The first essay is a personal narrative. The second essay is a profile of a person whom the student knows well. The final essay is a review of a documentary film that deals with the same subject as Obasan. As students move through this sequence of assignments, they find themselves increasingly required to analyze their personal experiences. Professor Rege in fact asks students to write the life in two or three different ways, and to bring the various attempts to class so that their classmates might consider the different approaches.
Students are quick to understand that they are interpreting rather than simply describing a life.
They are one step closer to writing analysis. Through this assignment, Professor Rege insures that her students receive preparation in academic writing. Still, Professor Rege argues that the personal essay is a valuable teaching tool because the issues that come up in these essays are very often issues that contribute to a student's writing problems. One example is Professor Peter Travis' English 5, a course that honors the connection between the student's person and her writing process, but that also instructs students explicitly in the conventions of literary criticism. In class, students share their essays and talk about the writing process, thereby demystifying the process and making it a matter of classroom concern.