Here is the chance, perhaps, for you to write the essay you have always wanted to write. The field is wide open. The only real constraints are that your topic must be based upon personal experience as I defined it, and you should be able to present a thesis encompassing the narrative you provide. You may use a series of briefer connected examples, or a single, extended, chronologically unified example. Certainly, given our series of readings, you may write about your experiences with war, either indirect, with violence, with ideas of personal responsibility. These papers cannot, however, be rants for or against war, say, or a particular war, but must be grounded in personal experience.
However, as I state in the first two sentences, your choice of subjects is your own.
The paper should begin with title and a first sentence that hooks the reader into the paper. You may place your thesis at the beginning, middle, or end of the essay, but it should fit where you place it. You will want to present strong descriptive and narrative detail throughout the paper. You will want a convincing conclusion that provides closure to the paper. My main concern is that you link your example(s) to your thesis and thus link memory to meaning.
Make sure that your paper includes the following:
a title that serves as an effective hook;
an introduction that draws the reader into the essay;
strong concrete descriptive details throughout;
clear narrative details;
a strong conclusion that provides closure and a sense of completeness for the paper;
a thesis, which provides a context of meaning for the memory or memories that your paper examines and that allows the paper to be more than a story, that allows it to be an essay.
Format your paper according to the model on page 193 in The Little Seagull Handbook.
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