Chris Essay 20

April 20, 2010

Mr. Salsich

English

FINAL DRAFT

Family Matters:

An Essay on the Role Models in To Kill a Mockingbird and My Life

(TS) Family members are there your whole lives, so they must be altruistic role models for you. (CM) Over the years, I have learned many things from the role models in my life, and fortunately, they have all been good. (CM) Everyone has family members in their lives, including the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. (CS) I can find many relations between these characters and my real life role models. One relation is that some of the characters and my family members both posses kind, caring and unselfish hearts.

(TS) I truly admire the many great members of my family. (SD) Firstly, I truly admire my astounding mother because she has an amazing job. (CM)  Amazingly, she has the tough, the strenuous and the arduous job of being a scientist for 25 years, as well as raising a child. (Parallelism)  (CM) She has maintained this job, but also has cooked family dinner's and helped me in my studies, as well as other tasks. (SD) Another character in my family that I admire is my marvelous father. (CM) My father has worked hard as an engineer, but has also somehow managed to be a normal father to me. (CM) Also, as an engineer for the navy, he has gone on numerous submarine voyages beneath the ocean’s surface. I admire this very much, as I know I would never be brave enough to do this. (SD) The final, and possibly most admirable person in my family, is my charismatic, clever and cool (Alliteration, thesaurus word and repetition) babci(grandmother). (CM) She has not only raised my mother, but she has also been a major part in raising me. (CM) Ever since I was little she has gone out of her way to support me. She would make the hour’s drive at a moment’s notice to come and see me or take care of me. (CS) These admirable people in my life are amazing, and I hope that one day, I can be as astounding as them.

(TS) I have found a few ways that my admirable babci (grandmother) can be related to To Kill a Mockingbird. (SD) Just like Atticus Finch, my babci is a great person; she is caring, thoughtful, pleasant, kind, willing and patient. (Loose sentence) (CM) Atticus is always patient with his children, and cared for them very much; my prodigious (thesaurus word) babci was the same way while helping to raise me. (CM) She would always care for me whole-heartedly, and was always patient with my childhood behaviors. (SD) Another character I can relate my astonishing babci to in To Kill a Mockingbird is Aunt Alexandria. (CM) Aunt Alexandria tried to bestow her ladylike ways upon Scout, and my babci did a similar thing to me. (CM) Throughout my childhood she taught me manners, as well as the values of dignity, respect, integrity. She taught me how to be a good person. (CS) The marvelous family values that my babci possesses can be related to the values of characters in To Kill a Mockingbird.

(TS) As role models, family members reflect their actions upon others. (CM) In fact, if you observe a family, a child will usually act a lot like their parent or other family member because that is who they emulate. (CM) An example of this in To Kill a Mockingbird is that by the end of the book, Scout notices that Jem is becoming wise and able to answer questions, just like his father. (CS) I hope to continue to learn from my family members, the role models in my life because one day, I will be a role model to the next generation.



Self Assessment:


The most difficult part of this essay for me was deciding what family members to use. This is not because I thought none were admirable, rather so many are admirable, that I had to decide three. The biggest difference between my first and final drafts is that I worked on polishing up the essay to make sure it had good style. Although I feel i made good points in my first draft, some of them were not as clearly written as I would like, so I tried to focus on editing this. The best part of my essay was probably the topics. I feel that I chose great examples of admirable family members and made good points about them. I feel that I could have looked it over more carefully to make it flow better, and also I believe I could have added more information to the essay to support my thoughts better. Overall, I believe I deserve a B.