Category: Personal Experience Essay

Sehun Bolaji

Personal Essay

During my 11th grade year in highschool, my English teacher was trying to prepare us for the English regents. So she would have us all work on our vocabulary and sentence structure in class and have us do various amounts of essays to ensure our success before the exam. I was pretty confident in myself due to the fact that I always had a 90 or above in all of my English tests during that time. She said to me the reason I had such a good grade on the essays is because she could hear my “voice” in my writing and that I use a lot of vocabulary words. But the day before the English exam however, she told the class that for the argumentative essay that we shouldn’t defend the side that we agree with the most, but defend the side that has the most backup information. This was not something I thought of before and it did sound like the logical thing to do so for the English exam I had started to do so, but because of this I had gotten a low grade on the ELA Regents. I didn’t fail the regents but I thought that the grade I got wasn’t good enough for me. So I was scheduled to take it the year after. During the gap in between I didn’t really study, all I did was do what I usually do, go to school and go home and watch anime and play video games and occasionally go out with friends. Then, when it was time for me to take the test again I came in with confidence, I was determined the write the way I see fit, which was basically the way people in the shows I watch speak because when I do that I use words I wouldn’t think of using before. Additionally it is more fun to me that way. Furthermore, I defended the side of the argumentative essay I agreed with, not the one with the most evidence. When the test grades came back I had gotten a 92 on the regents which made me feel better about myself, made me more confident in my writing abilities.

 

Student: Yasminah Carmela Jn Baptiste Raymond            

Professor: Ms. Jewell                                                                                                                                                  Course   : English 1101                                                           

Date      : 09/10/2019          

 

  Direction: Write an essay about your personal experience.  

 

           My name is Yasminah. I’m from Haiti. In my country they speak French and Creole. Therefore, when I first started high school in the United States in New York City, English was the hardest subject for me. The reason was because I wasn’t an Anglo. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what to do to speak this language fluently. As a result of when I introduced myself in my ESL class I used English that come from outside. In contrary, I remained speechless in order courses. I remember that while I was in the street I heard a man said ‘’you buy gun’’ and a lady said’’in the store’’. So, when I presented myself in the ESL class I made a sentence with those words. I said louder in my presentation you buy gun in the store. As consequence, everybody laughed at me and I felt ashamed. Finally, when the class was over the teacher showed me in my own language the meaning of my sentence on google translate. Thus, this made me more desperate than before, In addition, during the lunch time some of my classmates bothered me for my wrongdoing. I felt embarrassed. Instead focusing on shame I turned it into guilt. One day, I asked my older brother what to do to speak structured English. He told me studying grammar, vocabulary, and reading newspaper will help me. Then I followed his advice. Consequently, after one month I made progress in English. When talked in class everbody understood me. Tp sum up, I faced a lot of adversity to understand English. 

Personal experience essay 

 

I’ve had many personal experiences with reading and writing throughout my life but the one that stood out to me wasn’t that long ago. I started taking English as a language when I was in 4th grade and never really thought anything of it other than the fact that it was another language that I was required to take and had to study for. We used to read a lot of books that were so interesting so I liked English class and I had something to look forward to. Even though I wasn’t good at English when I was young I felt like reading a lot of books at a younger age in my English class helped improve it. English not being my first language reading and writing always felt like so much work and they were a challenge to me. An experience that stands out to me wasn’t until my junior year of high school when I started taking AP English and my English teacher prepared us for the AP test every class. She would give us a new SAT word every morning and made us read so many poems and write essays almost every class. Every time she gave us a poem to read or analyze I never understood the poem the first time around and her response was always the same “read it over and over again until you get it”.

One class she gave us this rather difficult poem to read and I understood it the first time around, figured out the tone and analyzed it before class was over. I was so happy and realized how wonderful reading and writing is and how you can express yourself or what the writer is trying to tell their audience through it. I kept thinking why did I have trouble with the English language for all these years when it’s simpler than I thought.

 

Have you ever read Animal Farm?

I believe if the first time you’ve done it was at a point in your life whereby you understand human nature, you would become forever changed by the contents of that book. I read this book in one day the first time I read it and to this day, I’m not sure if I ate that day. I was so consumed by the storyline and the character development that understanding this book became my most important task. I needed to isolate each character in my head and understand why they did what they did as the story made me not only question my morality but definitely made me question society and what leads to what is normal and accepted. The pigs were responsible for the creation of a power dynamic and the reduction of the original ideologies of the animals after using the masses for their personal intent. Animal Farm gives the view of the animals on a farm and in the beginning highlights the hard work and terrible living conditions they undergo while the farmer is “lazing around”. The animals bond together and execute an uprising, thereby removing the apparent user. The changes in the power dynamics and the idea of who is deserving of power comes to the forefront and the way the book illustrates the new oppression resounded deeply in my spirit. I was twelve and my worldview of my country’s class structures and communities that I existed in changed.

Tiffany Muse                                                                                                          Eng 1101

Standing in front of a courtroom with an immense amount of eyes watching my every move and ears listening to any possible mistakes that may be made. Standing in front of a judge, who was actually just a practicing attorney, the power they still possessed over me and the validation they owned I needed and wanted in return. This was my thought process during my mock trial competition my first year. During practice I needed to write my own direct and cross examination for the case we were competing as well as an opening. Needing to be aware of the proper legal terminology to use to sound like I knew what I was talking about required me to learn. Words and phrases that were being used that I was not aware of which made me feel unfit and in over my head to be able to succeed in this competition and overall field. I would go on quiz-let and review certain terms that were frequently used such as the different types of objections and certain wording that was more proper to use when determining what was needed in the case whether it was civil or criminal. I would go over the terms constantly until I remembered what they meant and how they are supposed to be used. During practice I would have to focus on many different aspects of the language I used having to emphasis every point. Not being aware of these terms put me at a disadvantage since it was my first year competing and everyone else on the team had experience from the previous year. This discouraged me at first because of my struggle to learn these phrases for the first time when it was just a refresher for everyone else. 

 

A personal experience that I had with reading and writing would have to be regarding my little 9 year old sister. In the growing process of my sister is has been fairly hard for her to comprehend certain aspects of school and that’s where I came in, My sister would have trouble reading and understanding the topics in school and also her homework so I would sit with her and go through it one by one making sure she could fully understand what I was saying and shortly after she was doing it on her own. I soon found out that it was the way I was teaching her and she found it more interesting and comfortable because after all I am her brother. After a few weeks of us going over how to pronounce certain words and also how to complete sentences, she had it down and was finishing everything on her own. I had also made an appearance in her school to have a talk with one of her teachers to find out that my sister was doing perfectly fine but the teacher was the one doing her job as if it didn’t matter to her. She(the teacher) had been giving out worksheets and expecting the students to complete it at home without any knowledge of what they were expected to complete. The teacher was eventually fired and replaced and I would make sure that my sister understood by asking her questions based on what she as reading, the problem never occurred again.

“Fight it… Focus… Wait, what?… I can’t do this…”, I told myself as I sat at my desk with my face against the table struggling to keep my eyes open. My boredom had taken control over me. I could not withstand the immense power of my boredom as I slipped into my subconscious… Zzzzzzzzzzz…

A few days later I had found myself in the same situation, fighting to stay in control, yet again… Zzzzzzzzzzz… This clash continued, recurring frequently and I soon realized this was not a battle, but a war, a war that I was losing, a war that could not be contained.

“I need to conquer this…”, I thought to myself. I needed answers. I started to explore my mind, going through all of my memories for something that could give me a clue. I had finally found something. There is a saying to “fight fire with fire”, I’ve always wondered what that had meant. How could I fight the furious fire with fire, if the fire was what I was fighting, how infuriating. Surely I needed water, so I had gone to get a glass a water, preparing myself for the war that was to come. As the war drew closer, I started to throw the water at the fire. The result: Well you already know what happened there.

Growing up as a young kid Sports is what I found my main passion is, which meant that for me schoolwork always came second  both in the class and at home.  Although I made this decision I had felt like I didn’t have any choice or I didn’t want to believe Did.  When I was in middle school I was diagnosed with dyslexia witch is a learning disability that for me impacts my ability to spell and read.

One personal experience with writing that I remember vividly was happening during six grade. The writing assignment was based on this book that we read (which I forgot the name of) and we were supposed to write an essay on how the author uses language to convey his ideas in the book. I remember finishing reading the book (being the last one to do so) and then I went on to the essay. As I started writing my essay I felt my words get repetitive and all my thoughts and evidence was unorganized. I got my grade for my first writing assignment of 6th grade… it was a 55%. After that happened the idea that I was not good at school was  embarrassing for me and not only was I bad I couldn’t even get a passing grade. This situation caused me too stop caring about my grades and the work I needed to put in, I felt that it just wasn’t worth trying anymore and so that’s what I did or I should say didn’t do… I didn’t try and continued to not try because it was the easiest way out.