Essay #1 (Online) - Descriptive Personal Essay
Write an essay that describes a significant moment or brief event in your life. The moment or event you choose should be significant because of what you learned from it. You should include enough details so that your audience knows what is going on, but do not get so carried away with details that your audience becomes confused or bored by an excess of information. Your essay should include reflection, or thoughtful consideration of what has happened to you. The reader should have a sense of what you took away from the experience.
"A new lease on life"
The most significant day of my life was the day I found out I had my blood disorder. From the moment the hematologist read my blood work results to me, my life has never been the same. It is always something that is on my mind and changes the way I live my life.
While waiting in the consult room at the hematologist's office, I sat in the most uncomfortable chair I had ever sat in. I was looking at all of his medical degrees on the wall and wondering what he was going to come in and say to me. My heart was racing a mile a minute, and I did not know what to expect. I had never been in a situation like this before.
When the doctor came in I jumped up like lightening shot through my body. He introduced himself as Dr. Eagle and reached his hand to shake mine. He was middle- aged with salt and pepper hair. He had a deep voice. Dr. Eagle, wearing blue scrubs and smelling of latex, looked as if he had just come from surgery. Dr. Eagle must have noticed that my hand was trembling and that my voice was shaking when I said hello.
He gestured his hand for me to sit back down in the uncomfortable chair, and he sat down next to me at the conference table. He placed a few files down and looked at me. He asked, "So what prompted your doctor to send you in and be tested for a clotting disorder?" I took a deep breath and sighed, wishing my doctor would have already sent all his notes. I did not want to go through the process of yet again telling my story. "Well", I said "my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother had deep vein thromboses, but they called it bad legs." He shook his head and took note of what I said on a piece of paper he had taken out of one of the file folders. He asked, "So, what about you personally? Have you had any clots?" I looked at him dead in the eye and said, "Yes, I have had three. What's wrong with me?" He leaned back in his chair, balanced his pen between his pointer and middle fingers and asked, "Have any of the women in your family been diagnosed with a blood disorder?" I looked at him, shook my head, and answered no.
Finally, he opened the file labeled with my name written in red ink. He then pulled out the results of my blood work I had done a few weeks prior. Dr. Eagle said "Holli, you have an inherited disorder called Factor V Leiden." He said it like this was something that he said every day. Then without taking a breath, he said having Factor V meant I have an increased tendency for my blood to clot. This can lead to sometimes serious and /or life-threatening complications depending on the condition of the clot. I repeated the word inherited. Upset by the news I had just been given, I asked, "So is this what all the women in my family have suffered from?" Why didn't any of their Doctors ever realize this?" I rose from my chair and walked over to the window. Looking at the beautiful Carolina blue sky and the birds flying around, anxiously I asked, "Does this mean I'm going to die from a clot like my great-Grandmother or have horrible ulcers on my legs like my grandmother?" At this point I started to cry. I kept looking out the window in order to avoid looking at Dr. Eagle. In that crushing moment I felt I had been handed a death sentence.
Next thing I knew he was standing at the window with me, and Dr. Eagle reassured me "No, Holli! You are not, and do you want to know why?" I choked back tears and said, "Why?" He said, "It's simple. You are diagnosed. Your family members weren't." I turned back around to face him. I asked, "Ok, tell me what this means." He started by saying that the first thing that we are going to do is put me on a baby aspirin regiment. This would keep my blood from clotting. Dr. Eagle then said the most profound words I think I have ever heard, "Knowing is half the battle," and now I knew.
Walking out of the hospital annex that day, I felt like even though I had just gotten some really bad news, I was alive, and I knew I was strong enough to fight! I decided as I was walking up the hill to my Jeep, with the sun baking my face, I was going to educate myself. I realized with Dr. Eagle's help, that knowing as much as possible about this disease would prevent it from getting the best of me!
Throughout my life I have had many memorable events. The memorable times in my life vary from being the worst times in my life and some being the best, either way they have become milestones that will be remembered forever.----- I got rid of that bad first sentence, because it is boring and not useful, and I like it now that it begins with this interesting sentence that used to be sentence #2.
no need to capitalize "doctor."
I have had three DVT's when I was a teenager, and each time I was treated with anticoagulants and sent home. The doctors never realized that it was the birth control I was taking that was making me clot. It wasn't until I was 23 years old, and went to my doctor and asked for a prescription for birth control did that anyone ever put it together.
I asked if there was something wrong, but they wouldn't ...
You can use italics here:
All I could think was, Just tell me what's wrong!
Okay, so go back and change the words Doctor to doctor (no capital letters).
I see at the end that you add a theme: it turned out to be a blessing. I think you should introduce this theme near the beginning of the essay. Also, try a little more to emphasize that moment that is the subject of the essay.
:)
Thank you, Susan! When you have time, would you please let me know if you think that I emphasize that moment that is the subject of my essay any better, and if not could you try to point my int he write direction to make it stand out better? Thank you so very much! Holli
... I was told by my Ob obstetrician that I was...
I think you made great progress! That moment is references in the intro, and then you give it a large paragraph right in the middle of the essay. I think this will be a success! As you continue to revise and improve, take out unnecessary details. For example, "sitting by the pool at the condo" is not about the moment. The moment happens in the Dr.'s office. Take out details that tax the reader's attention and detract from the experience of that significant moment.
I'm glad it turned out to be less scary than you thought!! It must have still caused you a lot of fright and difficulty, though!! Anyway, that is where wisdom comes from.
Thank you Kevin! This is such a wonderful site and I appreciate the help I have received so far! Thank you, thank you, thank you :)
One question? What did you take away from this experience? (except for mentioning it in one line at the very end of your essay?)
Even though it was well-written, I thought it was suffering from what I call the T.M.I syndrome! (Too Much Information!)
What the reader does with your essay is actively processes it. Active is when you read the start and end of every paragraph because you know the information is not giving you anything to process.
How has this experience changed you?! What were you before this that you arent now!? What changes have you felt in your personal/social life? How has this episode mirrored in your way of thinking. Are you more of an optimist now than you were before?
Its vague on this..."Your essay should include reflection, or thoughtful consideration of what has happened to you. The reader should have a sense of what you took away from the experience."
You have to make it a little crisp with a clearer sense of how every visit to the doctor, every injection every injected etc changed your life...
Little did I know that having this blood disorder changed my life for the better. You repeat this line twice throughout your essay and yet I dont see how just exercise
and eating veggies is a phenomenonal change? Is that ALL you took from this near-death experience???Surely not! Brain storm...Go to a dark place in your mind and re-live that time...
Best of Luck and thumbs up for your FIGHTER attitude towards life!!!
Ok! I am so totally confused! Here is what my teacher said....
When you revise your essay, look for places that you can show rather than tell the action. You might consider incorporating dialogue and using more sensory description. Also, right now your essay ends rather abruptly when you introduce a new idea in the conclusion. There is no indication throughout the essay that this disorder changed your life for the better so the reader doesn't know what to make of this idea when it's mentioned in the final two sentences. You can either develop this idea more fully as part of the essay or leave it out, but it doesn't really work to mention it in passing.
What does she mean to show rather than tell the action? What sort of sensory description can I include??????
This is how I revised it, I am a few hundred words over where I need to be. What is the TMI??? What can I get rid of?
What does she mean to show rather than tell the action?
Ha ha, this seems like a very nice and intelligent teacher. Maybe she will participate in EssayForum. We could use her help! :-)
"Show, don't tell" is a saying used in writing, and it also is useful for real life. If you introduce yourself to me and tell me you are someone who always works very hard at your job, I do not know if I believe you. But if, when I meet you, I see you working hard to accomplish some task and putting forth impressive effort, I will know that you do indeed work hard.
Similarly, if you tell me "The most significant day of my life was the day that I found out that I had a blood disorder," I don't know if this is true. Maybe you like to think it is, but maybe the most significant day was something else, something that you do not like to think about. HOWEVER, you can SHOW me that it was the most significant day by changing that first sentence like this:
The day that I found out that I had a blood disorder was full of movies, and they still play over and over in my mind.
If you add an image, it works even better:
The day that I found out that I had a blood disorder became a surreal movie, one that used to play over and over in my mind when I was trying to sleep.
Or something like that. Only you know the right way, but the point is to let the reader share an experience. There are some magic words that evoke feelings from readers. You can read some Dean Koonts or Stephen King, and see great imagery. Imagery words are the ones that make you exprience something right away. Like a fish that is biting your nose.
:-)
I decided that I wanted to be a Nurse, and help other women going thru with I went thru. I would like to work in Hematology, or a high risk obstetrician's office. Perfect! However, maybe you can mention in your previous paragraphs how looking at complete strangers (nurses) tending to you in your time of need shaped this decision out of you. Those intelligently chosen lines throughout the essay can beautifully lead to this conclusion.
One more thing on "Show don't tell": In writing essays that are read by many people - all with a different outlook towards life - its often best to paint an image thats universally accepted! The reason Kev mentioned King and Koontz is exactly this (Even Rowling and Tolkein for that matter - however I do think the latter tends to overdo it!)
Best of Luck.
Sorry, I didn't read your TMI question.
Ok, so theres definite room for brutal chopping in the fourth paragraph..."A week later, I was sitting in the waiting room with the...."
Heres what you should do. Sit down.Relax. Breathe. Now thinking that you are the reader, read the first four paragraphs describing the whole incident. What parts of it can you live without knowing? You should chop down the incident, removing parts like "the doctor dropped her pen and such..." and substituting long sentences with words like shocked and perplexed etc...Replace overly-dramatic phrases with simpler ones, as at times "SIMPLE" evokes the best of emotions from the reader.
Thank you everyone! I re wrote the whole essay. I started it off in the hematologists office and used dialogue between the Dr and I to describe how I got there. I fell a lot better about it! Everyone was so helpful and CORRECT!
Wow, great drama at the end. I really like the progress you made here. It really got refined into a cool piece of descriptive writing about that moment. You did a great job of honoring a particular moment over the course of several paragraphs. Not everyone can do that!!
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Wow, thank you Kevin. I worked HARD on this. I can't wait to get my grade and see what my teacher thinks! I learned that writing is truly a process!!!
Yep, it was interesting to watch you make progress with this one. I hope you stick around and keep participating when you can! :-)
