Connecting Through Form

            It was a great experience in sharing and reading my personal essay with my girlfriend, as it provided good feedback on some things I could work on, but as well as strengthen our relationship together. Some of the changes that I made after I read it out loud once again and hearing some of the feedback she gave I think really improved the overall strength of the essay. Not really any major changes to the essay, but small tweaks here and there on words and phrases that help the flow of the essay and improve the description in the essay.

            Like I said before, the experience of sharing my own writing with my girlfriend was a very positive one. Let alone the feedback she gave, I was able to express a mission memory in a whole new form that allowed her to connect to it in a different way. Instead of telling her a story by memory, I let the words of this personal essay bring her into a small portion of my mission. She was able to see another view, angle, perspective of my experiences in Africa through my writing. I don’t share my writing with anyone in my personal life, so I was little nervous when reading this to her. But she greatly appreciated it, and this opened up questions and discussion on some other parts of my mission that we had never talked about before. This experience showed me that writing is just another form of how we can express ourselves to our audience and others. Sometimes, like writing in different styles, communicating through formal essays instead or tweets or texts, we can have a better personal connection with someone and connect with a multitude of people.