Learning To Embrace The Different

personal narrative ideas middle school and Brannon might suggest I pry loose the grip that ancient rhetorical tradition has on my modern classroom, but I'm not convinced I can so easily abandon the ancient rhetoricians. Learning to embrace the different, more creative, and less frequently acknowledged elements of this tradition may be the way for me to go instead. The ancient art of rhetoric recognizes and celebrates the ambiguity of language; rhetoric speculates about the world and invites others to make their own speculations. The essays we assign our students to write, such as the narrative essay, however, discourage ambiguity and speculation. They force students to write about what they already know about their lives or the world around them. Composition instructors should turn, instead, to the personal essay via the father of the form, Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne's example encourages students to explore their lives and only attempt to make sense of them. Unlike the stiff narrative essay encouraged by modes-based readers, the personal essay is invigorated by creativity, spontaneity, and personal discovery. If we yearn for our students to experience writing in this light, we need to create a space in our classrooms that allows for Aristotle's art of wondering and encourages Plato's motley of ideas. We need to promote students' ruminations about life, rather than privilege their explaining of it, in a space that allows for vulnerability and contradictions along their paths to discovery.


This essay should demonstrate your awareness of the world outside your own ethnic or cultural identity. INSEAD is a highly international program and seeks candidates that both demonstrate and value diversity. This could be an opportunity to highlight any international or cross culture exposure you have had such as traveling outside your home country, or when experiencing diversity within your home country. When you describe the experience and judge it to be either positive or negative it will be important to provide some individual context. Every applicant from INSEAD is coming from a unique background and from many different countries. Your perception of positive or negative cultural diversity will be a view into how you interact with the world. For example, you could view the lack of diversity in a workplace or school environment as a significant negative, or perhaps you had an experience of being the only "diverse" person in a work or personal situation.


On the positive side perhaps you learned more about others through a new cultural experience or through team building with a group of people different from yourself. Where you are coming from will be the deciding factor in terms of what experiences are ultimately positive or negative. At all times consider the environment at INSEAD and what your essay is saying about your ability to fit in among a highly diverse group of people. Essay 4. Describe all types of extra-professional activities in which you have been or are still involved for a significant amount of time (clubs, sports, music, arts, politics, etc). How are you enriched by these activities? Nothing is more personal than what you choose to do outside of school or work. What are the most meaningful pursuits you have spent your time on? You should both describe the main interests you have outside of your professional pursuits and explain why they are meaningful to you and why you spend time on them. Content has been generated by Essay Freelance Writers!


Ideally you can also explain how you will continue your involvement while at INSEAD and cite some specific clubs or groups where you see your interests contributing to the community. Optional Essay: Is there anything else that was not covered in your application that you would like to share with the admissions committee? This essay is 350 words you can use for anything you would like to showcase and that you were unable to work into the rest of your application. Because INSEAD's questions are quite thorough you may have covered all aspects of your candidacy and personal qualities in the other five essay questions, in which case you can feel comfortable skipping this question (it IS optional). If you did not have a place for an interesting hobby, new aspect of your background to describe, or key accomplishment, it may be appropriate to use this space to tell that story. It is far better to fully explain any issues in your application than to leave the admissions committee to guess what happened. If you have any challenging aspects to your candidacy like a low GPA or a failing grade in college, this is the correct place to address those concerns. Explain your issue clearly and focus most of the essay on the correction for the issue. For example, if you had a disciplinary issue in college, spend most of the essay demonstrating that you learned from the experience and have been an ideal citizen ever since rather than focusing on the negative. Avoid blaming anyone else for your issue, and relentlessly show why this one incident is in your past and will stay there.