A Day at the Park

This semester has been composed of a theme park full of thrill-seeking roller coasters, all twisting and turning around each other in an effort to understand one another. I’ve watched in awe as my writing has transformed from a kiddy ride into a complex upside-down roller coaster. Now it seems that sometimes the words I write on the page behave much like the passengers on a ride – screaming in glee with the wind whipping past them as they savor the journey to the end.

In my E1, I had so many different ideas as to what I should write about. But much like when you are debating which rides you will have to time to go on at an amusement park, in an essay you must pick and choose what will fit best into your allotted space while also considering which factors compliment each other. In the end, I feel like I made the right decisions when it came to the topics I explored, however, I probably could have bettered my argument throughout the paper. I think this semester I struggled most with identifying the opposition (or counterargument) that I was writing against. If I were to rewrite or revise E1, I would certainly work towards calling out that opposition and further clarifying my stakes against it.

In E2, the writing process and the paper itself were much longer. This assignment felt a lot like how a kid might feel if they were awarded a few extra hours at the park. They are gleefully excited and yet, they know they will be exhausted beyond words at the days finish. The topic of death has been something that I personally have been forced to seriously consider throughout these past few weeks, and so it was interesting to have to explore it in a way I probably wouldn’t have on my own. I would have liked to talk about the idea of “impermanence” throughout my essay, as it would have connected largely with death, and on a smaller scale with the concepts of Buddhism I had already discussed.

Throughout the semester I have encountered many roadblocks, both within class and outside of it, but those blockages are what made my writing stronger. I can see now that the issues I used to see as an inconvenience are actually the things that make life interesting. The problems we face are what builds character and encourages maturation in both ourselves and in our writing. I started out as a kid standing at the gates of the park, with the world at my fingertips and the possibilities calling out to me to enact with them. Now, although I have gone on almost every ride, I see that there are many more rides awaiting my arrival, and new ones yet to be built.