Sample Narrative Essays
Seth French
Thesis in Introduction: Based on an Essay by Xihong Su
Essay Prompt: Overall, has technology made your life better or worse? Think of specific moments in your life that illustrate how your relationship with technology has developed throughout your life in order to answer this question. Keep in mind that you’re not just telling a story. You’re writing an essay to support your response and using stories from your life to illustrate your answer. You should incorporate details to highlight your point and engage a reader’s interest. Your essay should be approximately 750 words.
The Internet Has Made My Life Better
While walking around campus, many students access the Internet by phone. They may chat with other people and play games. While attending class, we may participate in class activities and upload homework to D2L on the Internet. If there were no Internet, what would happen? Whether you recognize that the Internet has changed our lives or not, the Internet does change our lives. In my opinion, the Internet has made my life better.
The Internet has changed the way that I can communicate with friends. I left my hometown and went to the first university about fifteen years ago. I was excited that I could make new friends and learn new knowledge from the university. However, I missed my friends who were in other cities. I often mailed letters with some photos to my friends and told them something interesting in campus and kept in touch with them. It often took several days or one week to receive letters. Sometimes, a letter might be lost. In June 2001, to my joy, there was a public computer room where students could access the Internet in the university. In the first few months, the computer room was full of students all day long. At the same time, the Internet chat tool, QQ, became very popular among students. When my friends and I were all available, I used QQ to chat with them face to face and heard their voices and saw their facial expressions. How wonderful the Internet was! In addition, sending an email partly took the place of mailing a letter. I composed messages with some digital pictures and sent them to my friend in an email. An email was almost instant and helped me learn about information from friends as soon as possible. Now, I can post my latest information and pictures in my Facebook that is a worldwide network service. All my friends in Facebook can see the information and comment on it and share it.
The Internet provides me a lot of helpful information. First, as a student, I need to write some essays and research papers. For example, one assignment I had was to write about King David. I searched the keywords “King David” in relative databases in the OSU library and chose several papers that were most relative to King David. I also input “King David” in Wikipedia and saw relative descriptions of King David from different perspectives. These published electronic resources really helped me write a thoroughly researched paper.
Second, after one day of classes, I wanted to make healthy and delicious foods in my dormitory. Before buying foods, I looked for nutrition information of foods and decided which kind of foods I would buy. After I prepared my food materials, YouTube videos of cooking foods guided me to cook foods step by step. No matter what level my cooking skills were, if I followed the guidance I would make delicious foods.
Third, because I like relaxing myself on holiday, traveling could be very important in my life. Before traveling, I may try to find as much information as I can on the Internet, such as weather, transportation, hotels, ticket prices and local foods. There are also travel guides and comments from other people who have been to scenic spots. Comments and relative information helped me make a better traveling plan about three years ago. My husband and I spent one month in traveling across half of China and enjoyed the travel. Therefore, there are a lot of electronic resources on the Internet. It may be very difficult for me to get much useful information without the Internet in a short time.
The Internet gives me more entertainment as well. First, there are many games that people can play together on the Internet, such as Popkart. I liked playing Popkart about four years ago. I did not need to worry about the speed limit or accidents that a car might cause while I was driving a car in the game. Second, many entertainment performances can be found on the Internet. It may not be easy to see some live performances on TV, such as TV shows. However, I can find TV Shows on the Internet and see them many times.
The Internet enables me to communicate with other people in an effective way. It provides a lot of electronic information and increases the speed of obtaining information that I want. It also enriches my life. Therefore, the Internet has really made my life better.
Thesis in Conclusion: Based on an Essay by Victoria Ferguson
Essay Prompt: For this essay you already food near to illustrate a key point about the relation to food culture and slash for identity keep in mind that you’re not just telling a story you’re writing an essay to support your main point in using a narrative using corporate details about your poison engage readers centers. Your essay should be approximately 750 words.
“You’ve gotta’ try this!”
My obsession with trying different types of food began in my dad’s second floor apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The apartment was “cool” because it was on the second floor. It had stone steps leading upward to the small patio and doorway that was teeming with many varieties of potted plants. A person passing by could see the soft blanket of colors that the flowers made against the railing of the patio – an urban jungle. My dad always had an interest in things that many, who are familiar with gender roles, would call “feminine.” These interests and passions consisted of potted plants, metro-sexual fashion, wine, and of course, fine cuisine. My dad was the type of person who would go to the grocery store to buy the freshest ingredients possible to try out the most recent recipe he had read in either his French or German cookbook. He also enjoyed coming home with the most foul-smelling cheese you can imagine because according to him “the stinky cheese is the best!” This sense of culinary adventure also extended into our experiences on the nights when dad didn’t feel like cooking.
Dad always had a way of finding what he called a “hole-in-the-wall place.” He always told me that “the hole-in-the-wall places always have the best food!” and boy, did we live by this mantra. We often found ourselves at restaurants where we were the only pair that spoke English. We would end up in the Mexican part of town at restaurants with the most delicious, authentic food in town. We would also go to many different Asian restaurants and on special occasions, we ended up at the nicest French restaurant in town and ate delicious, buttery escargot and flaky bread.
My most vivid memory of adventuring into the world of food occurred at a small, “hole-in-the-wall” Japanese restaurant called Ichiban. I was seven years old, and I loved Pokémon. The place was barely even visible from the road. When you walked through the ordinary glass, you found yourself inside of the elegant world of Ichiban. Little red cushioned chairs were neatly placed around square wooden tables. The red cushions gained even more vibrancy due to the overall reddish glow of the restaurant’s interior. A soft, red lighting beamed from lanterns that seemed to float in the air, like lonely balloons that had been left behind after escaping a child’s clutch. Bottles of Kikkoman brand soy sauce found their homes atop the square wooden tables, and seemed to accessorize the little red cushioned chairs. When we were seated, I did as any restaurant patron does: I looked at the menu and sipped on the glass of ice water in front of me.
As I was exploring the menu my dad leaned over and said to me: “You’ve gotta’ try Tako salad!” The first thing I thought of when my dad said “Tako salad” was the yummy combination of ground beef, cheese, pico de gallo, salsa, a dollop of sour cream and various toppings of the consumer’s choosing, that would all be served up in a crunchy, taco shell bowl. Thus the name “Taco salad.” When my dad asked me to try a food, I was always expected to give the dish a try. I was never that kid who got chicken or spaghetti at every restaurant.
I was a fearless and open-minded child who could never be labeled as picky eater. When my dad said we had to try the Tako salad, I of course agreed to order it. When it arrived, I realized that this was not the Taco salad I had envisioned. In front of me was a pure white bowl in the shape of a flower. In its center were colorful bits of cucumber with sesame seeds, fresh strips of something soft and green, and glistening pieces of white edged in pinkish purple. My dad was smiling at me.
I picked up my chopsticks and put one of the thin white slices into my mouth. It was strange, chewy, vinegary….delicious! We had ordered Tako Sun, cold octopus and vegetables in a sweet, savory vinegar sauce. That day at Ichiban, a miraculous transformation happened: a seven year old girl, who loved Pokémon and was seated on a red cushioned chair, fell in love with Asian cuisine. I began to make connections between food and culture. Japan is an island nation surrounded by bodies of water. With this abundance of water, the Japanese enjoy many seafood dishes that are not typically served in other cultures. One of those strange creatures is octopus. The simple elegant furnishings of the restaurant and the beautiful white bowl and the elegant arrangement of each item in it spoke of the Japanese attention to meticulous detail and fondness for precise rituals.
I am forever grateful to my dad for taking me out of my comfort zone. He made me give different and exotic foods a try. This did something even deeper for me than tantalize my taste buds: it made me love and appreciate cultures other than my own. Food is now the focal point of my experience with other cultures, and I have blossomed into a lifelong cross-cultural “foodie” thanks to the simple phrase my dad loved to say: “You’ve gotta’ try this!”