Marching Band

I approached this essay differently than I typically approach papers. I started by making a long list of everything I remembered from my past. After I finished the list, I read it over once before I took the list outside and burnt it to prevent anyone from seeing it. Then, I started to try and find a memory I did not fear people seeing. By the day before first draft was due, I was going slightly insane from frantically searching for any good memory to write about. “I’m surprised you didn’t write about band,” Mrs. Miller stated when she heard my concerns. Thus, I decided to write about my first year of marching band. “Music was a coping method,” I wrote in my first draft, because I was worried about revealing more. However, when Mrs. Stokes

By trying to avoid conflict, or even trying to look cool, people effectively hid from problems in their lives. Thus, my idea of hiding from problems was able to directly relate to a large audience. Furthermore, the last three paragraphs related to my audience by moving beyond my own story. The third to last paragraph brought in the first instance of “we”, which my second to last paragraph continued building. My conclusion paragraph referred to how people are hurting themselves, because they avoided a problem instead of dealing with it. In the end, I believe my concise ending idea, by hiding from problems we only “hurt [ourselves]”, was presented in a way that allowed the essay to move past my own experience and relate to

Because multiple people said I overused narration in the first few drafts, a lot of narration was cut from my final draft. To show the extent of the narration cut, I pointed out the following section: “The band director’s praise doomed my first season with the Waterford Wildcat Pride Marching Band. Mr. Laswell, the director, told my mother I was better than the senior tenor saxophone player. The senior player overheard their conversation, and her animosity spread throughout the band overnight.” This section was originally covered over two paragraphs, but I revised the section to be a few sentences. Because of the extensive cuts, I worried the narration was lacking in my final draft. Thus, I added the “we tried to hide” scenario in case my narration was too brief. I believed my narration allowed readers to see my points instead of just my