I have become best friends with a stationary saw - I feel great working on my tiny house.

Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

BIG / TINY HOUSE

I have become close personal friends with a stationary saw. I am an expert in the art of applying construction adhesive. My weekends have been consumed by tape measures, two by fours, and drill bits. I am building a tiny house, a 128 square foot home on a trailer. So far, the house is only a frame, but I have already made many proud accomplishments. The project has challenged me and helped to expand my horizons. It reflects myself and my values, and it relates to the future life I want to live.

The secluded yard that acts as my building site is enclosed by trees exploding with bright red apples, their branches barely revealing the snow-capped Rockies in the distance. The crisp air has a lingering scent of sawdust, and the occasional owl can be heard just after sunset. Within this picturesque setting, I am able to build to my heart's content. My building materials consist of my dad's dusty power tools, a few stacks of lumber and windows, and my sixteen foot long trailer. Here, I have learned construction jargon such as "header", "joist", and "sinkers." I have hauled countless pieces of lumber with inexperienced muscles. I have used some particularly frightening power tools. It is utter heaven.

Why on earth would I build a house in my backyard? My parents skeptically asked me the same question several months ago. Last year, I spent hours pouring over tiny house video tours, blogs, and floor plans. Around the same time, I was searching for an idea for my Senior Culminating Project, a requirement of my high school. I made an ambitious decision- to build a tiny house. I knew I had all the resources on the internet at my fingertips. I had the time, the space, and a summer job to help pay for the materials. I eagerly began my plan, oblivious to what lay ahead of me.

What originally started as a challenging project has taken on a much larger meaning. While knowing how to use a nail gun is certainly useful in modern society, the process of building a tiny house has already taught me infinitely more. I have budgeted my own precious funds, communicated with potential donors, and persevered through mistaken measurements and splintered thumbs. Tiny houses also embody all of my interests. The simplicity and mindfulness involved in tiny house living is perfect for my environmentalist philosophies. The design elements of my house correspond to my fondness for art. The architectural principles of weight distribution, structure, and precision in carpentry all involve my interest in mathematics and engineering.

My tiny house has been a series of small accomplishments. I have reaffirmed my interests, and I have opened doors to new ones. I have challenged myself and learned unique skills. Building my tiny house, surrounded by apple trees and breathing in sawdust-scented air, is an experience that I am sincerely proud of.

Lucy, while the title that you chose for your essay is interesting, it is not correct when you consider the the essay prompt. Your title describes a piece of construction equipment while the prompt is asking about a place or environment. I will grant you the content of the essay since it pertains to both an environment and place which in this case, is the small house that you are building. I would suggest though, that you limit the description of the house and talking about poring over Youtube videos because that is not really part of the answer to the prompt. Instead, I believe that you would do better to give a more in-depth description of how you feel while you are working on the house.

We need to know why finishing this project is important to you. Most specially since women are not really known for being interested in brick and mortar construction, which is what you are doing. You already explained a little about its important to you in the following passage


, you just need to build upon that sentiment.

By the way, you are supposed to pick only one place to discuss in the essay so this passage in particular, ,


has to be deleted. It is either you talk about the house you are building of the barn of your dad where you are working. Currently, this is an under developed paragraph which has no place in the end of your essay. What you need to do is talk about the importance of the house you are building and why you feel perfectly content working on it. That is the place where you feel perfectly content and it is also the place most meaningful to you.

Hi! I like your topic! However, the first thing I noticed is the repetition of "tiny house." I think you should try to replace some occurrences of this word with "this project" or some similar synonym. Also, I noticed your essay is a bit jumbled. You start with describing the house, then explaining why you chose to build a house, then (kind of) explaining your environment with bits of insight tossed in here and there. I believe you should move your description of the barn you worked in to the start of the essay and expand on the details of the barn especially since that's what the prompt asks for. Make sure we can picture where you're working. (For the last few months, I've been living in a cluttered old barn...) Then move on to explain the house you're building with detail (what color? what architectural style? etc?) Instead of saying "Tiny houses also fit all of my interests," say something like "this tiny house represents the accumulation of everything I've learned in high school." (see blue)

"Why on earth would I build a house in my backyard? My parents skeptically asked me the same question several months ago.Around the same time, I was thinking about what I might work on for my Senior Culminating Project, a requirement of my high school. Why not build a tiny house? Building a tiny house would utilize all I learned in highschool. I had all the resources on the internet at my fingertips. I had the time, the space, and a summer job at NOAA to help pay for the materials. I had spent hours pouring over tiny house YouTube tours, blogs, and floor plans. So I began building a tiny house, oblivious to what lay ahead of me."

Cut out the rhetorical question and irrelevant response. The part in green you should rewrite as something more positive versus oblivious. Or maybe like "oblivious to the challenges that lay in store."

Hopefully this gets you started. Overall, you need to make sure everything in your essay is in chronological order and is organized. Also, try to write in present tense if you can help it. Writing in future tense is strange, it's even stranger when you mix in past tense as well. Last thing, make sure you write about the place or environment and what it means to you to work in an old barn, don't emphasize the tiny house over the environment. Write how the environment allowed you to build the tiny house.

P.S. You never quite expanded on why a stationary saw became your best friend...was it your primary tool? was it passed onto you? etc.

Lucy, you can do more with the content of your essay to ensure that it answers the prompt in a clear manner. Be more specific about the challenges and obstacles that were in your path as you began this project. Illustrate how clueless you were at the start and how you had to learn how to use a hammer and a saw. Talk about how the experience served to be a learning process for you that resulted in one of the greatest accomplishments of your life. Being a woman who built a house, regardless of the degree of completion of the project, shows that you are a woman of substance. A woman who knows how to do more than is expected of her gender. So play that up as a part of your accomplishment as well. I believe that your essay stands out merely because of the topic you chose to write about as an accomplishment. We just have to make sure that your talents and accomplishments in this instance are highlighted and made the center of the essay instead of the house :-)