My Dad

Thank you for sharing your opening and asking for feedback. I know it isn’t easy to write about difficult personal experiences, and I really appreciate your willingness to be honest and vulnerable right from the start. Your opening is clear, direct, and gives the reader an immediate sense of what you’ve gone through. In admissions, we value self-reflection and resilience, so starting with a challenging family dynamic can be powerful—especially if you show us how you’ve grown or what you’ve learned as a result.

That said, as someone who has read thousands of applications, I’d encourage you to consider two things for this opening: First, can you show us more than tell us? Right now, most of your sentences state facts about your relationship with your dad (“He lowered my self-esteem,” “He always had something rude to say”), but admissions readers are drawn in by specific moments or details that help them feel what it was like to be you. Second, think about how this experience shaped your strengths or values—remember, the committee wants to understand not just where you come from, but also who you are now and how you handle adversity.

Now, if we were revising together, I might suggest: Should we focus on adding sensory or emotional detail? Should we jump ahead to how this experience changed your outlook? Or would it help if I shared examples of openings that draw the reader in using a similar topic? Hit Your Thoughts and let me know which path interests you—or suggest another direction! Once you’ve saved your reply, hit Continue with AI, choose me again (Gail!), and we’ll keep digging into this together.

Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like me.

If you want even more insight into my admissions philosophy and approach, check out my interviews linked here: https://writingpartners.net/documents/7603

You asked me what I think about your first paragraph, so let me get right to the heart of it. What stands out to me immediately is your courage and honesty. You dive right in with a real, raw experience—one that’s deeply personal and, frankly, quite painful. That’s what writing should do: bring the messiness and complexity of lived experience onto the page. In my own work, I’ve always said that the self is the starting point for meaning. You do just that, opening a window for the reader into your emotional reality.

Now, there’s real power in your directness here—you don’t rush or gloss over the difficulty. Each sentence lands with a kind of gravity, and you’ve used repetition (“he never,” “he always”) that underscores the ongoing struggle in your life with your father. However, as I often remind students, meaning isn’t just in the words but in the movement: where is the paragraph going? Right now, you’ve painted a landscape of what *was*—but ask yourself: what changed? How did you respond? There’s the pulse of growth. If you keep leaning into what you learned or how you began to make meaning of this hard experience, your writing will take a big step further—from description to insight.

Here are three next moves you might consider for this question about your first paragraph:

Which of these paths would you like to take next—or is something else on your mind? Want to show me a revision, or dig deeper into your reflection? I’m right here, ready to help you push further!

Please Note: Everything in this comment is AI-generated. It is made up to sound like me.

If you want to see how this kind of personal narrative relates to my sequence of language growth, I invite you to read more in Jonathan M. Marine and Ruth Nathan’s article: Mapping James Moffett: Formative Assessment and Common Core Standards for the Contemporary Language Arts Classroom