Essay 3: Personal Artifact
What objects tell the story of your life? Can you identify one object that you would include in an exhibit or book about your life? Why did you select this object?
Using narrative, description, and sensory details, recapture a specific time and place that relates to the cultural artifact you shared. Do more than just tell a story. Your narrative needs a central idea and a point. It should show readers something more about human nature, about each other, about ourselves. For example, how did this experience teach you and influence who you are today and who you want to become? How might this experience show the universality of humanity?
Use these writings as the basis for your essay:
1. Describe the artifact objectively so that someone who could not see it would get a good visual picture of it. Be precise in your description.
2. What questions could you ask about this artifact? 3. Write about the significance of the artifact to you now as you look back on the
time or the relationship it represents. 4. Free associate, using the artifact as a base and coming back to it. 5. Describe the artifact in use, in context. What stories does it remind you of? 6. Tell a story about the artifact.
3 pages, typed, double-spaced.