Highline Community College From Gas Stations to Trees Essay

I’m working on a english question and need a sample draft to help me study.

This writing assignment is designed to give you the opportunity to write about a subject on which you are the expert – yourself. It also offers you the opportunity to create a personal text that you may use in the development of work later in the quarter, and to consider your own position in relation to our broad course themes of place, space, and home.

As you write, think about context – this assignment asks you to zoom out gradually from a smaller context to something broader. This is a start to thinking about how important it is to consider context when reading and writing, an aspect of critical thinking we will be considering over the rest of the quarter. The image of Russian nesting dolls above reflects this idea – you are nested within ever-larger contexts or places, and all of these are connected somehow.

While you may choose to be creative, a basic structure for this paper might look like this:

• The first, introductory, paragraph, addresses where you are right now – what is the space you are inhabiting as you sit in front of your Zoom camera? Use descriptions (a good idea for thinking about descriptive writing is to consider some or all of the five senses: vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch).
• Then – Zoom out! what is the next context of your space right now? (a family home, a dorm, your car, and so on). Why are you there? Who is there? What impact does that have on your work?
• Then – Zoom out again! Where is that structure located? Think about your neighborhood, your city, and so on. As you are doing this work, the journalistic questions can be helpful to consider: Who? What? When? Where? Why? (W)How? (I add a ‘w’ to how, to make the list all w-words).
• Zoom out once more! What is the broader context of that neighborhood or city? Here you might think more about politics, or culture, or geography. Feel free to be creative.
• Then, in your conclusion, see if you can bring out some connection between the different locations on your Zoom Out journey: are there socioeconomic, racial, political, or other considerations linking these places? Are you constrained in your places, or are they chosen freely? What might you change? Given that you are required to stay in that initial place for many of life’s activities right now, how is your context helping or hindering your work?
• Use a basic font (Times New Roman or Arial, for example) in 12-point size.
• Indent paragraphs using the tab key. Do NOT add a space between paragraphs – the indent is sufficient.
• Use standard margin settings.
• Think up a creative title, and add your name at the top of the page.