TWO: Memoirs of a Procrastinator

During the past unit, we learnt about memoirs so that we could write our own excerpt of a memoir. In doing so, we read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. I really enjoyed this memoir. I thought it was really interesting to be able to learn about Jeannette Walls' life and to be able to experience the events with her. Jeannette Walls has a very intriguing story and the way in which she tells it is what makes The Glass Castle so great. I think I was as interested as I was, because without fully relating myself to those specific events, I could somewhat connect myself with some of them at the same time. As bad as it may sound, Jeannette's family kind of made me think of mine. Not to claim that my family is anywhere near as "unique" as Jeannette's, but I'm just saying, my mother will leave a car if she has to. I find it to be quite refreshing that being a memoir based on her actual life, Jeannette was able to get a happy ending despite her unorthodox beginning.   

Once we were writing our actual memoir, I didn't find it as difficult to write, compared to writing a story because we were simply recalling our personal experiences and making them more interesting. The hard part for me was deciding how to tie the different events together as everything in my memoir is true, however the order in which the events occurred are not. Another thing I found difficult was how to express everything in a way that would make it as interesting as possible since my life is nowhere near as eventful and exciting as Jeannette Walls’. Surprisingly, I did somewhat enjoy writing the memoir but I can’t say that I’m completely satisfied with my final product. As I was writing there were parts that I had thought of improving and certain things I had thought of adding, however I made the careless mistake of procrastinating, like I do, and not going back over it again to fix them. I am glad that we did those little exercises in class where we'd list 5 things and write about one, because otherwise I would have wasted so much time trying to think of what part of my life to write about. Overall, I enjoyed the memoir unit. It gave me a chance to think about not only my life but how drastically different someone else's could be without even realizing it.