<p>I just finished the first draft of my essay, and I’d love some feedback before I ask my teachers to look at it next week. THank you!</p>
<p>I’ll read it. PM me.</p>
<p>I’ll try to help too. Send it.</p>
<p>I’d love to read anybody’s essay as well. I’m great with grammar and sentence fluency, so feel free to private message me with essay help!</p>
<p>hm, i tried to message all of you but it didn’t work… i’ll post it here. also, i’m not sure which prompt it would fall under, so if you had a suggestion for that, it’d be great too. thank you!</p>
<p>People always say that you can understand a lot about a person by what is in their library. I’m not entirely sure who these people are, or how often “always” really is, but I’m sure it’s been said by somebody important, so I’ll venture to guess it’s a decent hypothesis. While my library is rather small, a meager collection of four or five small shelves of the books I could afford to purchase over the years, many of my own quirks and idiosyncrasies lie scattered about the pages of these paperbacks and periodicals.</p>
<p>As I skim through these shelves, a few significant works appear as means for my own self-reflection. Queer by William S. Burroughs – you may make your literal assumption as to why I identify with this novel – and the Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon pique my interest first. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, a coming-of-age story about a recent college graduate’s quest to escape his father’s reputation as a boss in the Jewish Mafia, is probably my favorite novel of all time. The protagonist, Art Bechstein, chronicles the summer after graduation through a plethora of new friends, new experiences, and all kinds of experimentation. Art has become a bit of a personal hero for me. Although the summer ends in tragedy and heartache, he reflects on his experience as a means for personal growth, and leaves the city of Pittsburgh inspired and ready for something better. His final thoughts rang so true for me – although I have not lived the most ideal and picturesque life, and have hurt myself and other people due to past mistakes, I have eternally looked towards the future with a sense of optimism. I am a product of my experiences, and I use my past mistakes and anguish as fuel to benefit my future.</p>
<p>At last, I come across the Everest of personally reflective works – Hamlet by William Shakespeare. As Shakespeare’s longest play, its rather obese physique only grows larger with my own personal reflections and thoughts. Like Hamlet, I too had a beloved and talented father who died too soon. He was an accomplished musician, but lost his battle with the bottle not long after my twelfth birthday. I was left with a kingdom of decisions to make, set in the context of moving across the country and my mother’s new marriage. I was alone at crossroads – do I let an alcoholic legacy live on, or do I ignore and close off my father’s history, making myself emotionally stale and creatively uninspired? I spent years in a vicious cycle of closing myself off from him and becoming too emotionally vulnerable at the whim of his memory. However, unlike Hamlet, I found a happy medium. I could embrace my ancestors without embracing their problems. My father’s spirit could live on without the stains of alcohol and depression on his breath, and I’m pretty damn proud of having this realization without having to murder my entire family.</p>