Essay Obsession

I've just revisited my memoir essay and made some of her corrections. I'm going to do some rewriting and resubmit it for a better grade. And as I seem to be obsessed with her comments, I decided to share them:

Although I have a number of sentence-level quibbles, I generally found this a very powerful essay. This "game" idea you raise in your title is intriguing, and you could do more with it -- developing theme of taking sides, joining teams, playing along, etc., throughout the piece to lead up to you decision to stop playing at the end. You might condense some of the material on questioning your mother to make room for more development of the social complexities that came later in your life. I'd also like to hear more about when/why/how you finally decided to quit the game. Terrific material, showing strong character as well as strong writing.

So that's what I have to fix. I'll probably try to get to it this weekend along with all of the other study plans I have. I've been hanging out with Marek a lot. I work with him and he also lives around the corner. He's from Canada and is a first-year Liberal Studies student. He came over last night around 11 and we watched the end of the stupid Cubs/Marlins game and drank beer and smoked and talked. We started talking about school, which we do a lot, and went into identity stuff, because he's studying some of it in a class. Then, all of a sudden (the stars must have been aligned), I told him I'd go to Bobst with him tonight. I figure that since not a lot is really all that cool in my life right now, I should dive into my studies. It's the one thing I really have control over. I feel a renewed sense of desire concerning academics and, even though I woke up in a sub-par space this (yesterday) morning, I had this evening to look forward to in Bobst. I still hate the building. But I went with Marek and got some good reading done. I think we're going to make a habit of it. We can push each other. And he likes my new motto, which I said it last night: "studying is my new girl." Think about it: I'll give and give and give (studying) and I'll get back (knowledge). Sounds good and healthy to me. Tonight I read an essay by Matthew Arnold called "Sweetness and Light." It's about culture. There were quite a few religious references in it and he discusses culture as being the pursuit of perfection -- I think. I'll have to review it before class. I also read an essay by Stokely Carmichael called "The Myths of Coalition." That was actually interesting. He kind of touched on ideas I mentioned in my paper for my race class last fall. I was interested, too, in the notion of a coalition of blacks and whites for black power. Carmichael suggested this is impossible because of class and race differences. There will always be a semblance of power/lessness in the group, which would work against building a viable coalition. Interesting stuff. I didn't quite get to Foucault. We were there till midnight and that's when the floors above ground close. I gotta sleep.