PERSONAL ESSAY
FEBRUARY 2021
This experiment was only imagined; it never came to fruition.
PROPOSAL
With this second experiment, I want to focus more on a different goal/pathway that I could go with my topic. With that in mind, I decided that for this experiment, my primary purpose would be to educate/inform. After reading the result of this experiment, I would want my audience to be more compassionate and understanding with regards to my topic. My topic is one that is often misunderstood, and that is something I would like to change. My audience would be people who are new to the concept of eating disorders, perhaps wanting to learn more about them due to the fact that someone they are close to is starting to exhibit behaviors/was recently diagnosed with one. Maybe they don’t understand the mental processes behind the disorder, or want to learn how to best support people who are suffering from eating disorders. After reading the results of my second experiment, they would have more insight into these things; the mental processes behind eating disorders and how to support someone who has one.
For this project, I decided to go with the personal essay for my genre. I have always cringed at the word “essay” because the constraints for an essay are usually quite tight, but this is not necessarily true for the personal essay. This genre allows for a lot more creativity, and no one personal essay is alike. You can make an argument, include outside research, make it a political commentary, deviate from the academic structure, or none of these things. As long as the personal essay centers around a personal experience, the mindset of the speaker changes throughout the essay, and the essay has a specific purpose, then you are pretty much set. The main reason why I chose this genre is because it relies on personal experience, and what I want to do with my topic is talk about my personal experience. Because the mindset of the speaker changing is a characteristic of personal essays, if I were to carry this experiment out, I would be able to show how my mindset regarding my topic has changed over time. This genre can also cater to my purpose—to educate others to be more compassionate and supportive of those with eating disorders.
I do not anticipate there being any issues with regards to technicalities. I have written personal essays in the past, and I took English 325—which was all about essay writing. So, I already have the skills I would need in order to write a personal essay. I wouldn’t need any equipment (just my laptop). I do not anticipate needing much, if any, mentoring assistance, either, because I am already pretty familiar with the genre. If I were to carry this experiment out, then I anticipate taking at least two weeks to outline the essay, write it, revise it, and then reflect on any last changes.
REFLECTION
The genre I chose for my second experiment was the personal essay, which fits a different goal I could choose with my topic, which is to educate people to be more understanding and compassionate towards those suffering with eating disorders and mood disorders. The thing I liked most about the personal essay and what made me choose it in the first place was the fact that personal essays center around personal experiences. They rely on them, even. You can incorporate outside sources if you choose to, but your voice and your experience is central. This is helpful if I were to end up choosing this genre in the end, because my topic is a deeply personal one, and my opinions regarding my topic stem from personal experiences. I also do not think my goal could be achieved without talking about my personal experiences. Another thing I like a lot about the genre is the storytelling aspect of it. This aspect allows for the writing in the essay to be more conversational and informal, way less stiff and stuffy than I view other essay genres to be. I feel like this would cater to my topic and my goals by allowing the reader to be more sympathetic and maybe even empathetic to my words.
On the other hand, I have a major misgiving with this genre due to the fact that my origin piece was also a personal essay. Should I choose a personal essay in the end, though, this misgiving could be overcome because my origin piece was written in a class as an assignment, and I had specific guidelines to follow. For example, I had to choose something that was unresolved within myself and it had to be a certain length. I feel like those constraints limited what I truly wanted to do with the essay and I felt like it forced me towards a certain purpose for my essay. But, if I were to do a personal essay again in this class, then I would have free reign. I could choose whichever purpose I wanted and achieve that purpose however I wanted because there are really no constraints besides encouraging the reader to think, feel, or act a certain way (that I know of).
I feel like if I were to choose this genre, I still have more to learn about it due to the fact that my model pieces were all pretty similar. They all followed a specific structure, which I mentioned in my genre analysis—the author has a certain belief, they write about an experience that challenges this belief, and they chronicle how that belief changed as a result of the experience they wrote about. Maybe this structure is the standard for personal essays, but I highly doubt that it is the only structure. I want to do a bit more research with other personal essays to see how other authors stray from this structure and the different effects that different structures can have.