Essay 1: Personal Narrative

First Draft due Monday, September 28

Final Draft Due Thursday, October 1

Five to Six Pages, Typed and Double-Spaced

For this assignment you will write a personal narrative in which you tell a story about a problem that you have encountered with regard to one of the following factors that determine community health:

  • Access to physical activity spaces
  • Access to health care
  • Access to transportation
  • Access to healthy food
  • Access to housing
  • Access to a safe neighborhood free from violence
  • Access to clean air
  • Access to jobs
  • Freedom from incarceration
  • Access to education

These factors appear on the graphic "Cultivating Health Equity" on page five of The Landscape of Opportunity, which we will read after the due date for the final draft of this essay.

Your essay will probably have a two-part structure. In the first part you introduce the problem and trace the developments that lead to the problem. In the second part you trace the development of solutions or the ways in which you have been able to cope with the problem.

In your essay you should aim to narrate specific events that happened at specific times. You can describe repeated events and periods of time, but the focus of your essay should be singular events that were a part of a sequence of events. For example, you should not have paragraphs that are organized in terms of years in school. Instead, your paragraphs should follow the timeline that is set by the problem and the solution.

Note that procrastination and time management will not be acceptable problems for you to write about. If your essay involves procrastination or time management issues then you should think of problems around procrastination and time management as symptoms rather than problems in themselves.

The essay will abide, when possible, with the essay-grading rubric for EWRT1A. Some points on the rubric are not readily applicable to personal narratives.

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