Project 2

Project 2 – Draw the Best Out

Mini Assignment 2

To get us thinking about our second writing project and writing about place, Dr. Robertson assigned a mini assignment where we would create a postcard of a place that we have visited. I chose my favorite vacation spot, Sunbay Resort, because my family has vacationed there since my mom and uncles were young.

Sunbay holds a special place in my heart. It is where my family and friends get together, where I learned many valuable life lessons, and where I have seen myself grow as an individual–from measuring my height in the pool year after year to learning how to swim in the lake.

Below is my destination postcard for mini assignment two.

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For project two, I decided to continue writing about Sunbay Resort. I used my postcard from the mini assignment to help me. I struggled a bit with this project because it was focused on developing place. In my first draft, you can see that I was developing my characters and plot more than my setting.

The feedback that my peers gave me pointed out a lot of good things, but some things I needed to improve on, too. All my peers enjoyed reading my piece, but found problems with my verb tense–something that I am still improving on today. They also pointed that I was just “telling” about Sunbay and not really “showing” Sunbay. Looking back, it was easier for me to “tell” rather than “show” because my audience and purpose for writing this piece was to relive a wonderful summer I had with my cousin, siblings, and best friend–all people who know Sunbay just as well as I do.

Writing about place was made easier for me by reading an excerpt from Jennifer Case’s Sawbill and an excerpt from Jeannette Wall’s The Glass Castle. Both developed place very well while still telling a story.

I chose to have a conference with Dr. Robertson and she gave me some great feedback on how to move forward with my draft. She also gave me an easy way to edit and fix my verb tense, which was to go through and highlight all my verbs. This made it easier for me when I went back and edited my project.

My audience for my piece was my family–my cousin, best friend, siblings, and Mom. The setting for my piece was July 2011. This particular summer was the last summer that we all got to enjoy together before we all became very busy and weren’t all able to be together for the entire week. My purpose for writing this project was to remind my audience of this wonderful summer and share some of our favorite activities and memories.

The genre I chose for this assignment was a podcast. I am happy that I chose this genre because you were able to hear my voice, my emotion, and my expression in the piece as I talk about this wonderful summer. It is also the best genre for my audience, too, because they would be able to picture Sunbay as they are hearing it described.

Below you will find my first rough draft, second rough draft, and my final draft and self-assessment.

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Second Draft View Larger / Download

Final Draft View Larger / Download