Hi, if you'd be willing to critique my essay I'd be very thankful!
What work of art, music, science, mathematics, or literature has surprised, unsettled, or challenged you, and in what way?
Wordpress, a semantic personal publishing platform, has surprised me since I started using it last year. Its focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability allows anyone to blog without knowing complex computer programming languages. Living in a small, Southern town with a population under twelve-thousand, I used to think that I couldn't really reach that many people. Then in the summer after my junior year, I found Wordpress. I've always been passionate about technology and business, and I'd acquired a substantial amount of knowledge and insight from various books, magazines, and news articles. So I decided to start a blog that would educate others on the two subjects, and, at the same time, support itself financially from unobtrusive advertising. I bought my domain name and web hosting and then had Wordpress installed in less than five minutes. I found a sleek, attractive theme from the thousands of choices within the blogging subculture. Then, I wrote my first post. I wasn't sure if anyone would even read the post, but clicking the "publish" button was so empowering; it gave me a voice. Thankfully, I have developed a readership and blogging through Wordpress has helped further develop my critical analysis skills, my writing ability, and my intrapersonal intelligence. I owe it to the simple design and usability of Wordpress, a technology that allows anyone to be someone.
Describe the world you come from and how that world shaped who you are.
The charter bus rolled into the village of Pedro Ruiz, Peru and all the natives' eyes were on the people that started getting off the bus. They saw the Southern Baptist missionaries and heard the reflexive datives and non-standard preterites of the distinctly Southern English. I spent much of my childhood this way - interacting with people of different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, and attempting to reconcile my place among them.
My experience of living and spending time around people of different backgrounds has allowed me to view events from different angles. As I became acquainted with the rural traditions of my Mississippi town, the strong kinship of African-Americans in Memphis, and the ambitions of the upper echelon at the college preparatory school I attended my junior and senior year, I could put myself in multiple perspectives. When I participated in Secret Pals, a church ministry between youth and widows/widowers, I learned the value of congeniality and conversation that is so commonly referred to as "Southern hospitality". During the times I enjoyed the famed crunchy, seasoned chicken wings at Ching's, I vividly saw and came to appreciate the deep roots and passions of black culture. While navigating through the college process at Memphis University School, I came to appreciate the characteristic of ambition as students took rigorous classes, competed in an array of sports, and still made time to give back through community outreach projects.
The diversity of my world allows me to respect and view complex problems through other people's perspectives.
Question: Did you think of any negative connotation when I used "black culture"? I don't want to come across like I distinctly separate people based on the their levels of melanin. I think I used it in a respective way, but I'm just curious.
Question about your second essay, where exactly are you you elaborating where you're from? Because if it's from Mississippi, than your opening paragraph about Peru is unnecessary.
To answer your question, as a black person, your use of black culture while not negative, is kind of insulting, but mostly awkward. "crunchy, seasoned chicken wings" are not a passion of black culture haha. I think that you should talk more about the community outreach projects that you do in your neighborhood and how that affects your world.
And you should take out your last line "The diversity of my world allows me to respect..." it's a bit weak. And you want your essay to end in a fabulously SHABAM! sorta way.
