Simone
English 9
Mr. H. Salsich
September 20
Unable To Let Go:
An Essay About a Song and a Movie That Decribe Going Back To School
TS In the summer you feel like the barbeques, the bonfires, and the fireworks will never end, but when August rolls around you get that nervous feeling itching up in your stomach because you know that summer is coming to a close. CM Going back to school in the fall is like waking up from a very long sleep. CM You just want five more minutes of summer but you know that you must get up and face the upcoming day. CS Summer feels endless and fall feels so out of reach, but summer slips through your fingers like the grains of sand at the beach, and before you know it, leaves are crunching under your feet.
TS If I had to choose a song to describe the bittersweet feeling of coming back to school in the fall, I would have to select the song "Half of my Heart" by John Mayer. SD John Mayer's song is about only being committed to something with half of your heart and not wanting to go through with it. CM In the song, he says that, "Half of my heart's got a grip on the situation, but half of my heart takes time." CM These lyrics could be interpreted many different ways, but I think that he is saying that part of him understands things but the other side of him takes time to grasp the subject. SD To me, this relates to going back to school after the summer because not all of your heart is in it. CM Part of you might want to go back because you want to see your friends or you are just bored with summer, but the other part of you wants summer to be ever present. CM One side of you knows that you should put your whole heart into everything you do, but then the other side just can't. CS Half of my heart is in going back to school, getting back into a routine, diving back into sports, but half of my heart just isn't. (base clause with two participles)
TS The movie "Going the Distance" directed by Nanette Burnstein, is about a couple who is forced to seperate, just like I am forced to go to school, but I don't want to. SD Burnstein's movie is basically about being forced to do something that you, at the time, really don't want to go through with, but know that in the long run it will get better. CM Erin (played by Drew Barrymore) and Garrett (played by Justin Long) desperately don't want to separate, but they know that it is necessary for Erin's job, and that the pain will only get better with time. CM If Erin and Garrett could do it any other way, they would, but they know they can't. SD I think that this movie hugely relates to going back to school after the summer because no one truly wants to have to go through yet another year of school, but everyone knows that it will pay off in the future. CM No one wants to give up summer, no one wants to wake up early every morning, no one wants to surrender to another year of school (parallelism). CM The discomfort of getting back into the habit of doing homework, getting up early, and going to practice everyday will eventually fade, and in time it will be like we never even had a vacation. CS Returning to school is like being separated from the one you love; you don't always want to do it but sometimes it is a necessity.
TS Fall is a bittersweet time. CM It brings cool days with brisk air, it brings school and work, and it brings the start of a very long year. CM This is why I think that the song "Half of my Heart" and the movie "Going the Distance" fit the season of fall perfectly. CS I don't want to go back to school just like Erin and Garret don't want to part, but at the same time half of my heart wants to go back to school but the other half just can't let go of summer.
Self Assessment:
1. Something I need to work on
One issue that I need to keep working on is my punctuation and deleting words that aren't necessary for the sentence.
2. One strong point:
One strong point that I see in my writing is my special effects. I think I did I nice job on parallelism and participles.
3. One possible weak point:
I think that my second body paragraph could be a weak point because it was very difficult for me to come up with a movie that fit my feelings about coming back to school in the fall.
4. The grade I would give myself:
I would give myself a B. The topic of this essay was a little difficult for me, but I think I did well on some of the key aspects of the essay.
In your topic sentence, you repeat the phrase "choose the/a song" twice. You might get rid of it in the second part of the sentence and say "I would have to choose 'Half of My Heart'" instead.
ReplyDeleteIn your second paragraph TS, you only talk about the movie and not how it relates to your life. You might want to generalize it more so the rest of the paragraph fits under it.
Your first paragraph has great support and evidence connecting the song you chose to the theme of returning to school.
Simone,
ReplyDeleteIn your second body paragraph, SD2 CM2, after you say "[...] everyday will eventually fade," you put the word "and" twice.
In your first body paragraph, SD1, I would erase the comma before "and" because the sentence is not a compound sentence. Also, when you say "not wanting to really go through it," I would take out the word "really".
I really like your CS in your second paragraph because I think it ties the paragraph together, like an umbrella.