This I Believe Essay
I believe in brotherhood
This I believe
It was a beautiful day in the desert of Utah. The sun was beating down on the Indian creek waterfall, awaiting a life changing event.
I had always known that there was something different about the relationship between my brother and I. We always know how to make each other laugh and smile no matter how bad of a day we’re having. Don’t get me wrong we definitely have our disagreements, but when we’re not fighting it’s like I’m hanging out with one of my friends. I believe in brotherhood, the most powerful bond I have in my life.
My family was camped about a mile down the road from the waterfall. My brother and I were the last ones to wake up and exit our tent into the baking sun. There was a weak breeze that you could hear bouncing off the canyons around camp. We joined the rest of the people in our camp standing around a dying fire. We had come to the usual afternoon group consensus of a nice swim to cool off in the waterfall.
We had been swimming for a while after the parents had set up their lounging area. I climbed up to the jump spot with a football and threw it down to my brother as he jumped into the current snatching it out of the air. Observing his head bob downstream I saw it collide with the rock face and shoot underneath the ledge. After a couple of seconds assuming I would see his head pop out against the side downstream, I see the football emerge from the wall and float towards the sandy shore. The suspense was building inside my gut. I was not thinking he was going to actually drown. It was just too crazy to think it would happen to my own brother. I glanced up towards my mom, she yelled “Go get him!” as she stood up in a panic ready to leap herself. I jumped down to the other side and reached under where I saw him vanish. One hand searching rapidly for a body part while the other was securing myself to the rock siding. Finally, I grabbed an arm and pulled him towards me placing his hand on the rock shelf reassuring he had a good grip as he caught his breath.
This was by far the most memorable experience I had with my brother. Each year we get closer and closer and hopefully we keep it that way. After thinking about it, my brother is my best friend because we spend so much time together, and we have experienced an endless amount of adventures that bond us. Without my brother I would barley even smile at home and I would have nothing to cheer me up after a long day. After almost losing my brother, I realized you don’t truly know what you have until it’s almost taken away from you and I never should take my relationship with my brother for granted.
It was a beautiful day in the desert of Utah. The sun was beating down on the Indian creek waterfall, awaiting a life changing event.
I had always known that there was something different about the relationship between my brother and I. We always know how to make each other laugh and smile no matter how bad of a day we’re having. Don’t get me wrong we definitely have our disagreements, but when we’re not fighting it’s like I’m hanging out with one of my friends. I believe in brotherhood, the most powerful bond I have in my life.
My family was camped about a mile down the road from the waterfall. My brother and I were the last ones to wake up and exit our tent into the baking sun. There was a weak breeze that you could hear bouncing off the canyons around camp. We joined the rest of the people in our camp standing around a dying fire. We had come to the usual afternoon group consensus of a nice swim to cool off in the waterfall.
We had been swimming for a while after the parents had set up their lounging area. I climbed up to the jump spot with a football and threw it down to my brother as he jumped into the current snatching it out of the air. Observing his head bob downstream I saw it collide with the rock face and shoot underneath the ledge. After a couple of seconds assuming I would see his head pop out against the side downstream, I see the football emerge from the wall and float towards the sandy shore. The suspense was building inside my gut. I was not thinking he was going to actually drown. It was just too crazy to think it would happen to my own brother. I glanced up towards my mom, she yelled “Go get him!” as she stood up in a panic ready to leap herself. I jumped down to the other side and reached under where I saw him vanish. One hand searching rapidly for a body part while the other was securing myself to the rock siding. Finally, I grabbed an arm and pulled him towards me placing his hand on the rock shelf reassuring he had a good grip as he caught his breath.
This was by far the most memorable experience I had with my brother. Each year we get closer and closer and hopefully we keep it that way. After thinking about it, my brother is my best friend because we spend so much time together, and we have experienced an endless amount of adventures that bond us. Without my brother I would barley even smile at home and I would have nothing to cheer me up after a long day. After almost losing my brother, I realized you don’t truly know what you have until it’s almost taken away from you and I never should take my relationship with my brother for granted.
Project Reflection
This I Believe essay reflection
I believe in brotherhood
This assignment was called the This I Believe essay. For this essay we wrote about a core belief we have learned from our own life experiences that can be applied to our daily life. Writing an essay this personal can be a very difficult process. To begin to understand the writing format of the essay, we explored a lot of essays from the This I Believe website and what skills made the essay unique such as authentic voice, communal relevance and narrative coherence. These traits were ideal for a This I Believe essay to connect personally with the reader. Then we started to think of our own topics that we believe in for our own essay. The credo assignment was our next task to begin our own essays brainstorm. The credo assignment was a small 250 word piece of writing that defined our belief to get our ideas flowing. I did not write my credo on brotherhood, but it was still helpful to get an idea of the format we would be writing in. Our next assignment was the actual This I Believe essay. After we wrote our rough drafts we had a peer critique which I thought was extremely constructive. After making the changes recommended by my peers I proof read it and fixed the little things, then submitted my final draft.
I have never had a writing assignment like this one, I found it very difficult to find a topic for my essay. Brainstorming was only difficult at first. By the end of our brainstorming process I had many interesting ideas of my beliefs. The two things I found the most difficult were choosing a topic, and keeping my essay under 500 words. I had narrowed down my topic to my top three and finally made my decision on writing about brotherhood. The primary reason I chose this topic was because I had the most dramatic story that goes with the belief. This was ideal to hit the part of the This I Believe essay that connects with your reader using the three skills I mentioned in the first paragraph. I felt the story was a good usage of authentic voice because I could tell it very well after experiencing it in person. The habit of heart and mind that helped me the most for this particular essay is advocacy. I only advocated for one meeting with Jessica but the meeting helped with everything I needed. The main thing I needed from the meeting was feedback on paragraph structure. I was getting very worked up about what the best order of my paragraphs would be to where I could keep my hook. Jessica told me that it worked the way I had them, and I thought it did to at first but some of the people that read my essay thought it was confusing to jump from my evidence to my story.
I am proud of a few things in my essay, one being my lead. “It was a beautiful day in the desert of Utah. The sun was beating down on the Indian creek waterfall, awaiting a life changing event.” This lead was in the top three of my leads options and I got a lot of feedback stating it was a very powerful hook. To me it did not seem that great but after re wording it and doing some minor editing it started to really stand out to me. When I looked at the rubric engaging leads I chose the strategy of “Description (of a person or setting)”. I described the scene of the day the event happened between my brother and me. I made my hook two strong sentences and stated the setting, and an engaging statement at the end to draw in the reader.
I am definitely planning on submitting my draft to NPR, I don’t see why not and I think it will be interesting to see what the outcome will be. I am planning on refining it a little further regarding sentence and paragraph structure. I am still not convinced the way I organized the paragraphs was the most effective way I could have. I am hoping to receive some critique from my family and maybe more peer critique. The only thing other than that is I will have to cut it down to make it under 500 words. My final draft was only about 510 words but cutting it down and using just as effective words is my final task before I submit it to NPR.
I have most definitely gained a different perspective on brotherhood and the relationship I have with him. Before I thought it was defiantly a close call but going back now and thinking about it I realized that something devastating could have easily happened that day and I should never take anything for granted especially the relationship I have with my brother. This project changed my perspective on brotherhood also just writing because I have never thought this much in depth about our relationship. Before writing this essay I didn’t think the strongest bond I had in my life was my brother. Thinking about this project in general was a great experience in itself. When I was thinking about the things that I believe in that applies to my everyday life, I had come up with so many ideas. All of the ideas I came up with I had never even thought of before in such depth. I had a great time with this project and have taken away a lot.
I believe in brotherhood
This assignment was called the This I Believe essay. For this essay we wrote about a core belief we have learned from our own life experiences that can be applied to our daily life. Writing an essay this personal can be a very difficult process. To begin to understand the writing format of the essay, we explored a lot of essays from the This I Believe website and what skills made the essay unique such as authentic voice, communal relevance and narrative coherence. These traits were ideal for a This I Believe essay to connect personally with the reader. Then we started to think of our own topics that we believe in for our own essay. The credo assignment was our next task to begin our own essays brainstorm. The credo assignment was a small 250 word piece of writing that defined our belief to get our ideas flowing. I did not write my credo on brotherhood, but it was still helpful to get an idea of the format we would be writing in. Our next assignment was the actual This I Believe essay. After we wrote our rough drafts we had a peer critique which I thought was extremely constructive. After making the changes recommended by my peers I proof read it and fixed the little things, then submitted my final draft.
I have never had a writing assignment like this one, I found it very difficult to find a topic for my essay. Brainstorming was only difficult at first. By the end of our brainstorming process I had many interesting ideas of my beliefs. The two things I found the most difficult were choosing a topic, and keeping my essay under 500 words. I had narrowed down my topic to my top three and finally made my decision on writing about brotherhood. The primary reason I chose this topic was because I had the most dramatic story that goes with the belief. This was ideal to hit the part of the This I Believe essay that connects with your reader using the three skills I mentioned in the first paragraph. I felt the story was a good usage of authentic voice because I could tell it very well after experiencing it in person. The habit of heart and mind that helped me the most for this particular essay is advocacy. I only advocated for one meeting with Jessica but the meeting helped with everything I needed. The main thing I needed from the meeting was feedback on paragraph structure. I was getting very worked up about what the best order of my paragraphs would be to where I could keep my hook. Jessica told me that it worked the way I had them, and I thought it did to at first but some of the people that read my essay thought it was confusing to jump from my evidence to my story.
I am proud of a few things in my essay, one being my lead. “It was a beautiful day in the desert of Utah. The sun was beating down on the Indian creek waterfall, awaiting a life changing event.” This lead was in the top three of my leads options and I got a lot of feedback stating it was a very powerful hook. To me it did not seem that great but after re wording it and doing some minor editing it started to really stand out to me. When I looked at the rubric engaging leads I chose the strategy of “Description (of a person or setting)”. I described the scene of the day the event happened between my brother and me. I made my hook two strong sentences and stated the setting, and an engaging statement at the end to draw in the reader.
I am definitely planning on submitting my draft to NPR, I don’t see why not and I think it will be interesting to see what the outcome will be. I am planning on refining it a little further regarding sentence and paragraph structure. I am still not convinced the way I organized the paragraphs was the most effective way I could have. I am hoping to receive some critique from my family and maybe more peer critique. The only thing other than that is I will have to cut it down to make it under 500 words. My final draft was only about 510 words but cutting it down and using just as effective words is my final task before I submit it to NPR.
I have most definitely gained a different perspective on brotherhood and the relationship I have with him. Before I thought it was defiantly a close call but going back now and thinking about it I realized that something devastating could have easily happened that day and I should never take anything for granted especially the relationship I have with my brother. This project changed my perspective on brotherhood also just writing because I have never thought this much in depth about our relationship. Before writing this essay I didn’t think the strongest bond I had in my life was my brother. Thinking about this project in general was a great experience in itself. When I was thinking about the things that I believe in that applies to my everyday life, I had come up with so many ideas. All of the ideas I came up with I had never even thought of before in such depth. I had a great time with this project and have taken away a lot.