Below is a sample student essay that earned very high marks. It is not a response to the EXACT prompt you are responding to for out of class essay #1, but it WILL give you a good idea of what quality of writing I am expecting.
David Rekow
Prof. Fraga
English 1A (19)
24 September
2008
The Special Place of My Childhood
I
love the smell of books; something about the musty pages and the sharp tangy
tickle of glue in my nose makes me feel like a kid again. As a child, I loved
to read. I learned to read at three; by five, I had decimated my collection of
“Little Golden Books” and was moving on to more challenging readings. In
kindergarten I was allowed to read the follow-along books aloud to the class,
holding the book up high so everyone could see the pictures. The Boxcar Children, The Hardy Boys,
Goosebumps – I filled my free time with descriptions of other places and
stories of the people who lived there. To balance my indulgence in the
imaginary, my parents bought me a set of children’s encyclopedias; these I
devoured as well, learning about how airplanes fly (lift occurs when air goes
faster over the top of the wing than the bottom) and what lives at the bottom
of the ocean (angler fish, tubeworms and little blind shrimp). It was through
reading that I discovered the world around me – the knowledge from the
encyclopedias told me how things worked, and the relationships between
characters in my fantasy novels told me why. Perhaps it’s not surprising, then,
that the place I most identify with from my childhood is the library.
Clare
Cooper Marcus, in her book chapter, “The Special Places of Childhood,”
describes the process of self-discovery that a child goes through:
“Children…create their own homes-away-from-home…that place of initial separation
and autonomy” (43). For me, that was
the library just down the street from my junior high. McKinley Library, in the
middle of the huge park that shares its name, was a place I thought of as home.
Every day the brick façade and wooden front door greeted me after school, and I
settled in a corner surrounded by books. The library represented a new level of
independence in two ways. First, I was allowed to walk there alone and simply
had to make sure to be there later at pickup time; it meant my parents trusted
me with my own safety. Second, it was the first time I could determine my own
schedule; instead of being picked up and going home to immediately do homework,
I was responsible for making sure my work was completed. The library was the stage on which my
life’s play progressed to the next act.
McKinley
Library was also where I began to change my social perspective, making a switch
from relying on my family’s judgment to my peers’. This was coupled with the
formation of a different kind of friend group – instead of people I just played
tag with, my friends became those whose opinions I regarded highly, and in whom
I felt comfortable confiding. This represented another shift in my life – the
changing nature of my friendships allowed me to discover the changes I was
going through, mentally and emotionally, and my friends became an anchor during
this time. Three of us in particular spent every afternoon together at the
library or in the park, doing homework or terrorizing wildlife (the squirrels still
haven’t recovered). So important were these friendships that I maintain close
contact with both friends today, though one has gone north to Seattle and the
other east to Boston; so much do I trust their judgment that I ask advice
before buying clothes by sending a picture from my phone. Those relationships,
which have significantly dictated the course of my life, evolved against the
ever-present backdrop of the library, as did my progress in becoming an adult
and human being.
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