Personal Narrative

Jacob Kirsch

10/19/15

English 101

Dr. Sonia Begert

It all started in September 2007 when I attempted to write my first real essay. It was the first day of school, so everyone was excited. We had to wait outside of the school in an area sort of like a college quad until our teacher, Mr. Brennan, opened the door. We would often get cold really fast since fall was right around the corner. The quad-like area was somewhat depressing, just a lot of concrete and a couple of blue picnic tables with benches attached to them. Dead leaves would often blow around like tumbleweeds in a desert. Since the whole classroom had to wait outside, most people got acquainted before we even got into the room. I checked my crappy glow-in-the-dark watch that I got out of a Rice Krispies cereal box. It was one minute until 8:45, when school was supposed to start. All of a sudden the worn blue metal door opened and we saw a tall bald man who looked like Mr. Clean, with some kind of beard/mustache combination. It was Mr. Brennan. He seemed happy to see us, and impatiently invited us in.

The classroom was pretty…. Interesting. It had brick walls, hideous blue and brown carpet, some bright orange counter tops that lined two walls, and a humongous heater under a window that overlooked the “quad”. There were about seven tables in the room with names on them. The tables had a “wood-like” plastic pattern surface, which sat four to each. We quickly found our spots and sat down. Before we could start chatting with our tablemates, Mr. Brennan began his introduction.

“Welcome to the 3^rd grade!” He exclaimed. “I’m Mr. Brennan, your teacher for the entire year. I’m so excited to be working with you!”

He continued introducing himself, talked about the class, and assigned our first project, an essay. Mr. Brennan handed out a paper, our first prompt. I took out my red notebook and placed it on the table in front of me, I was ready. The prompt read “Talk about your favorite type of dog and why it is your favorite! Your favorite dog could be any type of dog, real or fictional. Creatively write your essay in a five paragraph essay form.”

I had to do a double take. “What was a five paragraph essay form?” I thought. “Was I supposed to learn this last year?” Panic started creeping in, my skin started to crawl. I just kept staring at the prompt as time flew by faster than a military jet. As it did, anxiety engulfed me. About 2 hours later (which seemed easily like 5 minutes), we were dismissed for lunch.

 My classmates and I made our way to the multipurpose room, a huge gym-like area where we also had P.E. The floor was light brown hardwood with blue, red, and yellow painted lines for basketball and other sports. The room was illuminated by huge windows near the ceiling, 3 four paned windows per wall. Even though the majority of the students went up in line to buy hot lunch, I never did. I sat down at one of the brown fold-up tables, put down my red rectangular prism-like lunchbox, took in some air, and let out a huge sigh. I had no idea what I was doing, I couldn’t even touch my food. This essay was one of my biggest challenges yet. A challenge that I didn’t even know how to begin.

At the end of lunch, we were instructed by the lunch lady whose main job was to make sure we weren’t up to any shenanigans at lunch, to go back to our class. As I stumbled out of the multipurpose room, I felt as if I was about to burst out crying. Why was I not able to do this? Everyone else seemed to have an amazingly easy time with this project. I felt so ashamed and secluded, like I was stupid for not knowing how to write an easy five paragraph essay.

My class walked back to our room. Everyone took their seat and continued to work on our essays. I just kept staring at the prompt, occasionally acting like I was writing my essay in my notebook. About 10 minutes before class got out, I snuck out the door that connected to the hall, and hid in the bathroom until class was out so I didn’t have to turn in all zero pages of my essay. I ran to the bus, and couldn’t even thing about anything else for the rest of the night.

The next day turned out to be different.  Mr. Brennan handed back essays, not mine of course, and asked some of my peers to read theirs, luckily I wasn’t chosen. As I listened to my classmate’s essays, I tried to understand the form, and it still didn’t click. Some of their essays were very creative, especially this one guy’s whose favorite dog was a blue one with rainbow polka dots. It was weird, but still very enjoyable. Later, we were dismissed for lunch, Mr. Brennan stopped me right in my tracks.

“Jacob,” he said in an expressive voice, “I didn’t see your essay in the stack of ones I received, did you hand it in?”

I confessed. I told him that I didn’t do any of it, and because I didn’t know how to.

“Well why didn’t you ask for help?” he asked. I looked at the ground and remained silent with embarrassment.

“Alright,” he sighed. “Stay in here during lunch and I’ll explain it to you.” I was just happy I didn’t get in trouble.

Mr. Brennan urged me to grab a chair and come sit next to him in front of his computer. He pulled out his pesto spaghetti that he had packed for lunch, and opened a Microsoft word file on his computer.

“This is my template essay that I show to students who are having some trouble with theirs,” he said with some kind of proud tone. “You’re not the only one who didn’t understand, so don’t worry.”

He voiced that multiple students came up to him yesterday, not understanding how to write the essay. And just like that, so much anxiety and worry slid off my shoulders like a newly polished hockey puck on ice. I pulled out my notebook and started to take notes while Mr. Brennan slowly ate his green-speckled noodles.

“In a five paragraph essay, each paragraph should have at least 5 sentences. its first paragraph, is your introduction.” I started writing furiously in my notebook. “The first sentence is your opener, a short sentence about the main idea of your topic. The next three sentences should be your main points about your essay. For example, in yesterdays prompt, your main points would be why your favorite dog is your favorite.”

He described some creative examples like “because my favorite dog changes color” or “because my favorite dog sings”. I slowly started to understand everything as he went on to cover the last sentence of the first paragraph and the next 4 paragraphs. I was confident I was going to do this right. As Mr. Brennan finished up my classmates started to enter the room.

“I’m going to give you time to work on your essay out in the hall for the rest of the school day.” Mr. Brennan uttered to me. He ended up printing out his template for me to use, so all the stress notes I took and the cramp in my hand from writing too fast was ultimately for nothing. I thanked him an easy one thousand times, then skipped out into the hall. I put the prompt and my notebook on the only work space in the hall. It was a tan desk that was attached to the chair like you would see in 90’s movies. As I sat down, every word and sentence came to me so easy. Every minute I would look at what I wrote and then look at the template to make sure I was writing everything correctly in the correct form. School dismissed at 3:15, and I surprisingly ended up finishing it at 3:10. I was so happy and proud of myself. I had completed my first essay. I ripped the pages out of my notebook, ran into the classroom to staple it, and handed it in. Mr. Brennan read over my essay and gave me a huge smile.

“It looks great, Jacob!” he chuckled. “I bet next week’s essay will be even better!”

My smile morphed into a face of disbelief. I asked him to repeat.

“Next week’s essay…. We have one every week.” Something I apparently missed in the introduction. I turned around, walked to my seat, sat down for the last few minutes, and tried to focus on the work of art I just finished, not what he just shared with me. I had completed my first essay.

Even though some students and graduates say that a majority of the information they learn in school they will never use again, I knew the 5 paragraph essay form was different. I will forever be thankful to Mr. Brennan for sharing a literary method and tool that will help me with my education path for the rest of my life.