#I use the HOT APE RIP method for writing if any of you are familiar

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

Essays I wrote this year

If you're unsure how to write an essay or would like examples of high-scoring first-year college essays, please DM me or hit up my ask box for a link to any of these.

Fashion Politics

Prompt: Describe one article of clothing that interacts with your gender and one other social identity.

I picked my novelty earrings and how they signify my gender as a femme nonbinary person and my sexuality and how my whiteness determines how other people perceive me because of them (i.e. seeing me as retro, fun, and quirky instead of gaudy or "ghetto."). 1.5k words (5 pages).

Score: 100%

Viking Mythology

Prompt: Write a short assignment analyzing a piece of media that contains Medievalism (the utilization of Medieval elements or ideas in modern media) and how it abides by and differs from the original Norse myths, as seen in the Poetic and Prose Eddas and other course readings, such as Adam of Bremen and the Merseburg Charms.

I wrote about Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard and how it is surprisingly accurate to the original source material, with only a few creative liberties taken. The ending is a list of bullet points trying to convince my professor to read the books (he said he was interested). 887 words (about 3 pages).

Score: 100%

World Religions

Prompt: Write about how a course reading reflects a) the mythological dimension, and b) one other dimension described by Ninian Smart.

I chose Hadith 2 from Muslim scripture because I had to analyze it for a separate assignment and was already familiar with it. 914 words (3 pages).

Score: 94% (no comments describing why points were deducted, but I cranked it out in like 3 hours, so, yeah, I didn't go as deep into it as I could have.)

I also had a personal essay for this class that I will not share with anyone but my mutuals because it contains personal information.

Language In Culture

Prompt #1: Analyze a recorded interview with a friend for meta-communicative tools. The interview in question is supposed to be 10 minutes in length and the interviewer is meant to ask one of two questions.

I interviewed someone whose anonymity I will maintain by using the pseudonym "Perry." The question I chose to ask was, "What was a strong disagreement you had with a close friend?" Our conversation was about the sexism of one of Perry's friends, and I argued that she relied upon the two of us sharing the identities of being AFAB and being raised in countries colonized by Britain (the USA for me, India for her). 1.3k words (4 pages).

Score: 98%

Prompt #2: Examine non-human characters in an animated film for their voices and determine what the audience is supposed to understand about the characters through their accents, use of vernacular, vocal pitches, etc.

I looked at Zootopia and discussed the characters Mr. and Mrs. Hopps, Gideon Grey, Fru Fru, and Finnick. Specifically I examined how rhoticity (the pronunciation of the letter "r" anywhere but the beginning of the word) is used within the film in Gideon's southern accent, Fru Fru's New Jersey/New York accent, and Finnick's blaccent.

Score: 97% [deducted points for some valid reasons and also because I said "blaccent" instead of African-American (Vernacular) English (AAE or AAVE), even though a blaccent can exist outside of the context of AAE.]

Prompt #3: Essentially the same as Prompt #1, except you needed a more solid thesis (not only that the interviewee used meta-communicative devices but also why those conventions were used.)

My thesis was that "Perry made a conscious effort to make the interview conversational, with contributions both from herself and from me— in spite of the fact that interviews often have a low-involvement speech style— in order to establish camaraderie between us as individuals who were assigned female at birth (AFAB)." 1.8k words (6 pages)

Score: 96% (entirely fair point deductions; I kind of rushed this essay, by which I mean I wrote it at 3 AM the day it was due while on my prescribed ADHD meds, which I accidentally took instead of my sleep meds that night— 2/10 would not recommend. Don't do drugs, kids.)

Japanese Culture (Intro Class)

Prompt: Go crazy go stupid just write a well thought-out paper about an aspect of Japanese culture we learned about in class.

I decided to write about how religious iconography is presented in the anime Blue Exorcist because I'm lame asf. My thesis was that the use of imagery in the story is propagandist because it portrays Japan as religiously unified, which it is historically not (of course, there's a lot more nuance that I'm not going to get into and some that I frankly couldn't even discuss in the essay itself.) Including the abstract, footnotes, and bibliography, 2.5k words (7 pages of actual content).

Score: 95% (comments not provided, but I probably deserved it because there's, again, a lack of nuance.)

I wrote other papers, too, but these were the major ones. I go to a relatively prestigious state school that has a large student population, great sports and academic programs (especially for STEM, which I am not in), and a reputation for being a party school. Feel free to ask questions about my essay-writing process, about my school, or about what overall grades I got in these classes!

#essay tips #college advice #writing tips #writing advice #argumentative writing #DM or ask for more info #citations are either in MLA or in Chicago style #I can answer a lot of questions about MLA bc that's the citation style with which I'm most familiar #I use the HOT APE RIP method for writing if any of you are familiar #if you're not feel free to ask and I can make another post about that