I enjoyed this assignment the most out of the four Bridge assignments given this semester. I’ve always been interested in journalism and this assignment was the perfect excuse to use my David Foster Wallace inspired skills to write about Brighton Beach.
When visiting Brighton Beach, an unfamiliar place I had never been before, I took notes on the things I smelled, touched, saw, heard, and tasted. These notes, along with photos and memories, aided me in writing my piece. Having the five senses as my outline for the paper also proved to be more helpful than going in blindly and writing my descriptive piece that way.
Although everything I’ve written for Seminar aside from my research outline has been creative writing which has definitely stretched my limits as a writer. In high school, all I wrote were analytical essays and longer research papers and although it was difficult to jump into creative writing with little to no prior experience, it’s proved to be quite fun to explore this new side of writing.
For this unit, we read David Foster Wallace’s Ticket to the Fair which I found boring the first time I read it, but after reading it again I grew to appreciate the way that Foster Wallace made even the most mundane events sound interesting which is an essence I tried to capture in my work.
