After reading several Newsweek “Favorite Mistake” columns, we wrote about some favorite mistakes of our own:

“There was nothing positive about this. My head lowered. My stomach sank. What had I done?“  Julius recalls an incident involving the family pet and auto repair.

“I can’t remember what happened next, only my father coming in with a bowl of water, him yelling, and the unbearable stench of smoke.” Microwave mishaps befall  Mara and Yasmine.

“As if things can’t get any worse…they do.”  Read Vayda’s account of signing up for P.E.

“My hands were shaking and my heart was pounding so hard that I could hear it.”  Rachel shares a story of anxiety.

“There I was lying flat on the ground— eyes widened as if the world had just flashed before them—and for me, it had.”  Learn why Vivian was so upset.

“The whole thing seemed like it was in slow motion.”  Caitlyn narrowly avoids disaster.

Note that the Newsweek columns are based on interviews, written in first person but by a third party who had talked with the man or woman who had actually had the experience.

In class, we discussed how our favorite mistakes would be different:  ours would be personal narratives, written in first person by the student who had had the experience. For this assignment, our goal would be to show the event in more detail than the news magazine columns had, in a way that the reader could feel what the writer had felt.

Leave us your comments and let us know how we did!