In the first draft I wrote "The forest acts as an escape from the chaos of the city while the city provides the structure and order that the forest lacks; it creates a space that provides solitude but does not leave me feeling lonely". The thing that I ended up changing was the part where I wrote that the forest lacks order; it isn't that the forest lacks order, it's just that the forest is more natural and has a different vibe than campus. The second thing that I changed was the part when I wrote the mixture gives me a place where I can be alone without feeling lonely. When I first wrote the essay I struggling to find a way to end it and I thought that idea was nice but it didn't actually align with what I had written. The idea behind my essay was that I liked country living because I was connected with nature; it made me feel refreshed and relaxed, and that I liked city living because it was exciting; there was always something to do and new people to meet. When I rewrote the sentence I made sure that it aligned with the idea throughout the rest of me essay.

This was another section where I needed to explain why my observations were important to me. When I remembered the time I spent upstate one of the things that stood out was learning to drive. As I remembered certain details they aligned with what I had already described previously so I added this memory here.

Similar to the paragraph above, originally this paragraph lacked anything personal and was instead me just describing what I smelt but not explaining why those smells were significant. When I was rewriting I decided that this would be a good place to explain why I had wanted to live in the country/the memories that I had of being in the country. Since I contrasted the campus with the forest I had to also include a memory of the city and the crowded train one was the first thing that came to mind when I thought about how the different smells crowded my nose.

Before I added this sentence the paragraph was just a list of what I saw. I was very descriptive but I didn't explain why the things I was listing were important to me. When I looked over my notes and reread this paragraph and the two above it, with the new first paragraph in mind, I decided to included a sentence that talk about how the contrast between the campus and the surrounding forest worked together and balanced each other.

This paragraph wasn't originally in the first draft but after reading over my essay I thought that I needed to included a section that explained why I chose to speak about Newton Campus. The essay wasn't originally personal. I included details but I never explain why those details were important to me. This paragraph set up the overall significance of Newton Campus (the fact that I always wanted too live a country lifestyle while still having certain aspects of the city lifestyle) and then in the rest of the essay I picked out specific details, like the different sounds and colors, which allowed me to be more specific about the different part of Newton that caught my eye and made me feel something.

I added this paragraph and I changed from saying that "losing yourself means losing a sense of balance" to saying that "losing yourself can be either good or bad". When I was rewriting my answer to this freewrite I started thinking about that summer, and since I wasn't under a time crunch, I had more time to think about the details of the summer. I realized that there were times I actually enjoyed myself even though I had so much work to do that summer. I added this paragraph because it was one of the memories that I had from that summer. That memory was what changed my thinking on what it means to lose yourself.

This piece originated from a freewrite on the meaning of losing yourself. I chose this piece because it was one of the only freewrites where my thoughts weren't all over the place. I also chose this piece because it was one of the first freewrites that I did and we revisited this at the end of the year so I though it would be a good reflection of my growth.