ENC 1101                                                                                            Dr. Selitto

Core 1ss: Exploring Oneself: a memoir

Task: Students will demonstrate an ability to reflect on a personal experience using a combination of narrative and descriptive writing in the first person.

Purpose:      *  to develop expressive and reflective skills

          *  to develop an authentic personal voice

                      *  to choose and arrange details from personal

experience appropriate to rhetorical context.

                      *  to understand and utilize descriptive and

narrative techniques

                      *  to  identify and compose for a specific

                          audience

                      *  to employ the writing process effectively,

                          (i.e., pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, proofreading)

Audience:       People who share or have an interest in your particular experiences, goals, hopes, and dreams.

Length:  Three (minimum) or Four full pages, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font

Assignment:   You will write a memoir about an event, a person, or a place that helped define your current identity. This could be when you decided that telling the truth is important/and lying only leads to more trouble (or that lying is the best way to go, if that is a part of your identity), an event that inspires a career path (now a part of your identity), an event that inspires you to be a humanitarian and volunteer for a particular cause, an event that inspires you to be competitive or make other life changing/defining choices.  Tiger Woods might write about how the first time he scored par on a hole in golf made the sport a part of his identity.  Condoleezza Rice might write about how an experience with racism in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama is a part of her identity because it inspired her to become a lawyer.  Superman might write about the time he first picked up a truck to save his adoptive father and its influence on his identity as a superhero.

You will use description and sensory details to establish a connection with your audience, helping them understand and feel the same things you did at the time of your experience.  You should tell your story from the perspective of an adult looking back on his/her childhood.  It is important that you help readers understand not only what the significance of the experience was when you were a child, but also how it impacts your life as you’re growing into adulthood.  This paper is more of a story than an essay and should be approached with this in mind.