Select a person to describe.
You are strongly advised to choose a person who will appear in your narrative essay. The person should be central to the events of your second paper. If you are the only person in your narrative, then you are encouraged to describe yourself for this exercise as you appeared at the time of the narrative which you will write for the second paper.
If possible, find a photograph (or photographs) of the person you will be describing. Try to make sure they are depictions of how the person looked at the time the event(s) of the narrative took place.
1. Describe the color and shape of the person's eyes and the area around the eyes. Do not say "blue" or "brown" eyes. Be more specific - make a comparison. Include such things as eyeglasses, eyelashes, eyebrows, etc.
2. Describe the color, texture, and length of the person's hair. Avoid "brown" and "blonde" - much variety exists within these colors. Be as specific as possible. Also avoid "long" and "short" - be specific. When describing hair texture, if appropriate, describe how it physically felt to the touch. Otherwise, describe how you think it would feel if you touched it.
3. Describe the texture of the person's skin. You may focus on one area, such as the hands or face, or simply describe the texture of the skin in general. See if you can include a taste image. For example, what might the person's skin taste like: if it has a leathery texture what food with the same texture might you compare it too?
4. Describe the person's body build. Avoid relative terms, such as "short" and "tall." A specific guess that is actually off by two or three inches is still better than a generalization.
5. Describe the person's most dominant physical feature. In other words, if you were pointing the person out in a crowded room to someone who didn't know him or her, what would you likely point to as the identifying characteristic?
6. Describe any physical features that would be useful in determining the person's age if you didn't know it. Include at least one sound image in your description (perhaps of the person's voice). If you haven't already, include at least one smell image here as well. If there is a feature that would be misleading (if it made the person seem younger or older than he or she actually was), you might mention that, as well.
7. Describe the way the person looks when he or she is involved in some activity. Describe the motion as the person walks, runs, dances, skips, etc.
8. Describe the person's voice, or some sound the person makes. This may include talking, telling, laughing, crying, whining, etc.
9. Describe the clothing the person might wear on a typical day. Be specific. Capture him or her at one moment in time. What is he or she wearing?
10. Describe how the person smells, or any smell that you associate with the subject.
For the second paper, Draft a narrative essay of 750 words or more about two to three lessons you learned from a specific personal experience.The point of this paper is to demonstrate that you can use narrative and descriptive techniques to support your thesis and illustrate how learning happens.
Include a thesis sentence which clearly identifies the lessons you learned and the specific experience from which you learned those lessons.
For purposes of this assignment, place your thesis at the end of your introductory paragraph.