The Forest
The Forest
It was what I thought was a normal day in October of 1999. I woke up feeling this emptiness inside of me, my mind was blank and I did not feel like myself. I felt like I needed to spend my day alone, so I made the decision to grab my keys off the counter and leave to see where the world takes me.
I was driving aimlessly and I came upon a parking lot which seemed to have trails that lead into the forest. I parked my car and I chose to walk through it to see where it led to. As I start to get deeper and deeper into the forest, I look at my surroundings and see absolutely nothing. The creaking of the tree branches surrounding me, the leaves falling onto the dirt path, and the few birds that were chirping, were the only sounds that I could hear. It felt empty. There was absolutely no one back here except for me, the eerie feeling being in this forest alone it left me confused with my emotion. I did not know if I was content with it, or a little skeeved out. The silence was leaving me to get deep into my thoughts. I started to think about all the things going on in my life, and what needs to be changed for the better of my happiness and mental health.
The sun was trying to force its way through the trees to create a little bit of happiness within the forest. It was shining so bright that it almost looked like the trees started to allow it through. The dark brown tree trunks were alining the dirt path which almost seemed like it was leading me to somewhere unknown. The pine green trees were standing so tall that it completely enclosed the forest to the point that it was mid day and at some spots it took away all light and left nothing but dark shadows. I continued to keep walking further and further, I almost turned back but then I saw this one standing abandoned home.
It was almost like it was drawing me in, like I had to go explore it. So I walked towards it cautiously because I was thinking to myself that someone could be in there, or something. There was creaking of the old wood, and some parts of it were snapped off with pieces of the house on the ground. There was nothing outside, no sign of anyone living there, just a singular house. The wood almost looked like it was rotted and had mold on it, so this house seems like it has been here for a really long time. Maybe this is what I needed today, this is where the world wanted and needed me to be. I enter the home with broken glass everywhere. As I stepped inside it left this scraping noise, along with the creaking floorboards. This house almost seemed like people either vandalized it because it is vacant or the person who used to live here left very unhappy.
Even though this whole day had been somewhat sad and numb, it almost created a sense of comfort, and I felt very content with my emotions. As the sun started to set, I felt it was best for me to walk back to my car, leaving the forest felt a lot scarier than it did entering. This was probably because it started to get very dark very quickly, and I had no source of light besides my phone flashlight. The sky's color went from a cheerful bright blue, to a deepening denim blue that almost looked black. I got back in my car and headed home.
This day was unplanned, and I just went with whatever the world wanted me to do and it turned out to be better than I could have ever imagined. Although it was a dark and scary experience, It oddly made me feel better than I had felt when I first woke up. This was my day of therapy that helped my emotions calm and helped me make a lot of new positive decisions within my life that I will be taking action upon, to make my life a lot happier.
Hey Victoria,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog, I believe that it was most likely well planned out in advance as it had good structural progression, no grammatical errors that I could find, fluent content itself, and correct writing to engage the audience.
Specifically, I believe that you had effective expression, with a range of language, including complex some complex structures and less common lexis. This is obvious in your vocabulary and word choices, like in your second paragraph when you said "eerie feeling" not only giving an accurate interpretation of how you felt entering the forest, but also putting your writing to the point of the prompt which was to talk about an eerie feeling forest.
I couldn't find grammatical errors, however there were some weird sentencing that didn't make sense or felt weird to read. I can better explain what I mean when we look at your second paragraph which states "the leaves falling onto the dirt path, and the few birds that were chirping, were the only sounds that I could hear. It felt empty." This has a few levels of counteracting that make it more difficult to see what you're trying to make the reader feel. You say that you hear leaves falling onto the dirt path and that you're hearing all these different things, then proceed to say "It felt empty" which doesn't correlate.
The text is logically organized; ideas are developed in an effective manner. It is simple and linearly written and doesn't falter at all.
The task is achieved well; content is relevant. This is shown all throughout the writing as everything was aligned to the task save the last paragraphs thought and aftermath of the forest.
Audience was engaged, I enjoyed reading and there were very little problems that made it easy to read, it was also enjoyable since the content itself was good.
Overall it is a solid 20
Hey, Victoria, Overall you did a good job! I liked your detailed descriptions, but you should most differentially take it to the next level and expand my other types of a language other than just imagery. I would give you 11 marks.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to structure and organization, you did a great job in knowing when a new paragraph should have been made. While you distributed your ideas very clearly and there was almost no confusion gained upon the audience, you lacked in the “Task is achieved; context is relevant.” There were a few times when you became off-topic. For example, when you say, “what needs to be changed for the better for my happiness and mental health.” Here I know what you are trying to do, you wanted to exemplify the silence that you heard in the forest, while there is a better more on-topic way of doing so. Here you could have made it a simile and said, “The numbing silence dug into my brain, scooping out every core memory I have ever had.” Continuing with your being off-topic, you talk about a house and how you feel in the house, because the prompt tells you to describe a forest and eerie experiences in that forest, I would stick to the forest. Maybe you could pass a house and describe it, but just stick to the prompt.
As for grammatical errors, you had a few. For example, “...lot which seemed to have..” should be “that seemed” Another one was, “..the eerie feeling being in this forest” doesn't quite make sense as it is either a "feeling" or "being", so need to add both. Or you could have said “feeling of being..” There were a lot of common little mistakes like this, along with adding commons where they should not be or not adding one where it should be. Continuing with this I noticed that you switched between tenses a lot, for instance in the very first sentence of your first paragraph you said, “It was what I thought was…” in regards to the day being normal, you used past tenses here, the words “thought” and “was” clearly tell the audience that you are speaking in the past tense. Until the audience reaches the last sentence of that same paragraph and you say, “where the world takes me.” Here you are now talking in the present tense, if you want to sound logically correct you could say, “To see where the world was going to take me.”