Post II: Response to National Museum of Roller-Skating

On Friday afternoon, I visited the National Museum of Roller-Skating. My experience there was not one of the most thrilling or invigorating experiences of my life. As I first entered the museum, I walked through the doors and the first thing that I saw was a cubicle. As I entered the room, I realized that I was walking through an office; an office full of people busy at work. At this point, I began to feel slightly awkward. I felt out of place. I thought to myself, “I don’t belong here. People who roller-skate and people who care about roller-skating belong here.” I was not one of those people. I was just there for an assignment.

As I finally made it back to where the actual museum was I felt a little bit more relaxed. I was finally away from all those office cubicles with workers peering out of them at me with looks on their faces that read, “What do you think you’re doing here?” Everything started to felt better to me. I was a little more at ease. I began to walk around the museum and start to examine a few of the exhibits. Although I still felt out of place, I began to focus more on the history of roller-skating and various other interesting facts about roller-skating and forgot how out of place I felt.

There were a few interesting facts that I noticed while I was there that I had never heard before. For example, I never knew that Tara Lipinski was a roller-skating champion when she was a young girl. I also never knew that there used to be a dress code for women when they roller-skated. They couldn’t wear skirts that were more than two inches above the knee.
So, I finally stopped caring about what all the roller-skating people thought about me invading their museum. After that it became a lot more enjoyable. It became more than just an assignment. It became something interesting. I learned stuff while I was there. It was a good experience but…I’ll never go back.

Post I: Discourse Surrounding the Essay

“As there is no standard human type who writes essays, so is there no standard essay: no set style, length, or subject. But what does unite almost all successful essays, no matter how divergent the subject, is that a strong personal presence is felt behind them...Without that strong personal presence, the essay doesn’t quite exist; it becomes an article, a piece, or some other indefinable verbal construction.”

-Joseph Epstein in “No Standard Essay.”

I found this quote to be quite truthful. I believe that it is impossible to define a standard essay because of all the different subjects and writing styles that are used. There are essays written over subjects of all kinds, such as people, animals, thoughts, ideas, and the list goes on. For example, on essay on “The Existence of God” is going to be different from an essay on “My Summer Vacation.” An essay’s length can range from short to long and can be written from whatever perspective the author chooses to use. There is just no standard format that can be given when writing an essay.

One premise that Epstein put forth in his quote that I found to be extremely thought-provoking was his idea that “a strong personal presence” had to be felt in an essay in order for it to be successful. I had never thought of that being an important part of an essay, but Epstein’s reasoning is very logical. If one doesn’t add his personal presence, then the work does indeed become less invigorative; rather, the work becomes dull and lifeless. As Epstein noted, “It becomes an article, a piece, or some other indefinable verbal construction.”

An indefinable verbal construction obviously is not something that any writer should strive for in an essay, or any other literary work for that matter. An essay is meant to intrigue the reader, not to bore the reader to death. I see an essay best defined as a written work in which the writer explains his feelings on the subject. I see an essay as something that the writer uses in order to get his thoughts across to whoever cares to know. The author writes down his feelings and thoughts on a subject and allows anyone who would like, to read his work and draw their own conclusions about what he said. So although it is hard to actually define a “standard essay” that is the base definition that I have created.