"Pass me the ball!" I shouted as I sprinted across the gray concrete driveway.

Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there and why is it meaningful to you?
*this is not finished yet, I just want to know if I'm on the right track!

"Pass me the ball!" I shouted as I sprinted across the gray concrete driveway. The scorching, humid Georgian heat beamed onto my tanned skin as I shielded the sun's gleaming rays from my eyes. It was an intense game of basketball between me and my siblings. My stepsister and I challenged my brother and stepbrother. The first pair to make in five baskets would be the winner and the losing team had no choice but to buy Taco Bell for the four of us. Both teams of two were tied at four baskets. My stepsister had the ball and I was wide open, standing next to the towering ten foot basket. She launched the fluorescent orange ball at me. My brother and stepbrother both looked at me with widened eyes as I caught it, aware that they would be doomed to defeat. I effortlessly aimed the ball at the basket and casted it up in the air, watching it as it cascaded into the hoop swiftly. I leaped into the air with enthusiasm, mocking my brothers. We were all fatigued and hastened to the car to fill our vacant stomachs with our favorite meal-Taco Bell. It didn't matter who won; we all enjoyed spending quality time together as a family. It's not very often that my brother and I get to see my stepsiblings, so every moment counts. Visiting Georgia with my family to spend time with my stepmother's family gives me bliss because of the valuable moments that we all share together.

To me, contentment means being able to wind down and saying goodbye to any stresses or worries that I may have at the moment. It is being pleased with what I have and not wanting to ask for anything more to make me feel secure. From having to sit in our spacious minivan for a prolonged fourteen hour drive from New Jersey to Georgia, to simply playing a short, competitive game of basketball, spending time with my family is my place of contentment. Being with my family enables me to overlook the pressures of life and instead focus on having fun. I'm not much of a fan of sports, but playing basketball on the driveway with my siblings gives us a chance to bond with each other. While my siblings and I run around on the concrete, dribbling the ball back and forth to one another, our parents sit on the porch swing watching us laugh and joke around. Their eyes gleam as they watch us all getting along together and building a connection with each other. In that moment, I don't need to reflect about anything else besides taking delight in having a great time with the people who I can completely be myself around. When I am spending time with my family, I truly don't feel the necessity to ask or want anything more in that moment. The minutest things, such as playing a game of basketball with my siblings, are meaningful to me because I am able to make several memories and capture specific moments of my life where I am content.

The prompt doesn't really ask you what means the most to you, it is asking specifically for a place where you are perfectly content. You simply describes an experience that made you feel happy, which is good and all, but you're not really addressing the prompt. You need to describe a place that brings you happiness instead

So should I describe how the experience in my anecdote makes me happy instead?

I think the anecdote you give here is strong in mechanics and the way it was written. However, I do think it would be very beneficial for you to either

(1) Shorten the narrative portion quite a bit to be maybe a little less than half the word count, then continue to describe why this certain experience made you feel so content

OR
(2) Cut the narrative completely and describe why in general spending time with your family makes you feel content, and use quotes from your narrative to link back specific times and feelings you had/experienced when you were content.

In the end, the focus of this essay should be on both they place in general ("Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content.") AND what this place/environment means to you and why it means that to you ("What do you do or experience there and why is it meaningful").

Again, this is a solid start!

My narrative is 252 words and the max word count is 650 so it is less than half. I think I am going to keep the narrative because I am extremely short on time, but I will definitely use your suggestions of continuing on why this place made me feel content. Thank you so much!

Prashanti, you just need to mention that the place you feel most content is the basketball court. From there, you can use the rest of the information about how this place offers your family a place to bond and spend quality time together. Concentrate on the sense of family that you feel while playing on the court. Describe the areas on the court that are special to you and your family. What makes it special? It is not so much the activity as the place that you need to describe in relation to the sense of contentment. Perhaps there is a special spot where your family just sits and watches the other players. What goes on there. What kind of contentment does is bring to you or the group? These are just some questions that you can use as guides as you revise the essay. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. By the way, you can go over the word limit for your essay drafts. You will be able to cut it down to the required word count as we help you edit the paper. That means you can write everything that you want to say and we will help you compress the essay into the required word count :-)

Thank you so much Louisa! I felt like I lost the sense of direction in my essay and your suggestions really put me back on track. They were extremely helpful! I will get back to you after I am finished for your opinion on my second paragraph. I am almost done but not sure if some parts fit properly into the essay or not.

Prashanti, you have definitely fallen almost in line with the prompt. There is only a single sentence addition that I will be making at the start of the essay thatwe need to develop to help you finally meet the requirements. By the way, excellent way of merging 2 locations into one essay in such a way that it creates a vivid description of how you feel perfectly content during your time there. I think we can achieve this if we flip around 2 paragraphs.

Try the essay out this way, make this particular paragraph your introduction:


Then make this the second paragraph:


I flipped the paragraphs around in a word doc and I felt that the flow of the essay became smoother and the answer to the prompt became quite obvious. Try it out for yourself and see if this new format will work for you. Note the single grammar correction I made in the essay for you and apply it as well :-) The past tense of "cast" which means "to throw" (e.g. "to cast a fishing line", "to cast off in a boat", "to cast a ball into the air") is the same as its present and future tenses. So we had to drop the ed at the end in order to become grammatically correct :-)

Which sentence addition will you be making? And thank you so much for the advice! I'm glad you think it fits the prompt well because I was stressing out about whether or not it was relevant. I like the idea of switching the paragraphs, but would it be weird to have the anecdote as a second paragraph?

Having an anecdote as a second paragraph is not weird. I can however, understand why it reads that way to you. I also sensed it when I reviewed your essay but I did not want to comment on it as you may have preferred the essay in your format. My suggestion, now that you ask :-) is that you add a closing paragraph. A third paragraph that you can use to close the statement. Just a few sentences will do as a closer. Emphasize that the contentment you feel stems from the sense of family that the basketball court at your Georgia home extends to all of you :-) As for the additional sentence, I am not sure where you would want to place it, but here is my suggestion:

Sometimes it is not a single place, but a location in a place that makes a person feel the height of contentment. For me, the place I feel most content in is the basketball court at the back of my step-family's home in Georgia...

Do you think you can use a similar sentence in your essay to tie the two places together? You really needed a sentence like that to create the connection. You can use my sentence as a sample for your own version if you wish :-)

I'm still deciding whether or not I want to switch the paragraphs, but I think the additional sentence would fit into the third paragraph if I add it as a closing as you suggested. I think it could also fit into the beginning of my second paragraph as an intro.

Prashanti, I suggest that you write two versions of the essay that contain the sentence I am suggesting as an addition. By writing the essay in two ways with that sentence, you will be able to compare the two versions and decide which version seems to flow better with the sentence or which version in general you feel more comfortable using. Don't forget that I can't make that decision for you. I can only guide you in writing your essay, you have to decide how to make it work best for you :-) I am merely a guiding light and an impartial observer in this situation. The final decision as to how the essay should look and feel depends upon you :-) I'll be here to guide you until you feel that you have reached that state ;-)