"This I Believe" is a community project that was started in 2004, where people write essays blending personal beliefs with narration of what led them to adopt said belief. We wrote our own personal belief essays that we then recorded into podcasts to be aired on KDUR radio. We used several brainstorming activities to come up with a core personal belief, and then we told why we believed it. The greatest challenge for me in this project was blending narrative with personal belief. This was a struggle for me because I love writing stories and recounting experiences, and I got a bit carried away trying to make the story sound the way I wanted it too. Another struggle was that it ended up way too long and I had to remove what was the equivalent of a whole page of writing to meet the length restrictions. My greatest accomplishment was talking about this and being open about it because while I truly do believe it was something that needed to happen, doing something that dramatic and stupid often results in judgment.
My essay illustrates the belief that our experiences change us, and it is our choice if it changes us for better or worse. This experience I narrated was about a time I cut myself very intentionally when I was fourteen, and what I learned from that experience. I wrote how for me, the experience marks when I began to grow up. When I got out of my melodramatic head and began to see things with a more logical eye. I was able to stop blowing things so wildly out of proportion, and it even helped me to stop getting overwhelmed so easily. In a way, the cut was my rock bottom. I had to realize that my actions had real consequences and that by being dramatic and feeling sorry for myself I was only making things worse. I realized that I was SO lucky to have the life I had, and that I didn't need the attention and sympathy of others to feel good about myself. Besides- over time life gets hard enough on its own. There's no point making it feel or seem even worse.
I grew throughout this project as a writer, especially with the skill of making my work concise. For most of my academic career essays had a minimum word count. This project had a minimum, but it also had a maximum. In the end I couldn't even get my essay below the required 500, though I did make it to 506 which is certainly a personal record. When I finished my first draft it was over 700 words long and I had a very hard time figuring out how to remove those extra 200 words without totally disrupting the flow of the essay. I am very grateful for this experience as I do believe there is a lot of value in not only making sure you have lots of detail and give each portion of the essay the amount of attention it deserves, but also in making your statements concise when the circumstances call for it.
My essay illustrates the belief that our experiences change us, and it is our choice if it changes us for better or worse. This experience I narrated was about a time I cut myself very intentionally when I was fourteen, and what I learned from that experience. I wrote how for me, the experience marks when I began to grow up. When I got out of my melodramatic head and began to see things with a more logical eye. I was able to stop blowing things so wildly out of proportion, and it even helped me to stop getting overwhelmed so easily. In a way, the cut was my rock bottom. I had to realize that my actions had real consequences and that by being dramatic and feeling sorry for myself I was only making things worse. I realized that I was SO lucky to have the life I had, and that I didn't need the attention and sympathy of others to feel good about myself. Besides- over time life gets hard enough on its own. There's no point making it feel or seem even worse.
I grew throughout this project as a writer, especially with the skill of making my work concise. For most of my academic career essays had a minimum word count. This project had a minimum, but it also had a maximum. In the end I couldn't even get my essay below the required 500, though I did make it to 506 which is certainly a personal record. When I finished my first draft it was over 700 words long and I had a very hard time figuring out how to remove those extra 200 words without totally disrupting the flow of the essay. I am very grateful for this experience as I do believe there is a lot of value in not only making sure you have lots of detail and give each portion of the essay the amount of attention it deserves, but also in making your statements concise when the circumstances call for it.