Writing Before Dartmouth

The first writing sample is a paper which I wrote for my Health and Disease in Latin America class this fall. We were given the liberty to choose our topics and I decided upon the evolution of burial practice in Latin America and its relation to the church. One thing that I think that I did well was analyzing my thesis question from many different angles. Also, I made an effort to provide background information to make the subject accessible to readers unfamiliar with the topic, yet at the same time I think that that abundance of ‘context’ was one thing that may have hindered the success of my paper. It is possible that not all of it was relevant and should have been excluded for a more direct and conclusive argument.
In my college essay I think that the writing was effective at tying together many diverging themes in a rather limited word count allowance. The idea of comfort and home versus the unexplored and exciting, central to crafting my ‘personal narrative’ for the reader, was brought to life by the distinction between two Spanish verbs which sandwiched the piece. In addition to the main chronology of stepping out of my comfort zone by becoming an exchange student, I peppered this essay with other aspects of my life which I thought would flesh out the story; such as, reading national geographic, building a chicken coop with my grandfather, being a girl scout and the school mascot. While writing this piece I thought that it would be a creative way to introduce myself to the admissions office and I tried to engage the reader with my conversational tone. Unfortunately though, I think that I overstretched the topic and wasn’t able to fully develop my examples and therefore eventually struggled at making it a cohesive piece.

Research Paper Sample

Personal Essay Sample