Chris Dev 6/19/15
English Period
3
ENGLISH FINAL
CONTEXT AND REFLECTION:
When I was first introduced to this assignment, the first piece of
writing that came to mind was my slice of life paragraphs. I like these pieces
because it allows me to describe what has happened in my life which is
sometimes hard to portray if you were writing a fictional story about yourself.
When I looked through the numerous slice of life writings that I have created,
I choose this one because I believe that it clearly shows off my ability as a
writer and what I can do to add drama, excitement and action. When I sat down
and deeply analyzed this piece of writing, I concluded to make many changes
such as grammar and spelling errors. These changes will help with the
smoothness and ease of reading of the piece. I also noticed that there were
some context errors which depreciated the moral value of this writing. By
having context errors, the whole theme of the story is thrown off and confuses
the reader about what might be happening at that section. Each one of these
changes to the story will bring out the messages and values, such as action and
romance, that might not be noticeable if these errors remain in the story.
THE PIECE:
Just an Ordinary Day
On a blistering hot day in the middle of July, my family and I
were riding on a boat up on Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains. The
weather was the best it could ever be. The place that we had originally gotten
the boat from was in the town of which we were staying, but the part that we
were boating in was where there were barely any houses or docks, mainly
wilderness. After about a half of an hour of swimming my brother looked up to
see that there was an enormous black cloud headed our way. We nervously crept
onto the boat as we examined the phenomenon coming our way. Then we
realized that the storm had covered the place where we had rented our boat
which meant that if we tried turning back now, we would only be bringing
ourselves into the heart of this death storm. We then drove at full throttle
away from the storm but after about 5 minutes of riding realized that there
would be no way that we could out run this storm. The boat that we were on had
no cabin and was covered in metal which means that it would be a hotspot for a
lightning storm. My mother had started to panic and put all of our food in a compartment
so that it would not get wet. I was starting to feel a little queasy about what
would happen next until, like a sending from god, I noticed a beaten down shack
way off in a cluster of trees and shrubs. It even had a dock.
“Hey!” I blared over the
noisy sounds of wind and thunder.
“There’s a house with a
dock over there!”
My dad squinted through
the rain and shouted back
“I see it to!” He
screamed.
As we steered the boat
into the dock my dad told me to jump into the water and grasp a rope attached
to the boat so that we could tie it to the dock. He told me that there were too
many rocks for him to pull the boat into next to the dock. At this point, I had
a surge of fear rush through my body like stepping outside with no clothes on a
freezing winter day. After tying the rope to the dock, I scrambled back onto
the boat to bring some of the towels off to put on the dock because of how
soaked they were getting. My brother, dad and mom were now sitting on the dock
watching the storm. I came over to them and told them I would go knock on the
door of the house just to make sure that there was no one home. I went over and
knocked three times. No answer. I knocked again. As I reached for the handle,
the door suddenly inched open from the wind of the storm. I poked my head
inside to see that there was no one there. The lights were out and
unfortunately the people that were living there must have forgot to un clog
their toilet. I shouted back over to my parents.
“You can come in!
There’s no one here!”
They scrambled over to
me and came inside. We were drenched and it was nice to have a roof over our
head. We sat on the one bench sitting in the middle of what looked like was the
main room for almost 4 hours. My dad took out his phone and tried to call the
local coastguard but there was no cell service out here in the wilderness. We
decided that we should just wait out the storm. My mom took out our soggy
lunches and gave them to my dad and I. As I watched the rain poor down on the
lake, I remembered how just a couple hours back, the sun was out and there were
no clouds in the sky. I then wondered what might be happening right now if we hadn’t
found this shack or the tiny dock. I sat and ate my sandwich for another hour
until the rain had finally started to slow down. I stepped outside to see that
the sun was finally starting to come out again. My dad checked his phone and
saw that we had been sitting in that room for a good 5 hours. It was now 4 in
the afternoon and we were all still very hungry. We stepped outside and got
back onto our boat. My dad was then able to get cell service so he called the
boat rental place and informed them what had happened. After all, we had only
rented the boat for 3 hours and we exceeded that limit by two hours. We arrived
at the boat shop and parked it in the garage. We then jumped into our soaking
car and drove home so we could each take steaming hot showers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
As a student, school was never really my FAVORITE thing. I have been at Dewitt Middle School for 2 years now and my thoughts about school have definitely changed in a good way. Not only have I been able to thrive in my English experiences but I have also been able to successfully gain knowledge about writing and context. When I had started this year, I had no idea about context clues or figurative language. Now that I have gained all of this useful knowledge, I can use in my writings such as the one I presented above. Each day in English class is an opportunity to learn, and I will keep learning until my English class ends. (Hopefully never :)
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