essay: What works already about this piece? What makes you keep reading and want

Question

essay:

What works already about this piece? What makes you keep reading and want to hear more? What helps you feel like you can imagine this time in this writer's life? In other words, as a reader, what do you like? (Write 5-7 sentence about this, referring to specifics to support your ideas.)

What would you want to hear more about if this were to be transformed into a longer essay—which events or scenes are ripe for more vivid description and development? What could be drawn out about that core moment of epiphany, which will be the center of the essay? (Again, 5-7 sentences)

Essay:

   Middle School Epiphany

When I was a child I suffered from severe outbreaks of eczema and warts on my hands and bouts

of asthma. To add to this, I had undiagnosed ADHD. This meant that I was loud and bossy and

did much to make myself a target. I was also gifted, which meant I would finish work quickly and

then get bored. My teachers tried everything to keep me from bothering the other students. I was

sent to the library daily. I was allowed to sleep in class, they even sent me out to recess early and

let me do latch hook rugs (look them up, ancient, but fun craft for kids.) They did not know what

to do with me. The students in my classes did not know what to do with me either, so mostly they

mad fun of me, picked on me and made my life miserable. I usually had one good friend and I

had books, so I made it through.

In middle school, I began to play volleyball. I was very good at volleyball. Who knew? As a

9th grade student, I often played with high school students. The glamour of the high school

students must have rubbed off some, or I was growing and learning and my eczema got better. I

was never quite sure what accounted for the change, but people began to treat me better.

I was allowed to hang out with the more popular crowd. I still had friends from elementary school,

many of them as dorky as I was though. One friend in particular, Marnie Green had been my

friend from 5th grade on. She was kind and interesting and always made me feel better when

others made fun of me. She had lived in Barcelona when she was younger. She was intelligent

and in all advanced classes and loved to read as much I did. She played the cello, but did not play

any sports.

My epiphany happened with this girl one day towards the end of 9th grade. I had been

suffering the effects of being popular, you know, being judgmental, insufferable, the usual, for 6

months or so. One day I was hanging out in the gym with Marnie. She was shooting baskets and I

was hitting a volleyball against the wall. I noticed that her pants were too short. I made fun of her

having pants were too short. I think I said something like, “Hey Marnie, don’t your parents have

enough money to buy you new pants. Your pants are too short. They're total highwaters.” Shitty,

I know. Her response was completely unexpected and has given me pause throughout the rest of

my life. She said, “Michelle, my brother has Muscular Dystrophy and he is dying. This is expensive

for my parents. I also just had a growth spurt, so my pants are too short. My parents don’t have

enough money to buy me pants now and then to buy them again at the beginning of the next

school year. What you said was mean. Now that you are all popular, you think it is OK to make

fun of people, but it is not.”

She called me out about what a terrible person I was being. All I could do was to tell her that

she was right and that I was sorry. She and I stayed friends through high school. I tried to

remember that moment the rest of my life. Being popular doesn’t make you better than anyone.

Being kind makes you a better person. Thank goodness she had the guts to stand up to me being

obnoxious to her. In many ways she saved me from my worst self by just not letting me go down

that road. I think of this every time I start to feel superior to someone and I check myself.

Explanation / Answer

the moral of the story is that what you are not in your social life it doesn't matter if you dont have a kindness and respect for the others. most interesting part of the story is the perfectness of the writer, he is good in everything, he appreciated by our teacxhers and our classfellows and quite popular but in last he makes a fun of his friend which shows a negative point of his personality but when he realized that he was wrong he improves ourself. friendship and the memories of school times is the highlighted point of this story.

we want to know about his challenges because of eczema and their family background as well as, means how his parents supports him because a person can never succeed without a family support. Marnie Green's family and her hallenges can be also discuss in the story because she is the important part of the story.

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