs to go into the article. It does not matter the number of thoughts that we can generate to apply in the personal essay writing, however, what is imperative is the impact of the events that we are remembering. Ideally, we have a higher chance of coming up with a great article because our ability to remember presents us with two perspectives that we can merge. The past angle and the present viewpoint become critical when deciding on the organization we are adopting for the personal goal essay.

How We Apply Memory to Write

Events that we interacted with in the past in addition to our experiences area very essential in terms of painting a picture of the story we want to tell. When writing an article in chronological order, we can apply our memory to list the events in the manner in which they happened and the time when they happened. An event that happened a day ago may still be fresh in the writer’s mind, therefore, making it easy to write as compared to the one that happened several years ago.

Some Useful Ideas About Coming Up With Topics

The importance of topics in writing an assignment cannot be overlooked. It is not easy to even begin writing if you don’t have a topic. In other words, all tremendous personal essays must have a topic. The difficult part for most of the students is to find a topic. While this may not be a challenge for some, the ideal way to think about the topic for your personal essay writing is to list all the events one can remember. Look no further than the people around you and think about how they have probably impacted your life. This will make topic determination easy.

Among the areas that we can focus on to generate an excellent topic for the personal goal essay include:

  • The relationships and the memories attached to them whether with our friends or close family members
  • People who inspire us and when we got an opportunity to meet them finally.
  • What is that specific concert or occasion that steered your life to another direction
  • A routinized action that means something special in our lives could also be a great source of a subject for a personal essay writing.

How Do We Tell that We Have a Great Topic that Fits?

Establishing the topic to use is not enough because a writer must go an extra mile and sort among the topics selected only the best and appropriate ones. To do so requires asking oneself the following questions:

  1. What experiences are worth keeping in my memory?
  2. Did the experience mean something in my life?
  3. Given that time has passed, do I still feel the same way?
  4. What is the new thing that or lesson I learned from the experience and even the present ones?
  5. Is my life still the same even after the experience?

Arranging the Personal Experience Essay

It is important that we organize the content of the papers that we write into some readable format or eye-catching pattern. There are several patterns that a writer can use to present his or her work in the best way possible. Consider one of the following designs or a mixture of more than one to organize your article.

Organizing in a Chronological Manner

This type of organization means that personal goals essay is arranged with events in the order in which they happened. This could begin with the past to the present. More importantly, chronological arrangement other than being sequential also has the entire vital events factored in. We build our article up to its climax based on the order of the events. Here, you ask yourself what led to what and how?

Elements of a Great Chronological Technique

  • The pattern organizes the story in a manner that respects order and time for example, what happened when becomes the key question
  • Create suspense and climax on the basis of the orders whereby the build-up of the event to the climax
  • Do not ignore the substance of meaning in the story and present the writer with a golden opportunity to tell what the event meant to him or her.

Prospects Upset the Technique

Another right way to organize a personal essay is by writing down all the expectations of a particular event, including how it happened or not happened. Ideally, expectations unfulfilled gives a writer a great way to arrange his or her work because, through it, the writer can get to contrast various aspects of an event that were not achieved. If the event was characterized by fun, disappointments, or some comical moments, the style of organizing would be effective because it will bring an element of suspense and a resolution to the personal goal essay.

Elements of Expectations Unfulfilled:

  • The style has an introduction that des descriptively outlines the expectations that were never met during an event. In other words, the writer vividly tells of his or her experience that never happened as he or she thought of it.
  • The style has an element of foreshadowing an issue. This could be in the form of a warning which eventually culminates into some unexpected outcome.
  • It has an element of truthful elaboration of the stories told just as they happened. No uncalled-for surprises or exaggerations.
  • The style is descriptive on the sense that it gives the reader information with regards to the contrasting reality and the expectations
  • A thought about the ordeal or experience is also another characteristic of expectations unfulfilled. We can employ our reactions to the twists and turns of events ironically to effectively bring out the style.
  • The summary part of the technique ends with a while shifting of events whereby irony is used to describe the event. Conclude with irony.

Arranging by Frame Strategy

We are familiar with this sort of organization given its regular use in films and movies we watch almost all the time. Think about a movie that you recently watched and how it was organized. If you ever watched UP, then you have it because it is one of the best examples where the frame strategy has been used.

Frames are known to apply flashbacks to give the audience a sneak preview of the past or the future events, and this sort of arrangement can be exciting mainly because it raises the expectations of the reader other than bringing about suspense to the story.

As compared to other patterns of the arrangement, frame strategy is most effective when we are substantiating the meaning of the narration we are giving to the readers. It is, however, imperative that the writer uses strategy carefully by ensuring that he or she does not randomly pick flashback references. It is in this case essential to be meticulous and particular in terms of the item we put into the article.

Arranging Using Internal and External Conflicts

The pattern takes into account the prevailing circumstances and the mental rift that ta writer is going through. The idea is to weight what we are feeling internally against the surrounding environment to inform the writing of personal essays. It is important to note that when we connect the internal situation and the external events, a great way of organization emerges. We cannot assume that there can never be the variation in terms of what is inside our mind and what is happening outside of it.

Think about an event such as a birthday celebration where you could be cutting the cake, but deep inside your mind, you are not happy with the fact that you are growing older. Thus could be because you have not yet achieved some of the things you wanted to at a certain age.

How a Student Can Organize a Personal Goal Essay

Academic institutions have different methods that they teach their students to apply when writing personal essays. Having learned some of the techniques used, a student may decide to make his or her work unique by adopting more than one organization style. How about two or three styles blended in the organization? This will not only show how good the student has mastered the techniques but will also give him or her a broader perspective to work on the personal experience essay. Probably we can try out frame and conflict and resolution arrangement as suggested below:

  1. In the starter paragraph, we can introduce the frame technique for example arrival at the mall by Brandt which maybe we are familiar with
  2. The internal conflict whereby Brand is pondering whether to commit an offense or not can be used as the first discussion of a conflict resolution
  3. Getting caught when trying to steal as it happened to Brandt is used as the second conflict resolution discussion
  4. Trying to wonder how the response of the parents will be in regards to stealing and being arrested as Brandt had to present two scenarios that are both interior and exterior. This can be the third discussion of the conflict resolution
  5. Walking back home with lots of disappointment and unexpected turn of events characterized Brandt’s experience. This can make a conclusion given that he walked in at the mall only to step out of it feeling different. This is the closing border of personal essay writing.

Conclusion

Personal Essay writing takes various formats, but what is essential is the ability to piece together essential experiences to tell a story. As evident with great stories, the ability to remember what happened in the past, and what is happening now is an added advantage for good personal essay writing.