Conor+W.

Gender draft 2

"Lauren, what the hell were you thinking?" her mother said "Lauren, now you have detention this saturday. You should be looking forward to that, it'll be fun." My mother responded to them "Mom, Darryl cut class a couple of times in this same exact high school a couple years ago, why am I getting punished, why didn't he?" Her mother said "We thought you would know after Darryl got suspended and got detentions to not do the same thing, it's like... it's just stupid of you to do that Lauren." My mother got angry that she got more of a punishment than Darryl did, when this was her first and only time cutting, and he cut a handful of times here and there in high school. It seems as though they may have had higher expectations for her because she was a girl, not because she was the oldest. My mom and her brothers all had jobs around the house every weekend that would take up the whole day, (there is an eight year age difference between her and Darryl and a four year age difference her and Whitney) Whitney and Darryl were a little lazy on the weekends and slept in all day and my mom (when she was very little) would get stuck with all the work because she didn't want to get in trouble because of them. Her parents knew that she did all the work and praised her for it, but they cared ( not as much as they should have) that Darryl and Whitney were sleeping all day and my mom was being worked to death like a child laborer. My grandparents were sensible people who weren't quick to punish or to yell but when I asked them about thirty years later about it they both said "we should have punished them more [Whitney and Darryl] and let Lauren have a break for a while. Now thinking about it, Conor what was I thinking?" "Tim, what the hell! Did you seriously just get yourself kicked out of woodworking class?" my grandmother said to my father when my father was kicked out and banned from the neighborhood art center. She was really angry. "I did it as a joke mom, I put the knife up to Jim's [my Dad's twin brother] neck to scare him a little bit so he won't mess up my stuff. Geez, give me a break. This isn't life or death mom, it was a joke." My dad was a very mischievous kid, but kept his inner demons inside and rarely got caught doing stuff, one time his plan slipped and he was kicked out of class and his parents were going to kill him. It seems that if his older sisters did something like this they would have gotten in a lot more trouble than he did because he was the youngest and they were girls which played a huge role in my grandparents perception of how they should act.

Good examples. The sentence highlighted in purple and the next sentence are a little confusing, maybe make more of a transition to show who is talking. Try to add more examples from a broader source rather than just your family and show how you know gender played a role in this unfair treatment rather than age or other siblings. -Allison Dammann

After your anecdotes you should write more about an essential question - TAS you still need to expand on yoru own thoughts, not jsut the anecdote.-GLR

Gender Draft 1

My mother and father grew up in a house where they were the black sheep in the family, gender wise. My father grew up with a twin brother (they are the youngest), four older sisters, and a mother and father. My mother grew up in a house with a mother, father and three older brothers, two of whom she is very close to (she is the youngest). My grandfather on my father's side grew up with an older brother and a mother, his father died when he was ten (he was the youngest). My father and his twin brother were the youngest out of six children, four of whom were girls. His father never pressured him to act a certain way or be a certain way, he wanted him to be who he was. His only requirements for him and his brother were to avoid trouble, do well in school, and do whatever they wanted career wise. My father didn't have many male role models beside his father and uncle. My mother was the youngest of three children, she had two brothers, Whitney who is four years older than her, and Darryl who is eight years older than her. They were all very close to each other, she wasn't pressured by her parents to act a certain way, but her brothers were a different story. Her brothers unintentionally expected her to like what they like and act similar to them, she ended up having many things in common with both of them but also had many different hobbies and interests. One day during high school, my mother and her friends decided to skip class for the first time. They've never done it before but they thought it was good try everything, so they skipped class and got bored to death. When the teacher didn't see my mom in class, she freaked out and called the principal and who called her parents for missing class. It was a chain reaction of trouble, her parents were very angry with her, and her father said "Lauren, what the hell were you thinking?" and her mother said "Lauren, now you have detention this saturday. You should be looking forward to that, it'll be fun." My mother responded to them "Mom, Darryl cut class a couple of times in this same exact high school a couple years ago, why am I getting punished, why didn't he?" Her mother said "We thought you would know after Darryl got suspended to not do the same thing, it's like... it's just stupid of you to do that Lauren." My mother got angry that she got more of a punishment than Darryl did, when this was her first and only time cutting, and he cut a couple of times here and there in high school. It seems as though they may have had higher expectations for her because she was a girl, because she wasn't the youngest.

Biggest problem is that you start with what is least interesting--the story is much better--your opening paragraphs are all telling. Start with the story--develop it more fully, especially the last two sentences, and find more to go with that. More interview--sounds like it. MrC

Good anecdote, and it perfectly matches the idea of the story but you should maybe start with the anecdote and then elaborate on what you think about the situation and make connections -Eleanor Sadik-Khan

You have good examples and an interesting story from your parents. I think you should try to focus your essay in more to a specific idea about gender, rather than just telling stories, as it seems like they don't relate specifically to gender. -Allison Dammann

Try to get an anecdote from your father about something like cutting class, and start with anecdotes. You should elaborate on whether or not your grandparents' reactions were reasonable - TAS

You have teh anecdote, but you don't really expand on your thoughts onf the topic.-Gwen


 * Maybe you can try and reformat this information, into some kind of story. You can even mingle your mom's and dad's experiences into one story. That would be really interesting! SiF **