Personal Narrative

Reflective Memo

The goal of this paper is to tell my life story of being a gymnast and how my life changed after getting injured. After reading my paper, I want the audience to realize how your goals and dreams might not come true, but you will still be happy in the end. The writing strategy that I used to write this paper was making a brief outline of my passion for gymnastics and how I felt before, during, and after my injury. I did not go into detail on my outline; however, I just wrote bullets of what each paragraph was going to be about.

My essay has changed throughout the drafting process because I ended up making drastic changes for every draft. For my first draft, I went back and took out some information that was repeated or wasn’t important. Then for my second draft, I decided to start my essay off with my injury and then explain the events that led up to the actual injury. Lastly, for my final draft, I took out all the information about cheerleading and mainly focused on gymnastics and my injury. The part about cheerleading was just addition information that I could have used for a whole different paper. Some problems I came across while writing this paper was that I did not know how to word some of the ideas I wanted to write about. I knew in my head how everything happened, but I thought it was more difficult to put my ideas in an actual essay.

This writing has compared to other writings I have written in the past because it was a true story about me. I believe that it is so much easier writing about something that happen to you because you can write your feelings down as you write the paper. Also, while I was writing this paper, it brought back some great memories and made me realize how much I loved gymnastics and how upset I was once I got hurt.

The lesson that I learned while writing a personal narrative is that you don’t know if you’re going to have enough information to write about, or maybe even too much information until you actually start writing. At first, I had to switch what I was going to write about because I knew I couldn’t talk about my old topic in an essay. I could sum it up in a few paragraphs, but it wasn’t long enough. Then once I had my new topic, I realized I had too much information. The skills that I need to sharpen when writing a personal narrative is trying to use different describing words and write more about my emotions and feelings. When writers do this, it makes their writing more descriptive and gives their readers a better understand of how they are feeling.

The comments of the people that read my paper in class were very useful to me. Danielle, Giovanna, and Dan all agreed that I needed to go into more detail on my injury and how I felt after it happened. Also, they told me that I should try to grab the audience’s attention more in the beginning paragraph. Dr. Simon gave me an idea of starting off with my injury and doing a flashback, which I thought was a great idea. I believe that my second draft of my personal narrative is much better because of my classmate’s comments and thoughts.

After visiting the writing center, Megan helped me improve on the areas where my classmates and I thought needed work. She helped me with some grammatical errors, as well as making my conclusion sound more forceful. In order to do so, she made me free-write about my feelings after I got hurt and then we discussed it, and tried to add it into the conclusion. The writing center was extremely helpful to me because I was able to get another person’s opinion on my paper. After my first experience at the writing center, I know that I will definitely be going back there!

A Broken Dream

Bam! There I was, face planted on the floor, looking like I just fell from the Empire State Building. At that moment, I knew I had thrown away everything that I ever worked for. My fingers were shattered, and they were starting to swell up to the size of a tennis ball. I knew right then that I dislocated my finger bones. When I landed the trick, I hit my head so hard that I could not even move it if I tried. All the other girls in the gym, looking like blurs, came running up to me asking if I was okay, but I was in a state of shock and in excruciating pain. I had no idea where I was. I felt lifeless. My gymnastics coach kept asking me if I was okay, but I was not responding to him. He tried to help me up, but I was not moving from that mat. I felt as if my head was not attached to the rest of my body.

Once my coach gave me ice for my fingers, they started feeling numb. My head was still pounding, and I was trying to sit up. I kept seeing little stars shooting out the corner of my eyes. I knew something was not right, but at this point I didn’t even care. While I tried recuperating, I asked my coach if this was going to heal in time for Nationals, which were only two months away. The look on his face did not seem too promising. I lost it. I started hysterically crying. I had just thrown away my dream.

Every little girl’s dream is to go to the Olympics. It was my dream as well. At the age of five, I entered the gymnastics world and fell in love with it. I remember how I felt at my very first gymnastics class: excited and scared, with visions of myself in the distant future as an Olympic gymnast in a sparkle leotard. I continued to do gymnastics, advancing slowly by levels each year, and working twice as hard during the weeks. I lived and breathed gymnastics; it was what kept me happy and I didn’t want to do anything else. My family room couch was used for doing flips off of and practicing what I had just learned at practice. During my spare time, I would watch gymnastics movies or even taped episodes of Shawn Johnson, who was my Olympic gymnast idol. I was going to be an Olympic gymnast, and I would do anything to achieve that goal.

When it came time for high school, I had no idea that being on the varsity high school gymnastics team was going to be so much more competitive and stressful. The team practiced everyday after school, and we did everything together. The first day of practice the coach told us our life consisted of eating, sleeping, and gymnastics. She was not kidding. Sometimes I thought I was with the gymnasts more than my own family! We came in first place in almost every meet, being known as the best team and everyone’s worst competitor. It was the best feeling anyone could ask for being on a team with great benefits. All of the hours spent working out in the gym paid off at every meet by landing our tumbling pass or even simply by not falling off the balance beam.

During the year, I was working on perfecting a skill that I never even thought I was going to be able to do. Every night at tumbling, I would get closer and closer to mastering it as if I just learned how to do a cartwheel, except this move consisted of being upside down and twisting in the air all within a split second. I would make little mistakes each time, and I would get so frustrated with myself. Therefore, one day, I was feeling confident in myself and I decided to go for it with no help, no spot, and most importantly no coach being around to catch me if I fell.

The doctor walked in and showed me my x-rays. I didn’t even hear what the doctor was saying, I just knew. I was out of commission for four months because of my broken fingers and head concussion. I could not do gymnastics anymore. I was still a part of the gymnastics team, along with my broken fingers that were useless for the team. It was so hard going to practice watching the girls practice on the same blue mat and me not being there right along side of them. That small injury of mine actually ended my career as a gymnast. I thought I was going to be able to get right back into the skills where I left off before I got hurt, but I wasn’t able too. It was so much more difficult and I didn’t want to relearn skills I learned when I was ten years old. There was nothing I could do except try to keep my head up high.

I would watch gymnasts collapse all the time on TV and wonder what they felt like. Now I knew. I wish I didn’t. But gymnastics is a challenge. Gymnasts are always falling and getting hurt in the gym. It's nearly impossible to learn and master a new skill without falling. I know I did not achieve my goal of going to the Olympics, but I did achieve numerous medals at high school gymnastic meets. My injury was reality and it was a price I had to pay. I could have gone back out on the mat, but I knew my body wouldn’t feel the same. All I would remember is falling flat on my face, and I wouldn’t want that to happen to me again. Sometimes it takes more heart to sit out and really recover than it does to race back onto the mat and end up on a stretcher.