Kate Barber
Ms. Barber
EN 1010-16
22 August 2014
Personal Essay Outline
Chosen topic: Choose a photograph, recent or old, that is important to you. Write an essay about that photograph, the day on which it was taken, the people or place pictured in it, and why they are important to you. Did something in your life change that day? Was something clarified?
Describe your topic choice: Two years ago, I took a trip to Wilmington, North Carolina. This trip changed my life in several ways, and was easily the best week of my life.
Thesis: During this vacation, I learned that we often find hope in the strangest places, I fell in love with a city I eventually moved to, and I was inspired to write a story that morphed into my now three-hundred-page novel.
Point 1: I learned that unlikely friendships can be formed. The friends who took this trip together believed very different things, disagreed on most any topic, and were very different. Somehow, though, we were all very close, and over the course of the week, through these friendships, I experienced a hope after a hard time that was very unexpected.
Point 2: Wilmington, North Carolina is a city home to Screen Gems Studios, where shows such as Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, Matlock, Sleepy Hollow, Under the Dome, and Revolution have been filmed, in addition to films like A Walk to Remember, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Iron Man 3, Meet the Millers, and Tammy. The city sits between a beach and a river and also doubles as a college town to UNCW. I enjoyed the downtown on the river setting as well being able to enjoy a beach just minutes away. The people in Wilmington are very friendly, easy to talk to, and all seem to agree on one thing: Wilmington is full of magic.
Point 3: While on the beach during this trip, I talked to my friend Nick about what an odd group of friends the five of us are. I am a Methodist preacher’s daughter, Nick is a very liberal youth minister who also works at a distillery, Seth and Loganne are very rigid Pentecostals, and Russ is a Pentecostal ladies’ man who flirts a lot. I said to Cody, “On what planet would the five of us ever be friends? This is like a film script of some CW teen drama that someone scrapped. I should write a story about this trip.” So I did. From that story came characters that grew into my graduate thesis project and eventually, a full-length novel.
Conclusion: This trip really changed me because it taught me about friendships, about how strong a love for a place can be, and it inspired a group of stories that is very important to me.