This I Believe is a project in which the person writing the essay expresses something that they believe to be true and why. It was originally a popular radio show in the 1950s that was adopted by NPR in 2004. The point behind this project, was to see how we all believe in different things for different reasons. We prepared for this project by making lists of things that we believed to be true and writing formative life experiences. In the end we ended up making an essay that was 300-500 words in length and a podcast of our essay.
I had a couple challenges during this project. One of the challenges that I faced was, getting my essay to fall within the word limit. My problem wasn’t with getting up to 300 words, it was with staying under 500. My first draft was 664 words, 164 words over the limit. My other challenge was connecting my story to my belief. This was hard for me because, I would get really into the story then go back and read it and realize that I couldn’t tell what my belief was throughout the essay. One thing that I would do if I were to re-do my essay completely is, to map out and plan my essay before I started writing.
I was really proud of the descriptive writing I used in my essay. I was proud of this because, I find it hard to use descriptive writing without adding too much fluff. Over all this project was a really nice way to start the year. This is because, you got to gently ease back into writing while also exploring a personal topic of interest that you might not have given much thought to in the past. Through this project, I have learned that we all have different beliefs. Though some might be similar, we believe them in different degrees and for different reasons. Since I got to really think about my beliefs, I realized why I believed so heavily in something’s and didn’t believe in others.