What objects tell the story of your life?
Arduous Art
The plastic models I have constructed throughout my adolescence and teenage years. The first time I was gifted a plastic model kit, I was confused. I thought to myself, “This can't be right; shouldn't they have constructed it before?” The challenge was daunting and demanding. I needed tweezers, pliers, and a special adhesive called Plastic Cement. The sheer amount of tools and precision needed to fulfill the project was frightening. I was exploring a cave with a match to light my way. Unboxing the kit unveiled the trays of pieces I need to put together to create the tank. Glancing at the instructions was no help, vague annotations on a large diagram of an unfinished tank. Arrows and letters are paired with numbers to differentiate the myriad of pieces, such as “A3” or “B20”. Being placed in the middle of the fire, I had to navigate my way to the exit. I began to cut out the pieces and try to assemble them according to the diagram on the instructions. In attempting to replicate the diagram, I quickly figured out that most of the pieces wouldn't stay in place. The instructions omitted where and when to use plastic cement and only told you when not to use it. These instructions were a nightmare for an 11-year-old who comes from building Legos, where the instructions are clear and explicit. This endeavor went just as well as you would expect. Roughly cut pieces, too much cement, fingers get sticky, and then dry out; excess cement permanently marking fingerprints onto the plastic. After an hour or two, I was left with barely any progress. I started putting the wheels together, but the tank was still bare and unfinished. The progress was agonizingly slow, and for a kid who wants immediate results, the progress was demotivating and crushing. The antithesis of my form of entertainment remained on my table for weeks. After attempting to continue my messy work, I had unknowingly spilled the plastic cement all over my table. The thing about plastic cement is that when left out in open air for too long, it will become hard and inseparable from its host. That's right, not only had I made a mess of my tank model, but I ruined my table in the process. My first attempt was a complete and utter failure. It was many months later when I picked up my next plastic model kit. It was my birthday (again), and I thought, “I have to give this plastic model thing another shot”. I picked another tank and began work on the model. I carefully followed the instructions, double-checking that I had cut out the right piece before applying cement, and carefully placed the pieces together so as not smudge excess cement. My cutting skills had still not improved much, and small studs remained on the pieces, creating uneven connections between the pieces. The cement still left smudge markings on the plastic. The process was grueling, and at times it felt as though I was crawling through a mudpit with no end in sight. Soon enough, I had finished and was left with a haphazardly designed tank. The result was not instant gratification, rather it was a result I needed to work towards. I needed to cut hours from my day to one day enjoy the beauty of my own work. The tank was set on my shelf to soon be joined by more tanks, airplanes, and even cars. The models sat as totems of a portion of my life spent carefully and tenderly piecing together each and every fragment of a greater result. The joy did not lie in the result of the beauty but rather in the processes by which it was created. I have grown to appreciate more of the process and dissociate from the quick stimulus of dopamine rushes. In the present, I have grown lazy, and the thought of building another kit makes me think of the countless hours that I will have to dedicate, when instead I could watch YouTube instead. With this in mind, countless new and unfinished kits build up at the foot of my desk. I wonder if I will be able to experience that same joy I felt again.
- My essay is over 650, how can I shorten?
- This was my outline: "Started out rough, got better at it throughout time, shows how I have matured and been able to find joy in the process rather than always seek the outcome." was I able to fulfill it?
- I felt like I got lost halfway through essay
- Any other revision suggestions would be much appreciated.
- Should I change the title?
Hello Alberto Rojano. This Blog looks very magnificent. Can you start the essay by having a sentence on what the plastic model kit is? The average reader has likely never seen or heard of one before, myself included. I really like this section towards the middle, "After attempting to continue my messy work, I had unknowingly spilled the plastic cement all over my table... My first attempt was a complete and utter failure. " I think that it's quite humorous and gives that extra boost to the essay readers experience. I also quite liked what you had at the end about youtube. Now to answer your questions, you can shorten your essay by cutting off a bit in the beginning about your troubles with your first and second try at the kit, it seems to feel a bit repetitive after a while. I think that you were able to fulfil your outline. Honestly, halfway through the essay is where it really starts to shine. So I think that the second half of the essay if the stronger section. The title is wonderful.
ReplyDelete-Ana Artz
Hi Alberto,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this read. As a kid I used to get those plastic model kits as well, but due to its complicated nature I gave up and it never really stuck. It's nice to see someone else who stuck with it and their experience. I think the overall arc of the story is nice. A couple pieces of feedback—you can section your paragraphs a little bit better so it doesn't look like one wall of text. Although it's probably okay it makes it a little hard to follow with my eyes. Secondly, towards the end you have a good "Moral of the story", but you kind of disrupt it by saying how you have more and more unfinished projects now since you prefer cheaper dopamine. Either incorporate that as part of your main point or just cut it out entirely, otherwise it sort of disrupts the nice flow you have going on. Great job overall!
Hi Alberto! Before I say anything else, I just wanted to say that I thought it was a very nice essay to read! I could imagine you building these models (and struggling), and it was pretty funny. For cutting down on words, I personally liked a lot of what you wrote, so I was struggling to find stuff😅. I thought that your analogies were good but sometimes unnecessary; for example, "Being placed in the middle of the fire, I had to navigate my way to the exit" overlapped with an analogy of exploring a cave you put just a few sentences before. Maybe you could cut some of the details of building the model, but I personally thought they were important details, so maybe just make them more concise. I think you followed your outline and had each of the four components, but I thought you could benefit from having a little more reflection or thoughts from when you were younger to further show your frustrations with trying to make the tank look perfect. Finally, for your title, I thought it was good because it captured how you felt (and still partially feel) about the models. You could also change it to something that captures the way you look at it as the process vs the finished product. Overall, great essay. Hope to see more from you!
ReplyDeleteHey Alberto! This blog does a good job conveying how challenging and intimidating the process of building plastic models can be, especially for a child. The metaphors, such as being "placed in the middle of the fire"or "crawling through a mud pit", help the reader feel the frustration and effort involved. I also liked how the essay shifts from failure to growth, showing how patience and appreciation for process develop over time. One thing that could be improved is breaking the essay into shorter paragraphs. Doing so would make the piece easier to read and give key moments, like the first failure and later reflection, more impactful.
ReplyDeleteHi Alberto! I think you chose a really nice story with a good progression for connection to larger themes of self-growth. I enjoyed your descriptive word choices that helped me visualize the story a lot better, and I think you wrapped it up nicely at the end. Something I noticed is how, in the beginning, I felt kind of lost while reading, since you jumped right in fairly quickly. But in a sense, it was kind of cool that it paralleled your confusion and sort of overstimulated experience as a child. So maybe for this essay, the disorganization kinda works!But it could be helpful to pick a few details to describe and develop more in-depth, rather than a lot of different ones. Because sometimes I got a little confused between all the metaphors and plastic model descriptions. With the cave, fire, and mudpit, I think those were all strong and thoughtful metaphors, but it might be a bit much for a reader to keep track of all of them in an essay like this with a relatively short word limit. So you could maybe just try picking one or two, and then referencing them later. This would also be a useful tool in articulating how you have matured, for example, by comparing the way you navigate a cave, maybe with a matchstick vs a flashlight. Also, I noticed that your description of the first experience takes up a bit over half of your essay. Since this was a “failure”, it could be more efficient and have a stronger delivery of your intended message if you were able to shorten that part a little (this could be through those metaphor cuts, etc.) and add more self-reflection, to really emphasize the theme of self-maturity and development. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this draft. You picked a great story with clear morals, and wrote in an honest, intimate way. Great work, and I am excited to see how this develops!
ReplyDelete