Highlight a Difference Essay

Before you write the actual essay, first you must do an Essay Topic Exploration and then compose an outline:

• Take your topic for the third paragraph assignment and extend it into a full essay. To do this you will need to break your paragraph topic into two middle paragraphs and then write a beginning paragraph and an ending paragraph to surround them. The idea for this essay will be to explain the difference between your stressful situation outside of school and a stressful situation in school.

Overview

• For this essay, you will support a thesis statement by showing how two situations are different in an interesting way.
• Your reader wants a new perspective on the nature of stress--your contrast will help show that stress is not simple.
• Base your response on your own personal experience.
• Identify one main difference between the stress in the two situations. The middle paragraphs will give examples from each situation to make the difference between them clear.

Clarify a Process Essay

Before you write the actual essay, first you must do an Essay Topic Exploration and then compose an outline:

• Take your topic for the second paragraph assignment and extend it into a full essay. To do this you will need to break your paragraph topic into two middle paragraphs and then write a beginning paragraph and an ending paragraph to surround them. The idea for this essay will be to explain a task that you can do to lower the burden of your stressful situation outside of school.

Overview

• For this essay, you will describe a process to prove how it can help you reach a goal.
• Your reader wants to understand the value of the task, not merely a summary or description.
• Base your response on your own personal experience.
• Describe what YOU actually did one time or what YOU plan to do so that you can show how your process is a good strategy. In other words, write about yourself. Do not give commands or use "you" in your essay.

Interpret an Experience Essay

Before you write the actual essay, first you must do an Essay Topic Exploration and then compose an outline:

• Take your topic for the first paragraph assignment and extend it into a full essay. To do this you will need to break your paragraph topic into two middle paragraphs and then write a beginning paragraph and an ending paragraph to surround them. The idea for this essay will be to explain how a particular struggle outside of school poses a potential problem for your academic success.

Overview

• For this essay, you will interpret an experience in order to prove a point about a source of stress in your life outside of school.
• Your reader wants to understand HOW your experience had an effect on your academic experience.
• Base your response on your own personal experience, not general ideas about stress that assume about everybody.

Essay Topic Exploration

You'll be writing four essays this semester, and for each one, you will have to compose a 12-line topic exploration before you begin outlining and writing the paper. To view possible topics for each essay, click on the essay assignment below:

1. Interpret an Experience
   
2. Clarify a Process
   
3. Highlight a Difference
   

Once you choose a topic, create a document in your Google Drive writing folder and name it this way: "LastName.FirstName.WhichEssay.Topic.Semester"

Let your mind think openly about the topic. Why does this topic interest you, and what is something that happened to you that you could base your essay on?

Each topic exploration is part of the completion grade you earn on that essay. In other words, if you skip the topic exploration, you cannot get full credit on the essay you write for that topic.

Readings

Look below for TIME Magazine essays that you can use to practice reading and see how essay writing is done by the best:

Obama vs. the Church
The Case for Making It in the USA
The Case for Inflation
The Penn State Effect
When Secrets Go Viral
The Hard Truth About Going 'Soft'
A Time to Compromise
For Richer or Poorer
After Trayvon Martin: How to Stay Alive While Being Black
Corporations Help School U.S. Students in Technology
Inside the Racist Mind
Citizens United
The Truth About Men, Women and Work
The Detached Dad's Manifesto
The New Battle over Financial Aid
An E-Mail Plea: Help Pay My Tuition!
Why Colleges Are Making Laptops A Must-Have
Outsourcing the Textbook
Hidden College Costs: Rising Fees
The Great Brain Drain
Got Money? Then You Might Lack Compassion
How Children Learn to Survive in a Meritocracy
Roaring Tigers, Anxious Choppers
When It Comes To Class Size, Smaller Isn't Always Better
Zero Tolerance, Zero Sense
The Coping Conundrum
Carnist Challenge: Making Meat-Eating Cruelty-Free
7. High-Status Stress
How to Teach Kids About Money
Does Obama's Education Plan Make the Grade?
Time Out: Gauging the Value of a Gap Year Before College
Student Debt for Life: New Government Rule Cracks Down on For-Profit Colleges
Can Schools Punish Students for Posting Racy Photos Online?
Why Students Have a Right to Mock Teachers Online
The New Sexism
Incarceration Nation
For-Profit Colleges: Educators or Predators?
Should Tenure Be Abolished?
The Education Crisis No One Is Talking About
Just Not the Marrying Kind
One Cure for Title IX Woes: Make Cheerleading a Sport
Now What?
The Upside of College Rejection: Your Safety School Might Be the Smarter Choice
Low Graduation Rates: It's Not Just Student-Athletes
KIPP Schools: A Reform Triumph, or Disappointment?
Are Parents Too Involved in the College-Admission Process?
The Case Against College Education
Actually, College Is Very Much Worth It
Larks and Owls: How Sleep Habits Affect Grades
Tuition Help for the Unemployed Gains Traction
What Facebook Users Share: Lower Grades
Should Students Be Paid for Good Grades?
Should Students Be Paid to Do Well in School?
New College-Loan Plan: Pay Back By What You Earn
TV for Babies: Does It Help or Hurt?
Parenting: The Case for Keeping Out
Why E-Mail May Be Hurting Off-Line Relationships
The World Wide Living Room
Study: Obsessive Web Surfers Are More Depressed
Twitter Lit: A New Creative Outlet
TAPS: Help for the Families of Fallen Soldiers
When Bullying Goes Criminal