length : 4 pages, not less, but an go up to 5

this essay is writing about a place that made who are you know.

The essay will start with a narrative about how you perceive yourself today (maybe recall an incident or experience which has made you question an aspect of your identity). This will help establish why you are interested in conducting this search of a real place that has been significant to your development. It will then lead into the story of your research: the different steps that you went through in order to gather information on this place. This research can include an interview, but will mostly depend on observation. It will also explain any challenges, dead ends, issues that you encountered in the process of this search. This part will be followed by an analysis of the place itself: colors, layout, location, structure etc.; your analysis will demonstrate an understanding of rhetorical concepts. Following the story of the research and the rhetorical analysis, you will reflect on your findings- both the answers that you found and the questions that still remain.

Your process

(1) Reflection and narration: Start out by reflecting on your own self at present, and then retrace your steps to a specific place in the past that has influenced you the most. As you retrace your steps, take notes on the process: what led you to choose this place, how are you planning on gathering information about this place/text, will you revisit or look at old pictures or interview others, and what you are hoping to learn. Take notes throughout as you record the story of your research in order to show its authenticity. Once you have narrated this part of the essay, you will proceed to the rhetorical analysis of the place.

(2) Critical re-reading and analysis: Choose the text/place that has had the most influence on your thinking/self and reread the text critically. If possible, re-visit the place or collect specific photographs (you can actually submit the pictures too by embedding them in your essay or attaching them separately). Just as in print text, during the first reading you get a sense of the text’s meaning and the experience of the text, or how it attempted to persuade you. The second reading is where writing actually begins to take place. Take extensive notes on the text, its parts/components, what the text is attempting to convey, to whom, how, and why it is effective/relevant.

(3) Evaluation: Following the analysis, you will evaluate your findings (what you learned about the place/text, what you learned about your own self), and reflect on what you have realized and/or what more is left to be explored.