End of the Year • Personal Statements

Advanced Placement English Composition

The Personal Statement on Skates

Goals & Objectives:

• to experience and experiment with the Writing Process
• to experience and experiment with a Writer’s Workshop
• to create TWO ROUGH DRAFT personal statements
• these are the low-pressure, plenty-of-time drafts
• these are the drafts where you can take risks because you won’t actually USE these, so you are free to swing for the fence
• (You might end up doing something ridiculous.  You might end up doing something brilliant.  I don’t care which, as long as you're not BORING, you take your pieces  through an authentic, thoughtful, rigorous writing process, and that you meet the deadlines and word counts.)
• to demonstrate skill and proficiency in writing through
• a properly narrowed, controlling idea
• supporting examples with singular, concrete detail
• an appropriate sense of audience and rhetorical purpose;
• minimal errors in grammar and punctuation;
• a clear prose style appropriate to the assignment

Specifics:

• Your personal statements together will be between 1250-1500 words TOTAL (2 essays with that many words total).  How you split them up is up to you:  750+500, 1000+300, 225+1026, etc.
• You absolutely, positively may NOT use “Personal Statement” as a title.  Ever.
• Your FINAL EXAM:  "Author's Chair" -- publicly share your favorite piece.  (Get over it.)
• MLA format:  get this right — it's not necessary, but It's good practice so I want to see the 2nd draft in good MLA form.

Deadlines:

• Personal Narrative 1, Draft 1 (PN1D1) due in class Thursday, May 30
• Personal Narrative 1, Draft 2 (PN1D2) due in class Friday, May 31
• Personal Narrative 2, Draft 1 (PN2D1) due in class Thursday, June 6
• Personal Narrative 2, Draft 2 (PN2D2) due in class Friday, June 7
• Workshop with Fletcher, June 10 & 11, requirements TBA
• Author's Chair, June 12 during regular class time; June 13 during Final's Block

TOPICS FOR THE PERSONAL STATEMENT

Choose one from two different categories

CHOICE A:  From the University of California

• Describe the world you come from — for example, your family, community or school — and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.
• Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

CHOICE B:  Some Prompts from the CommonApplication (www.commonapp.org)

• Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.
• Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?
• Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?
• Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?
• Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

CHOICE C:  University of Chicago, 

2012-2013

• ESSAY OPTION 1.  “A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.” — Oscar Wilde     Othello and Iago.  Dorothy and the Wicked Witch.  Autobots and Decepticons.  History and art are full of heroes and their enemies.  Tell us about the relationship between you and your arch-nemesis (either real or imagined).
• ESSAY OPTION 2.  Heisenberg claims that you cannot know both the position and momentum of an electron with total certainty.  Choose two other concepts that cannot be known simultaneously and discuss the implications.  (Do not consider yourself limited to the field of physics).
• ESSAY OPTION 3.  Susan Sontag, AB'51, wrote that "[s]ilence remains, inescapably, a form of speech."  Write about an issue or situation when you remained silent, and explain how silence may speak in ways that you did or did not intend.  
• ESSAY OPTION 4.  "...I [was] eager to escape backward again, to be off to invent a past for the present."  —The Rose Rabbi, by Daniel Stern
• Present:  pres-ent
• 1.  Something that is offered, presented, or given as a gift
• Let's stick with this definition.  Unusual presents, accidental presents, metaphorical presents, re-gifted presents, etc. — pick any present you have ever received and invent a past for it.
• ESSAY OPTION 5.  In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, pose a question of your own. If your prompt is original and thoughtful, then you should have little trouble writing a great essay. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun.
• ESSAY OPTION 6.  So where is Waldo, really?

And because these are so fun and challenging, I'm including even more:

2011-2012

• ESSAY OPTION 1.  “What does Play-Doh™ have to do with Plato?” — The 2011 University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt List:  Every May, the University of Chicago hosts the world’s largest scavenger hunt. As part of this year’s hunt, students raced to find the shortest path between two seemingly unrelated things by traveling through Wikipedia articles.  But Wikipedia is so passé. Without the help of everyone’s favorite collaborative internet encyclopedia, show us your own unique path from Play-Doh™ to Plato. 
• ESSAY OPTION 2.  Observation, Hypothesis, Experiment, Analysis, Conclusion; since the 17th century, the scientific method has been the generally accepted way to investigate, explore, and acquire new knowledge. The actual process of intellectual discovery, however, is rarely so simple or objective. The human mind often leaps from observation to conclusion with ease, rushes headlong into hypothesis-less experiments, or dwells on the analysis, refusing to conclude.  Tell us about your non-scientific method. (Diagrams, graphs, and/or visual aids allowed within your essay.)
• ESSAY OPTION 3.  Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote, “Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it.” Give us your guess.
• ESSAY OPTION 4.  While working at the Raytheon Company, Percy Spencer noticed that standing in front of a magnetron (used to generate microwave radio signals) caused a chocolate bar in his pocket to melt. He then placed a bowl of corn in front of the device, and soon it was popping all over the room. A couple of years later, Raytheon was selling the first commercial microwave oven.  Write about a time you found something you weren’t looking for.
• ESSAY OPTION 5.  In the spirit of adventurous inquiry, pose a question of your own. If your prompt is original and thoughtful, then you should have little trouble writing a great essay. Draw on your best qualities as a writer, thinker, visionary, social critic, sage, citizen of the world, or future citizen of the University of Chicago; take a little risk, and have fun.
• ESSAY OPTION 6.  Don’t write about reverse psychology