My Happy Place

This is a piece I wrote for my WRI 212 class, the third and final essay for the class, where we had some choice in writing a subgenre of essay that interested us based on ones we had looked at and investigated throughout our time in the class. In the beginning of the class I was not extremely comfortable with writing personal essays but as the class progressed I got more and more comfortable. For me, this essay had the most creative freedom, I chose to write a place-focused essay centered around my grandparent’s lake house and the family traditions that the house and the lake stand for and represent for me. Out of the essay choices, the place focused choice stood out the most to me as I loved the idea of using detail and description to convey feeling and emotion to a reader who has never and may never go to the place you are writing about.

My goal was to describe my grandparent’s house as a place that represented family and love and comfort throughout my childhood through the description. It was more than just allowing them to visualize the place but to create that same feeling I felt when I walked in the door of the cabin every summer. I wanted to make the reader feel a sense of warmth and acceptance through the imagery I used throughout the piece. Similarly, the main constraint I faced when writing the place essay was using detail to convey a deeper meaning and purpose. It was also important to think about what details to include and where within the page limit, I had to be selective especially with an entire lifetime of memories. Overall, it was a really enjoyable piece to write and my family absolutely loved reading it.