My peers noted that I didn’t really have any Asian American pop culture connections in my first essay (honestly I hadn’t really figured out my angle yet so I bypassed them) this is something that I’m trying to really focus on while writing my second draft.

My first draft felt a lot like fluff because that’s pretty much what it was. Writing meat into this essay has been hard because I run the risk of getting a little too personal but also of being too vague and just writing words for the sake of words (even I got pretty bored with the last draft).

Kris mentioned that I should try to make my father more complex. Because I love my dad so much I might have just gushed about him in my original draft while not even thinking about his flaws resulting in a rather one-dimensional portrait of my father to those who don’t know him. As I think back I have a hard time recalling his flaws probably because at this point they seem very normal to me, but maybe great writing is taking a step back and introducing the reader to a character I know intimately like I’m looking at him with a brand new set of eyes.

This essay has been tricky for me, I didn’t really get the prompt at first and had to have it explained to me several times; slowly. I think that I’m used to arguing in my essays and to not have anything to argue about is more confusing to me than I thought it would be. In general I’ve finally realized that I don’t have to argue a point necessarily for this essay but rather, make lots of observations and then simply point them back to my idea of what home is. Simple right?