Swiss Miss

    In Amanda Thompson's personal essay "Swiss Miss" (2015), claims that the reason she acts the way she does is because it's easier for her to think more clear especially since her feelings aren't involved. She tells us how she was forced to go to her grandparents camp at their church and how she had to go on a trip with other kids around her age so she could become more social. The purpose of this personal essay was to inform us and let us know that it's okay to be different and be alone but in order to become more social you have to be able to understand others.The intended audience are students and those who have similar situations.

     After reading the personal essay we felt a sort of pride for Amanda for making friends she had once detested. Her change in attitude toward the girls was surprising to us and even countered what we originally thought of her. This led us to believe that Amanda is actually a pretty friendly person despite of all her actions in the past. She came out of her comfort zone and discovered a side of her she had never seen before.   

        Amanda Thomson explains her personality of being alone by using a story of her summer experience with her church’s youth group. She believes that there is nothing wrong with being alone. Her actions made audience feel a little bit surprised. She tries to explain how her grandparents forced her to go to summer church for youths so she can have social relations with others. The way she wanted to stay alone, other kids were thinking that she may have problems as one of them kept questioning her: “Why are you always thinking” (136)? “You know, I haven’t seen you smile since I’ve met you. Are you sad”(136)? With all those questions she tries to explain how she feels that she was not sad or angry where another one asked her again:” Do you ever feel happy, then (137)? By avoiding others, she answered that she can think more clear without them. After all, they understood that she didn’t want to be a burden where they named her after Switzerland by comparing her with it and explained how Switzerland avoided all things having to do with war and they let her know she was doing the same. Amanda was happy to know that someone understood her actions by naming her “Swiss”.           

      

Watch Your Language

      After reading the article, we were surprised with Larson's perspective on language teaching because he had been an English remedial student in high school and now debunked the method he was taught in that class. We could also relate when Larson used a personal anecdote about attending a luncheon and being an outsider. His refusal to "be one of them" related to the English concept of accepting criticism for the way we wright, but that was not the case for Larson. We were impressed with Larson's idea of a "new class", one where students are taught to use different language codes with different audiences and use the language they had brought with them. We were taken back a bit with reading his new ideas of what a English class should use to teach students.

   

      Larson approaches that the ways English is taught could be different from the way it is.  He believes that it is not needed to force student to learn it in certain way. When he became a teacher, Larson started out teaching in the manner by which he has been taught. He gives example how he attempted to straighten his students’ grammar the way his orthodontist straightened his teeth by force.  In what he called “nonsense rules of grammar”, he asks questions that why is it a crime to end a sentence with a preposition? What’s wrong with contractions? Larson uses comparison of how students resist to learning of standard usage of English to his own experience of attending luncheon a few years ago honoring a writer and how he felt like an outsider because of not knowing the rules of a complex a meal. He wondered which fork to use and for what? That is the same how the students seem to be while not knowing the rules of proper grammar. Students feel that way the moment they are forced to learn what standard English is.

A Visit to the Library

    After reading this personal essay, we felt sympathy for the narrator and wondered what it felt like to be in his position. This essay taught us what it was like in the segregated south for African Americans and how they were treated differently. They were looked down upon and treated as inferior people, but many African American still fought for their rights despite all the hate they recieved and found ways to gain the rights they deserved.

                Richard used his personal experience to express his extreme feeling of hatred between South and North while he visited the library as Negro who was living in south in order to archive his dream of being a writer. This makes audience feel worried for the narrator. It also gives the sentiment of anxiety to display. Richard uses his experience, knowledge and resources to make the whole story clear. This is shown when he was reading an article denouncing Mencken and surprised: “I wonder what on earth this Mencken had done to call down upon him the scorn of the south. The only people I heard ever heard denounced in the south were Negroes, and this man was not a Negro” (126). Richard shows the courage to read by borrowing the library card from an Irish catholic to enter the library as a Negro when he told him:” I want to read. I can’t get books from library. I wonder if you’d let me use your card” (127)? He succeeded to get the book, but he always read the book under circumstances. Once white men find the book in question into his packages, to put him down and show him the incapability of reading, they questioned him and told him this :”you’ll addle your brains if you don’t watch out”(130). He was courageous and strong to bear all kind of white mockers around him and finally that book made him thinking again about writing. The reading had created a vast sense of vast distance between him and the world in which he lived and try to make a living as Negro in South.   

We Are the Same

                                 





        After reading this personal essay, we felt joyous of Renie's belief of beauty. The fact that she was also teased for her appearance brought the idea of individual beauty into play. When Renie was made fun of at a young age for her teeth, she figured that this was the same thing the young schoolgirl was going through and praised her for her different appearance, calling her beautiful in her language. This  gave us a deep appreciation for Renie and this personal essay.

Renie used comparison and the stories of her childhood when she was working at hospital in Zimbabwe and meet a school girl who were treated like her the moment she was in 7^th grade. This makes the audience delight to know how people are the same even if they have different color and nationality.  Renie was teased before because of her teeth when she was laughing and one boy told her:” Seriously, no one wants to see your buck teeth” (147). Since then she was quiet and careful to never let anyone see her teeth. The same way how the girls brought the Tonga girl in front of her and started pointing at both Renie and the girl nose:” you are the same” (146)! Through her experience, Renie notices that no matter what, whether we share or not the culture, the language, and the skin, we are the same. As they both knew what is look like to be outcast, they learned to recognize the kindness of true friend and Renie decided to no longer let people to define how she felt about herself; and she hopes that the school girl too feels beautiful.