11: "The Summer of 2009"

Anyone who knows me knows how much my grandfather meant to me, and how much his passing affected me.

He was often one of the few people who ever seemed to really get me, understand me, appreciate me completely.  We had such an awesome relationship, and I think about him every single day.

But he is always with me, because everything I am doing with my life right now can be traced back to one moment from my freshman year.  It's the only moment in the Top 25 that comes from my freshman year, and it's my number 11 college memory: writing the essay about my grandpa, called "Thoughts on My Future: Life, Death, and the Summer of 2009."

My grandpa died on a Saturday.  September 12, 2009.  We played Notre Dame that day.  Tate Forcier threw a last-second, game-winning touchdown pass to Greg Mathews shortly after they carried his body out of the house.

The story goes like this:

-In my freshman writing class, the first assignment was a personal narrative.
-Immediately, I wrote down ideas about an essay detailing my relationship with my grandpa.
-I structured the story based on The Godfather: Part II, which I had just watched.
-I wrote the entire essay in one sitting.
-I received almost no feedback from my classmates in workshop, who all felt it was good as is.
-I changed, maybe, two paragraphs.
-I wrote 12 pages when I needed 6.
-I cried upon writing the emotional last line.

I'll let the essay itself do most of the talking, except to say this (which I kind of alluded to in my post on the screenplays I wrote based on this essay): my decision to get back into writing was the result of the experience of writing this.  Never before and never since has something just poured out of me as easily and as effectively as it did when I wrote this.

Sleepover, Casting Call, Ann Arborland, Aftermath...they all happen because of this.  The screenwriting sub-concentration.  The Love You Take.  The Designated Driver.  It's all because of this.  It was the essay I submitted to the Minor in Writing to get in.

No moment in my four years at college was more significant than this.  Enjoy.

http://zachbucholtz.weebly.com/freshman-writing.html







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