Process Writing- Personal Narrative

When I saw on the syllabus that our first Narrative Journalism assignment was to write a personal narrative, I expected to just coast on through.  I've always found writing about myself to be relatively easy and enjoyable and I anticipated that this essay would be no different.  Well I was wrong.  This assignment actually really perplexed me.  One of the most difficult parts was trying to pinpoint a "pivotal" moment in my life that I could recount in a short, 900-word narrative.  Even though I have had numerous turning points or Ah-ha! moments growing up, most of those moments were the product of a series of events, not just one, some even spanning months or years.  I finally decided to focus on my time in Japan after talking to my parents last weekend.  I told them about the assignment and my mom suggested that I talk about my first day of school in Japan.  After giving the essay and this particular topic some thought, I realized that she had a point.  Going to Japan at age seventeen truly marked a pivotal point in my life.  For the first time, I was immersed in a culture, language, and race different from my own.  All of the anxiety I felt (and still feel whenever I travel) could really be captured by my first day of school.  The idea of wearing a uniform and being "the same" as everyone else while simultaneously being acutely different also really intrigued me.  While I am glad that I chose this topic and decided to explore and reflect on such an important time in my life, I think my piece still has a ways to go.  Specifically, I would like to experiment with Julia's suggestion of slowing down time when I enter the classroom.  I think it would be really interesting to add in some more sensory images, detailing what I saw, heard, smelled, etc...  After the stress of deciding a topic melted away, I found myself to really enjoy writing this essay.  I am looking forward to delving deeper into this piece and play around with all the great suggestions made by my classmates.