“This I Believe”, is a project for you to express yourself in what you strongly believe in, write an essay about it, then record yourself to publish on a local radio station. About sixty years ago, Edward R. Murrow, created the idea to have people share what shaped them to become the person they are today. Whether if that was a life lesson they were taught, or an experience that changed their perspective on life. It’s not that easy for you to discover what influenced you to evolve into the person you are today. So, for a start, we composed five stories that impacted our lives. It was a way to start thinking and brainstorming to find the deeper meaning.
The hardest part of this project, for me, was deciding on what to write about and how I could connect it to a life experience. Once I figured out what the moral was and a story to go with it, I had a difficult time making it flow. The narrative coherence was one of the things I struggled with in the rubric and adding more descriptive literary devices. Yet, I had a lot of friends peer critique my essay and they helped change that with their supportive feedback. Next time, I would like to throw in more of the five senses to create an emotional response to the readers.
My favorite part of the project would have to be describing about my experience of getting on stage with Michael Franti. It brought back a lot of memories and reminded me what life is really about. When I said, "I was so happy and couldn’t stop jumping or giving the peace sign to the roaring crowd," it made me laugh of how much of a little hippie child I was. It was amusing writing about that amazing time. Also, there is a couple of sentences I am really proud of writing. " Once you realize that, and start doing what you love, you create a little flicker in your heart that keeps you going. That flicker starts to grow into a fire that stays with you until you die. This is how you should feel throughout your entire life. Whether if that spark is going to the beach, camping with friends, or even reading a fascinating book. Life is too short to not be doing what you are crazy about. If you truly love something, don’t let other people get in the way of it. You do you, and everything will be alright." Those quotes strongly reflect of how I feel about life and it also inspires me.
I believe everyone has their own perspective on life, and I respect that. It was interesting learning about all these different and unique stories that everyone had to share. It also open my mind to new ways on how to look at life. I am really glad we did this project because I never really thought about what I believe in and it made me realize what I do believe. I have a better understanding of who I am now.
The video is the concert I am talking about in my essay. I am the one where about four minutes in, Michael Franti hands the mic to me.