All about me
Manaswini Sridhar
Tell me about yourself… this is the one liner that most interview candidates are comfortable with, but they (usually) don’t really nail it! Most of them, complacently and without giving it a second thought, reel off the following: My name is… I have done my M.Sc from …University and have secured 97%. My father is an engineer working in a private company and my mother is a homemaker. I have a brother who is doing his under graduation in ….University. I come from …and I think I qualify for this job.
The astute (and irked) interviewer puts a cross against the candidate; the occasional forthright interviewer patiently explains: I have not learned anything about you! I now have some knowledge about your family; whatever else you have said about yourself is already there in the CV. This puzzles and perplexes many a young person because what they have stated above is what their school essays have contained, and they have received a good grade for it. Hence they have assumed that they have been on the right track!
Students right from class 1 keep writing about themselves; however, but for the first one or two sentences, the focus shifts to other people and other things! The Myself essay is customarily about the family; the student writes about siblings, parents, and concludes with a one liner such as: I like cats.
Typically, a primary class student would probably write something like the following:
My name is Anita Kohli. I study in Class 4 in KS Matriculation School. I have a brother and a sister. They are younger than me and they study in the same school. My father’s name is Arjun Kohli. He owns an electrical shop. My mother’s name is Anuradha Kolhi. She is a teacher. My brother, sister, and I play in the evening and do our homework.
The sentences are simple, have no grammatical flaws, and the vocabulary is apt. The student would probably be awarded three or four marks out of five. But does one know anything about Anita? There are no personality traits mentioned and there is no mention even of the game or the sport that she plays. The unfortunate student does not even recognize that what she has written is not of relevance to the topic because I, as a teacher, have not offered that feedback. The student assumes that since she has used the first person pronoun throughout the essay, the essay has been about her!
The essay below, in contrast, qualifies for an essay about Myself.
My name is Mahesh Vardha. I study in Class IV in St. Thomas School. I like my school because it has a big playground with a lot of swings. I love to swing, and I can swing higher than my friends. I like that! The subject I hate most is mathematics because I can never understand it. I like basketball. I need to improve. My coach says that I need to grow taller for that. My mother is giving me more milk for this reason. I play the keyboard and entertain my grandmother. She thinks I play very well. People ask me what I want to be…I think it is enough to be ME right now!
The sentences are simple enough. The paragraph gives one a clear idea of what the little boy could be like, and is therefore of relevance to the topic.
https://blog.udemy.com/essay-about-myself/, http://www.indiacelebrating.com/essay/myself-essay/ and http://busyteacher.org/6976-diary-5-ideas-to-get-students-writing.html provide adequate hints or scaffolding to help students write an essay about themselves. The websites help one look at oneself in various ways, and students can choose what is easy or appealing to them. These are not the typical descriptive essays about a person’s qualities or achievements. The essays chalk out an experience or a belief of the writer, making it easy for the reader to discern the personality of the writer.
So what are the expectations from the middle school student? Are we looking for more information, richer and more complex vocabulary? If this were clearly spelled out to students, many of them would probably be more enthusiastic in writing about themselves. They only need to do a little bit of introspection, and focus on the more interesting aspects of their personality – the more positive or comic traits!
If the teacher puts up the following categories on the board, students who have a problem coming up with themes or ideas about themselves will find that their pens are more than willing to race across the page. If the teacher puts up these categories on the board, and explains to students that the essay can comprise any of these elements, or a combination of them, then students begin to perceive that it is not such an insurmountable task. For example, a student who wants to write a simple and easy essay will focus on the birthday theme, and then go on to describe where he/she was born, the kinds of things he/she likes to do on the birthday, which in turn will reveal a little about the writer. The student who wants to write a narrative will probably focus on a favorite childhood memory. Since the theme is given to the student, it becomes unnecessary to offer any more hand holding in the form of vocabulary support. Each student will be able to write about some particular aspect of his/her life. In the process of writing, students also begin to understand themselves better. By understanding themselves better, they are also able to mentally make a comparative study of their negative and positive traits. They begin to understand what skills they need to develop in order to achieve their goals and ambitions. It is no wonder that this topic about myself that starts in primary school continues all through one’s career. The idea behind it is that as one grows older, one grows out of talking about one’s family and graduates to one’s likes, dislikes, abilities, and core competence area. Since this is a topic of such high value, it is up to the teachers to make sure that the subject takes on a different approach in every class, and that its importance is explained to the students so that they can continue working on themselves in order to succeed in their career and in their life.
Tip of the month
When introducing a new topic, make sure that your personal feelings towards the topic don’t colour your presentation. For example, if a teacher says that he/she is going through something quickly because it is not of great importance, students will turn a deaf ear to what is being said, and in the process, the teacher has closed yet another window in the child’s house of knowledge.
The author is a teacher educator and language trainer based in Hyderabad. She can be reached at manaswinisridhar@gmail.com.
