http://www.chinaitproducts.com/my-friends-son-had-written-an-essay-please-help-rate/ China IT products,IT Industry News, reviews and reference! Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:27:23 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 hourly 1 http://www.chinaitproducts.com/my-friends-son-had-written-an-essay-please-help-rate/comment-page-1/#comment-3908 Nobody Special Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:43:00 +0000 http://www.chinaitproducts.com/my-friends-son-had-written-an-essay-please-help-rate/#comment-3908 I was unclear what connection you hoped to draw between the childhood creed and the experience in the bank. It seemed to me that you were intending to demonstrate personal growth from this anecdote, but I came away with the sensation that you chose to keep the "childish creed" despite evidence that it hadn't worked. Can you be more explicit about how your perspective matured? What you learned from being rejected that will allow you to keep your optimism and yet help you succeed next time? As I read, I also noticed a number of stylistic points which made it difficult for me to follow your ideas. For instance, I found "I vigorously looked for an internship on weekends in a bank" unclear (did you look for internships on the weekends? did you look for a weekend internship?). Likewise, there are some cases of incorrectly applied phrases, like "Brainstorming my mind" (you can't brainstorm something; you just brainstorm). I also noticed a few dangling participles... these can be hard to explain. When you say "After optimistically waiting for 10 minutes, a general manager came to that cozy meeting room," the sentence is structured so that you're saying the general manager waited optimistically before entering the room. This is because there is no subject in the first clause, so the verb acts with the subject in the second clause. An easy way to fix this kind of error is to say something like "After I had waited optimistically for 10 minutes, a general manager..." and so on. Something I generally suggest to students of mine is reading an essay out loud. When we write, we sometimes get caught up in the slightly unnatural act of writing, which can make things come out funny. Reading out loud allows you to hear when sentences are structured in a way you just wouldn't use in conversation. You definitely have the makings of a good essay here -- I believe I can see what you're going for in connecting the two segments of the essay, but I think you could make it clearer for the reader. Hopefully my comments have been helpful. I was unclear what connection you hoped to draw between the childhood creed and the experience in the bank. It seemed to me that you were intending to demonstrate personal growth from this anecdote, but I came away with the sensation that you chose to keep the “childish creed” despite evidence that it hadn’t worked. Can you be more explicit about how your perspective matured? What you learned from being rejected that will allow you to keep your optimism and yet help you succeed next time?
As I read, I also noticed a number of stylistic points which made it difficult for me to follow your ideas. For instance, I found “I vigorously looked for an internship on weekends in a bank” unclear (did you look for internships on the weekends? did you look for a weekend internship?). Likewise, there are some cases of incorrectly applied phrases, like “Brainstorming my mind” (you can’t brainstorm something; you just brainstorm). I also noticed a few dangling participles… these can be hard to explain. When you say “After optimistically waiting for 10 minutes, a general manager came to that cozy meeting room,” the sentence is structured so that you’re saying the general manager waited optimistically before entering the room. This is because there is no subject in the first clause, so the verb acts with the subject in the second clause. An easy way to fix this kind of error is to say something like “After I had waited optimistically for 10 minutes, a general manager…” and so on.
Something I generally suggest to students of mine is reading an essay out loud. When we write, we sometimes get caught up in the slightly unnatural act of writing, which can make things come out funny. Reading out loud allows you to hear when sentences are structured in a way you just wouldn’t use in conversation.
You definitely have the makings of a good essay here — I believe I can see what you’re going for in connecting the two segments of the essay, but I think you could make it clearer for the reader. Hopefully my comments have been helpful.

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