Post by Ellie on Jun 29, 2004 1:59:36 GMT
Practice Essay for BC Provincial English Exam - Danielle Rettich
Windows
You think what you are about to read is just another high school essay. You will read through quickly, looking for main points, thesis statements, dangling participles, and other grammatical miscellanea. You believe me to be just another faceless voice in the crowd, crying out to be heard yet only adding to the chaos that we humans love to create for ourselves.
Like it or not, you and I have beliefs that colour -taint- our perception of the world. My values and beliefs are a stained-glass window. You see it as a stranger, looking from the outside, perhaps admiring its beauty - it’s very pretty when the sun shines. However, I, stranger, see it from the inside, here in my mind. It holds so many tales... Come, and I will tell you a bare few of them.
The framework for the glass was forged in fire, constant pressure and heat bending and shaping it as They willed. It is beautiful, is it not? Sometimes I wonder what the mountain looked like before this iron-ore was mined... Perhaps it, too, was beautiful, but who can say? It is lost, was lost a long time ago.
I remember the forging, though I have long tried to forget. Lectures, shouting, reprimands, stern looks, spankings when I tried my luck too hard... I was no easy child, I’ll give them that. And ‘twas never all hammer and anvil, either - there were times of gentler molding in warmth. Memorizing Bible verses, letting my younger siblings play with me, and other things I treasure in my heart; and then, of course, there was my window’s glass...
Do you see it glistening? Those might be frozen tears... They form a hard wall, now. I remember helping pour the liquid glass into the prescribed sections, guided by Their hands to a set design. Such pretty colours they have. Do you see the way they catch the light and spin it into rainbowed cloth?
The light fills the room, coloured ocean greens and blues and indigos, tainted sunset-red and the deep purple of dusk. The light tints my every perception: I see my friends and my life in strict terms of good and bad, right and wrong, shoulds and shouldn’ts, Allowed and Not Allowed - just the way I’ve been molded. Oh yes, my window is a beautiful thing.
My window is my shield. It keeps the rain and cold outside. When there are storms, I can hide safely behind it, in Their care. When I need to fight, it’s a firm wall at my back, warming and supporting me; and when I lose the battle, it keeps the noise of my crying away from the rest of the world. My window was made by Them, but it’s my own choice to stay here, safe behind it. It’s very pretty when the sun shines.
note: I was one of two students in my school (the other being a very close friend of mine) who achieved 100% in the 2004 BC Provincial English Exam for grade 10. (It was with a different essay, obviously. I like this one better.)
anyhoo, I gotta go cuz They don't want me on here, cuz I slept in my first sunday off school
I might be on later this evening, depends how alert They're being...
Windows
You think what you are about to read is just another high school essay. You will read through quickly, looking for main points, thesis statements, dangling participles, and other grammatical miscellanea. You believe me to be just another faceless voice in the crowd, crying out to be heard yet only adding to the chaos that we humans love to create for ourselves.
Like it or not, you and I have beliefs that colour -taint- our perception of the world. My values and beliefs are a stained-glass window. You see it as a stranger, looking from the outside, perhaps admiring its beauty - it’s very pretty when the sun shines. However, I, stranger, see it from the inside, here in my mind. It holds so many tales... Come, and I will tell you a bare few of them.
The framework for the glass was forged in fire, constant pressure and heat bending and shaping it as They willed. It is beautiful, is it not? Sometimes I wonder what the mountain looked like before this iron-ore was mined... Perhaps it, too, was beautiful, but who can say? It is lost, was lost a long time ago.
I remember the forging, though I have long tried to forget. Lectures, shouting, reprimands, stern looks, spankings when I tried my luck too hard... I was no easy child, I’ll give them that. And ‘twas never all hammer and anvil, either - there were times of gentler molding in warmth. Memorizing Bible verses, letting my younger siblings play with me, and other things I treasure in my heart; and then, of course, there was my window’s glass...
Do you see it glistening? Those might be frozen tears... They form a hard wall, now. I remember helping pour the liquid glass into the prescribed sections, guided by Their hands to a set design. Such pretty colours they have. Do you see the way they catch the light and spin it into rainbowed cloth?
The light fills the room, coloured ocean greens and blues and indigos, tainted sunset-red and the deep purple of dusk. The light tints my every perception: I see my friends and my life in strict terms of good and bad, right and wrong, shoulds and shouldn’ts, Allowed and Not Allowed - just the way I’ve been molded. Oh yes, my window is a beautiful thing.
My window is my shield. It keeps the rain and cold outside. When there are storms, I can hide safely behind it, in Their care. When I need to fight, it’s a firm wall at my back, warming and supporting me; and when I lose the battle, it keeps the noise of my crying away from the rest of the world. My window was made by Them, but it’s my own choice to stay here, safe behind it. It’s very pretty when the sun shines.
note: I was one of two students in my school (the other being a very close friend of mine) who achieved 100% in the 2004 BC Provincial English Exam for grade 10. (It was with a different essay, obviously. I like this one better.)
anyhoo, I gotta go cuz They don't want me on here, cuz I slept in my first sunday off school
I might be on later this evening, depends how alert They're being...
