Essay 12

     

A Perennial Friendship:

An Essay on One of My Friendships

An Essay by Alexander Hawley

8th Grade English

Pine Point School

April 17, 2011

     Many of my friendships are like perennial flowers, but the one to best describe that metaphor is my companionship with my friend Alastair. Perennials start as one flower just like my friendship with Alastair did. The flowers will grow then die, and then they will grow some more before they die again, this cycle will repeat yearly. My friendship with Alastair is very much like a perennial flower.
     Alastair, my long-term friend from Michigan, and I have a friendship that is a lot like a perennial flower. First of all, our camaraderie together started as a few flowers planted all alone, one thing we had in common, one time we enjoyed ourselves together, or one secret we shared. At this time, I didn’t know Alastair very well, we’d just interacted for the first time. We didn’t really understand each other or know each other’s secrets. Sadly, in the wintertime, no matter how many perennial plants there are, they die. The winter after I met Alastair, I had to move away from Michigan, my confidant’s home state, and I now live in Connecticut, a 13-hour drive from Alastair’s house. In a sense when I am that far away from him our partnership is dead, apart from a few texts, phone calls, or emails. The great thing about a perennial flower is that even if one flower dies in the winter there will more be flowers in that place every summer for a substantially long time. Although Alastair and I are not very close during the wintertime, when summer break comes we always meet up. All of those flowers will grow back, and Alastair and I will be inseparable again. Like a perennial flower does, our friendship multiplies. For a flower, there will start to be more and more of its kind around it, it has multiplied. In terms of my association with Alastair, when we come to meet each other after the long school year, we tell each other all about our lives and the school year, but mostly, we play with each other, all of this heightens our friendship. The perennial flower is the perfect metaphor for my friendship with Alastair.
     The perennial flower is very representative of my friendship with Alastair. All friendships start out as a few little connections just like this one did. All friendships don’t, however, match the pattern of a perennial so well, end, but then multiply, end again, but only waiting to multiply again, and so on. Many people love the beauty of a perennial, and wish they were that beautiful, and I think that it is safe to say that many people want to have a friendship as beautiful as ours, one that grows season after season.


Self Assessment

1. I am continuing to work on proofreading because I don’t want to sully my essay by making stupid errors.
2. One strong point would definitely be the fact that the essay isn’t vague. I give a specific friendship and relate it to the topic in every chunk.
3. A possible weak point would be my opening paragraph I tried to summarize what would happen, but it seems to take away from the actual essay.
4. I would give myself an A, I love this essay and I think that I found a great metaphor for the topic.   
Note: The body paragraph has four chunks.