In this personal essay portfolio, the goal is to use your personal experiences to discuss an issue that is larger than yourself. You will practice what you are learning about the rhetorical situation by choosing and then writing for an audience. You can choose the audience, but it needs to be a real, specific group of people who could actually read this piece of writing one day (i.e. your audience can’t be “the American people,” but could be “the XYZ admissions committee at the ABC graduate program”)

Depending on your audience, the essay can be funny or serious. It can be very personal or somewhat personal. You can choose a print modality, an audio essay, a video essay, or something else that helps you to achieve your purpose. Throughout the process, the goal is not just to craft great prose, but also to remain attuned to your purpose and your audience.

The final portfolio should contain a draft or script, a peer review, a final version, and a brief reflection (350-500 words) on the steps that you took to research, write, and revise your piece. Your reflection should also cover where you would send this essay, and why you think it would appeal to the specific audience that you’re targeting. It is not a requirement to actually send it (unless you want to!), but I do want you to have a specific venue in mind as you write. I have included some prompts with ideas and specific venues below, though you are not required to write your essay to respond to any of these. They’re just there to get you started.    

To maintain an A, the essay portfolio must contain all of the above components. To maintain a B, one component can be missing. To maintain a C, two components can be missing. To maintain a D, you only need to turn in the final draft of this project. 

Prompt Ideas:

Below, you’ll find some prompt ideas. You are welcome to use these if they are helpful to you, but you don’t have to use them. 

Prompt Idea #1

Choose a publication venue or an essay contest from the Where To Submit page on the website www.entropymag.org. Make sure that the venue is looking for essays. Read a few of the essays on the site to make sure that yours might be a good fit for this venue.

Prompt Idea #2:

Craft a personal narrative composition (text, video, audio, etc.) about your experience throughout this past year as a college student living through COVID-19 to contribute it to the Queens Memory Covid-19 Project. You might reflect on any aspect of your experience. Some ideas: 

• What it’s like to be a student during distance learning
• What it has been like to live in your neighborhood during COVID-19
• What it’s like to be an essential worker (if you are one) 
• What it’s like to be a parent or a caretaker (if you are one) 
• What it’s like to be involved in mutual aid or volunteer work 
• Anything else that feels relevant to you

From the website: “The Queens Memory Covid-19 Project is a borough-wide archiving campaign to collect first person stories of life in the epicenter of the pandemic. They want to make a lasting record of how we are living, working, learning, and helping one another in Queens during this unprecedented time. Go to queenslib.org/covid to see all the ways you can contribute stories in any format you’d like – audio, text, video, photos and writing. Submissions will become part of the archives at Queens College and Queens Public Library and will be shared by our tech partner, the Urban Archive.”

Please note that you are NOT obligated to submit this piece to the project if you decide that you don’t want to submit it.

Prompt Idea #3:

Are you thinking of going to graduate school or pursuing studies after you’re done with undergraduate work? Or do you need to write a personal essay for any other kind of scholarship, fellowship, or program entry opportunity? You are invited to write a first draft of your personal statement for this class: a genre which requires you to tell a personal story about yourself in order to make a case for why you should be selected for a particular program. 

To pursue this option, do a little research on the program you would like to join, and ensure that you will need a personal statement as part of your application (it’s likely that you will). Determine whether you need to answer a specific question or whether you are just required to submit a general statement. Then, read this quick list of tips from the Purdue OWL, which gives some great advice on getting started.  

Prompt Idea #4:

Choose an essay prompt from this list of scholarship essay prompts (the majority of which ask for personal narratives of some kind). Write your essay to respond to the prompt, whatever it may be. And then, if you want, actually apply for the money! Why not, right? You have to write the essay anyway. Might as well. 

Start by reading a few of the winning sample essays (if they’re available to you) and doing some rhetorical situation analysis on them. Refer back to the Rhetorical Situation Analysis prompt for a list of questions that you can ask yourself about the “moves” that these authors are making. 

Do note that some of these have scammy submission fees: don’t apply to those, please.  Also note that it’s OK if the deadline has passed: you can always get feedback on the essay from me and your classmates and the Writing Center, refine it, save it, and apply to the same scholarship next year. 

New: Prompt Idea #5

This prompt comes from a colleague of mine who is currently selecting essays for an edited collection. If this description below applies to you and you are interested in writing about this for your personal essay, please get in touch with me, and I will connect you to them.

“I’m working on an edited collection of essays whose purpose is to provide a broad overview of Orthodox Jewish childhood’s material culture. We’ve gotten a good selection of full-length in-depth academic analyses, and we’re looking for shorter, single-item-focused essays to round things out. [The essays in this collection will be personal essays where students write about] artifacts of their own childhoods – the books they read, the stories and music they listened to, the songs they sang, the toys they played with, etc. This is a great chance for [students] to have a publication as well.”

New: Prompt Idea #6

If you are the first person in your family to go to college (i.e. a first-generation college student), and you are interested in reflecting on your experiences, this is an option for you.

Review some of the recent submissions to First-Gen Voices: a journal from Loyola Marymount that features the creative and academic writing of first-generation college students, faculty, and staff. You might consider doing a Rhetorical Situation Reflection for one of your Weekly Work tasks on a piece from this journal to get started.

Then, craft a narrative about your experiences as a first-year college student at Queens College.

Please note that while this journal accepts poetry and fiction, since this is an essay class, I’d like for your submission to the class to be a personal essay, but I would also highly encourage you to submit creative work to the journal outside of the class! Also note that you are NOT obligated to submit the piece that you write to the journal if you don’t want to submit it.