Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.
Warrenville Paint and Hardware is described by many as a diamond in the rough, a Mom & Pop shop in the small town of Warren, New Jersey that rivals even the local Home Depot in customer service. But to me, it was my very last choice of institutions of employment. At the tender age of 14, a freshman in high school, more concerned with personal image than wages, I was reluctant to take a job as a cashier at the local hardware store. Inheriting the position from my older sister who was off to college, I had no...
I liked the general tone of your essay..
The only thing I think you should work on is making it more on you. It is a personal essay, discuss more on how you felt during those situations at the store. Add more detail on how your experience changed your perspective on things. Make your anecdote less of the focus of your essay, and your 'personal lesson" more of it.
good start though
do you mind if you can take a look at mine...?
Thanks, lanes! I felt that way myself, but I wasn't sure if it was the overall topic that just wasn't working for me or if I just needed to change the focus. I'll work on that.
My only worry is that the topic doesn't stand out enough, any thoughts?
Isha, i really like the flow of your essay and the topic that you wrote about. I agree with Elena, don't take out the examples that you gave but expand more on how these different situations helped you grow that way you will focus more on you "thesis" and get your point across better.
Thanks for helping me on my essay! :) and i hope my small suggestions helps!
Elena,
if it's not too much trouble, do you think you can look at my essay? I will look at yours as well and wirte any comments necessary.
I agree with lanes in that your essay should be a little more personalized. It is a great topic, and your unique job opens up a lot of opportunities for a great essay, but I think that you should talk a little bit less about the quality of the customer service of the store in general and talk a little bit more about what you yourself have done for the store/customers. Also, it isn't completely clear what impact it has had on you, so you may want to elaborate on that. Promising, though! :)
this is my revised essay-- do you think this one does a better job describing me as a person, as opposed to the original. any further suggestions?
"We sell satisfaction, not hardware." It is an epigram the boss repeats as I punch in to each and every shift at Warrenville Paint and Hardware. The store is described by many as a diamond in the rough, a Mom & Pop shop in the small town of Warren, New Jersey that rivals even the local Home Depot in customer service. But to me, it was my very last choice of institutions of employment. At the tender age of 14, a freshman in high school, more concerned with personal image than wages, I was reluctant to take a job as a cashier at the local hardware store. Inheriting the position from my older sister who was off to college, I had no hope of finding any other positions within a 2-mile radius at such a young age. And so I took the job with the intention of quitting at the earliest sign of an opening at the closest mall, where I could find a better match for a teenage girl in retail.
More than two years later, I still find myself standing behind the same stainless steel counter, ringing up the exact same handymen and regulars every Monday and Friday after school. It is a fact I regret I was once ashamed of. With every shift I worked and every paycheck I deposited, I learned to appreciate the workers, customers, and exchanging of goods around me.
Not long ago, a customer who frequents the store regularly brought with him a newspaper clipping of an editorial he had read recently. The author detailed a trek she had made on her bike across the state, stopping in unknown towns and searching for hidden treasures in local businesses and restaurants. Cited among those lines was none other than Warrenville Hardware. The author discussed the expert service provided in search of an eleven-cent screw that would save her beloved antique lamp at home from a dumpster, the congeniality of the young woman who rang those eleven cents up, and the elderly man in tape measure suspenders, bursting to share his knowledge on gardening, who led her down the center aisle to fill up her bottles at the water cooler.
What stood out most to me was this woman's disbelief over the willingness of the employees to help a customer out. I remember, in those fateful first months of my training, my own incredulity at the amount of time, energy, and money devoted in the business to making customers happy. That woman walked out of the store with gratification enough to write an article. But she didn't write about the screw she left with; she wrote about the people.
In our ever-growing culture of materialism, all it takes to bring our focus away from the "items" is the experience of a community. I gained this understanding over the course of two years through the honor of being the provider of such service. I've learned more than I could list, forged relationships with coworkers of all ages and walks of life, and appreciated the 14 employees that keep the store running. I've grown to see a place that originally brought to my mind grime and tools, as a place where I now belong. I will leave my hometown and first paying job in less than a year with knowledge of the time of year to lay crabgrass preventer on a lawn and the type of concrete used to set a mailbox. But more important, I will leave a community in which I was an active participant - a fact that I could not claim to be true if I had spent those years at the mall.
