Tayler

This year in English we are having many different types of essays to right. Well this is another one: an interview. Honestly, this was iffy for me. It was hard to decide what to ask, and coming up with at least five questions to ask but it wasn’t hard to get the information to write down. My first formal interview! I’ve been asking my parents questions about their life, my whole life. But the assignment was to try and talk about something we didn’t already know about. And this is something I didn’t know about.

My mother, Lisa 42, is a strong opinionated woman, interested in politics and current events. Who knew, she wasn’t always that way? I questioned her about the moment that changed her mind on keeping up in the World.

1. What were you doing when President George Bush Sr. announced operation Desert Storm on 16 January 1991?
- I was 6 months pregnant with your sister, flying home from a business trip in Phoenix, your father was picking me up from the airport and George Bush was announcing it over the radio.

2. What made you remember this event so thoroughly?
- Being pregnant makes you more cautious than you ever would normally be. Knowing drafting was a option was the scariest part. Your father was just the kind of man they would want to fight for them, without him, raising a child would be impossible.

3. What did you think was going to happen?
- I thought this was going to be the “Vietnam War” for our generation. I thought there was going to be fear for many years.

4. What changed since the war for you?
- I have a greater awareness of world events. Only being 25, I didn’t know much about politics and now I try to educate myself as much as possible. After seeing the high security in the airport, that day, I have a greater appreciation for our country and how much they are willing to do to keep us safe.

5. Do you think the President did enough to keep the states safe?
- Looking back on it now, I would have said we should have hunted Saddam Hussein down but back then I thought operation Desert Storm was a success.

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This is an essay I had to write in English. I recently took the Aims reading and Writing test and so he thought we should write a descriptive essay on how we felt and saw when Aims was going on. I think this essay is really good, but it seems more like a narrative essay than a descriptive essay… tell me what you think.

Defeating Aims

The chill that runs up my spine was like an Olympic runner; fast but powerful. As I walk into the Aims’ testing room, I notice the room is cold but my nervousness is keeping me warm. I know that the Aims test is like a dragon, it is out to get all sophomores, and their only defense is to slay it with their sleek, sharp pencil. I can hear the boredom in the teacher’s voice as she is introducing herself, and handing out the tests chronologically. I am glancing around the room to see various posters of this-and-that. Most have English tips on them, so I assume the teacher teaches English.

The room is quickly hushing as the Aims teacher says “Shh” multiple times. It was time to start the test; I flip to the first page. I am flying through it until I come to a story about a sprinter, training hard so he would win the big race. Words like “hurry” and “time” pop up from the word-filled page and keep flashing in my mind. I only hear the clock saying “Tick, tock. Tick tock” as if it is speaking directly to me. I can feel the little hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up as the teacher is pacing the back of the room.

A brunette boy stands and hands the bubble sheet and the test booklet to the teacher. I glare at him in an I-can’t-believe-you-finished-so-early kind of look and glance back down to my own bubble sheet to see 25 more unbubbled questions. He has conquered the dragon, while I’m still in danger of being a lump of charred coal. I can hear the brunette boy tapping his pencil against his desk to a beat that I recognize. I twist my head to give him a sour look and he immediately stops. Now he is playing with his shaggy hair to keep his boredom at bay.

I force my neck to turn back to the test to read the final story. Knowing I am the only one left still taking the test, I whisper to myself “Do not rush, do not rush.” Finally, it is my turn to stand and hand my test to my teacher and sit back down with an accomplished smile on my face. All the stress and worries are over. I defeat the dragon.

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