This I Believe Essay and Project Reflection
This I Believe is an international organization that encourages people to share their daily and core beliefs through written submissions and essays. These essays are archived through their website, broadcasted on radio shows, published within books, and are featured in weekly podcasts. Within class we were to write our own personal essay on a core belief that manifests in our lives as well as a credo to express what the belief itself is. The purpose of this project was to reflect on our deepest beliefs so we could later confront them and challenge them in different aspects of morality and ethics throughout the rest of the semester. The process the class followed to complete the project involved learning writing skills that create an engaging personal essay. These writing skills were authentic voice, narrative coherence, and communal relevance. Authentic voice is when a writer or author has the ability to create a strong personal presence within his or hers writing. This may involve describing an individual experience that expresses the larger picture of their particular belief. This brings us into communal relevance. With this personal experience, and as it widens into what the core belief is, readers should have the ability to engage and have the belief be applicable to their own life scenarios. This creates a dynamic between the reader and the author, and makes it relatable to their own lives. Lastly narrative coherence is when that has a start, middle, and an ending. An example of this is ABA formatting; where your introduction could be your belief, have your content could be a personal experience, and lastly tie up your personal experience with you belief in the conclusion. Once the class had a clear concept of how to integrate the writing skills into their essay, we started on our rough draft. There was the process of peer critique, which involved reading other students works, responding to prompts relating to their writing skills, and providing structured criticism on paper and in conversation. After PC, drafts were finalized and sent to grade.
Reflecting back onto what I wrote for the This I Believe Essay, my awareness comes to how I draw in my beliefs and how they manifest. To me, an ideal authentic belief would be based on your own personal, spiritual, emotional, or psychological experience. As of what was required in the essay. Yet the more I think about it, I can’t remember a specific time when a great sense of belief came to me in the moment of an experience. Over the past year I’ve been reading this book called Think on These Things by Jiddu Krishnamurti. If you look throughout my DP, and if you’ve read some of his work, you would immediately recognize the quotes and concepts that he’s written about in my essays and school projects. This book has effected my beliefs immensely, and how I perceive the outside world. As much as I love his ideas, and want to incorporate them into my life and my thinking, it also troubles me. Almost every question of moral or ethics I’m asked about in class I try to apply back to something I’ve read in the book. I feel that, if I was to have a reality check, my ideals of how to live in existence and truth stands on someone else’s ideals of existence and truth. It’s difficult for me to apply my own experiences and perceptions to things because I’ve always been in a state of desire to look at people and things in an altruistic manner because of what I’ve read. (Which I’ve found out is one of the most challenging things ever, unless you’re a Saint.) This came to me when I was writing about, well, writing. I had to ask myself why writing was such an effective coping mechanism for me. For me to find this belief, I had to be inspired and provoked by a concept. Only then could I develop my own concrete base to my belief. This whole project brought a new aspect into how I obtain and retain the foundation of my thoughts and my actions. I don’t know if I ever will break out of Krishnamurti’s shell, it’s such an amazing experience, to read and realize the concepts he talks about. Not just him, but other authors as well. Books have been my life for the past 6 years. From them I draw out everything, mold them, and place them into my own world in some twisted, dimensional, and intangible way or another. To think for oneself is something that I find highly important. It makes me highly gratified I was able to reflect in such a deep way when it came to this writing this essay.
The last paragraph shifts a little into prose. This, in my eyes, was the moment when we diverged away from my own personal feelings about writing into the communal relevance of why writing is such a reflective and silencing process. I write: “As I see it, I have the ability to release all thoughts onto paper and keyboard. It’s to make them physical and comprehensible. Yet it’s also to help clear the voices inside my head, the incessant talk and dialogue between all the people within me. From writing there are avenues through which my mind and heart can become quiet. Then, I can truly listen and observe. Then, there is peace.” This is my favorite part of the whole piece. Particularly because of how it really brings my whole essay together. The articulation of the belief is strong, and pointed. If a reader was to ask, “So What?” that’s how I would answer.
Refinement is always something that seems vitally important to a piece, yet is also something that I always tend to miss. One thing I would like to refine within this essay is the paragraph and essay structure. There are no specific pieces of evidence, (in this case experiences), that show through in it. Which depletes the authentic voice as well. I do try to use humor and some small anecdotes to put my own personality into perspective for the reader, yet it’s not quite as well as it could be with a personal experience. I do have one in mind that I could place in there, and it would be wonderful if I could. In reality, I don’t even have a narrative within the essay, which will probably show up on the final grade. This could be accomplished once again through sharing an experience I had with writing. If I were to submit it to NPR, I would most definitely take the time and the refinement to add in this experience.
I believe that the mission to voice your beliefs as a person in the world community is probably one of the most vital and progressive things we all can do for humanity. Integration through exposure to other people’s ideas and thoughts is a way to lead to diversified thinking and living; as well as a way to find acceptance and awareness within the conscious mind. To be able to independently think and believe for yourself, and to express that, only inspires and encourages other people to find their own path. Whether this is through personal experiences, spiritual odysseys, or creative endeavors, there are endless ways. In my eyes this is truly what education and learning consists of. As I publish and finalize this essay, these are the thoughts that come into my mind when I think of myself as a member of the human community. It’s a wonderful, revolutionary thing that I will always be willing to engage in.
Reflecting back onto what I wrote for the This I Believe Essay, my awareness comes to how I draw in my beliefs and how they manifest. To me, an ideal authentic belief would be based on your own personal, spiritual, emotional, or psychological experience. As of what was required in the essay. Yet the more I think about it, I can’t remember a specific time when a great sense of belief came to me in the moment of an experience. Over the past year I’ve been reading this book called Think on These Things by Jiddu Krishnamurti. If you look throughout my DP, and if you’ve read some of his work, you would immediately recognize the quotes and concepts that he’s written about in my essays and school projects. This book has effected my beliefs immensely, and how I perceive the outside world. As much as I love his ideas, and want to incorporate them into my life and my thinking, it also troubles me. Almost every question of moral or ethics I’m asked about in class I try to apply back to something I’ve read in the book. I feel that, if I was to have a reality check, my ideals of how to live in existence and truth stands on someone else’s ideals of existence and truth. It’s difficult for me to apply my own experiences and perceptions to things because I’ve always been in a state of desire to look at people and things in an altruistic manner because of what I’ve read. (Which I’ve found out is one of the most challenging things ever, unless you’re a Saint.) This came to me when I was writing about, well, writing. I had to ask myself why writing was such an effective coping mechanism for me. For me to find this belief, I had to be inspired and provoked by a concept. Only then could I develop my own concrete base to my belief. This whole project brought a new aspect into how I obtain and retain the foundation of my thoughts and my actions. I don’t know if I ever will break out of Krishnamurti’s shell, it’s such an amazing experience, to read and realize the concepts he talks about. Not just him, but other authors as well. Books have been my life for the past 6 years. From them I draw out everything, mold them, and place them into my own world in some twisted, dimensional, and intangible way or another. To think for oneself is something that I find highly important. It makes me highly gratified I was able to reflect in such a deep way when it came to this writing this essay.
The last paragraph shifts a little into prose. This, in my eyes, was the moment when we diverged away from my own personal feelings about writing into the communal relevance of why writing is such a reflective and silencing process. I write: “As I see it, I have the ability to release all thoughts onto paper and keyboard. It’s to make them physical and comprehensible. Yet it’s also to help clear the voices inside my head, the incessant talk and dialogue between all the people within me. From writing there are avenues through which my mind and heart can become quiet. Then, I can truly listen and observe. Then, there is peace.” This is my favorite part of the whole piece. Particularly because of how it really brings my whole essay together. The articulation of the belief is strong, and pointed. If a reader was to ask, “So What?” that’s how I would answer.
Refinement is always something that seems vitally important to a piece, yet is also something that I always tend to miss. One thing I would like to refine within this essay is the paragraph and essay structure. There are no specific pieces of evidence, (in this case experiences), that show through in it. Which depletes the authentic voice as well. I do try to use humor and some small anecdotes to put my own personality into perspective for the reader, yet it’s not quite as well as it could be with a personal experience. I do have one in mind that I could place in there, and it would be wonderful if I could. In reality, I don’t even have a narrative within the essay, which will probably show up on the final grade. This could be accomplished once again through sharing an experience I had with writing. If I were to submit it to NPR, I would most definitely take the time and the refinement to add in this experience.
I believe that the mission to voice your beliefs as a person in the world community is probably one of the most vital and progressive things we all can do for humanity. Integration through exposure to other people’s ideas and thoughts is a way to lead to diversified thinking and living; as well as a way to find acceptance and awareness within the conscious mind. To be able to independently think and believe for yourself, and to express that, only inspires and encourages other people to find their own path. Whether this is through personal experiences, spiritual odysseys, or creative endeavors, there are endless ways. In my eyes this is truly what education and learning consists of. As I publish and finalize this essay, these are the thoughts that come into my mind when I think of myself as a member of the human community. It’s a wonderful, revolutionary thing that I will always be willing to engage in.