Extra Credit

myrna Nashed
Mr. Soeth
English 3AP
March 1, 2011


A. “Commencement Speech at Mount Holyoke College”- Anna Quindlen

B. Anna Quindlen expresses that being prefect is exhausting work, and how year after year she would try to maintain being perfect but came to the conclusion that she “is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.” She also states that it’s more difficult to be yourself now because of how cultures work, that we should set aside the “traditional notions” and start making choices for ourselves and what seems fit for us.

C. Quindlen expresses ethos by quoting Lily Tommy saying “If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat,” explaining that no matter how much you strive, if you strive to be successful and you don’t believe in yourself then you won’t be successful at all, you’ll be just as ordinary as everyone else. This quote also represents Quindlen’s point because she is trying to prove that life isn’t just about work and being successful because not matter what you’ll be as ordinary as everyone else but what makes you extraordinary is when you decide to become yourself and be “successful on your own terms.” “Eventually being perfect day after day, year after year, became like always carrying a backpack filled with bricks on my back. And oh, how I secretly longed to lay my burden down.” Quindlen relates this, by pronouncing pathos, to numerous people who have been for countless years trying to be perfect. She sympathizes with those who are trying to be perfect, reaching out, and criticizing the burdens of “carrying a backpack filled with bricks.”

D. “Take if from someone who has left the backpack full of bricks far behind. Everyday feels light as a feather.” Quindlen uses a metaphor and parallelism, describing of how her days are now lighter than a feather and she had also opened her statement with carrying a heavy burden of being constantly perfect but now it’s gone; since she can to realization of, being perfect isn’t going to make you successful in life as long as you are not please with yourself. “But I can tell you this about her without question: she was perfect. Let me be very clear what I mean by that. I mean that I got up every day and tired to be perfect in every possible way. If there was a test to be had, I studied for it; if there was a paper to be written, it was done. I smiled at everyone in the dorm hallways…..I can tell you today what I did them to be perfect, in every way possible.” Quindlen defines perfect in her own way stating that being perfect to her met that she had studied for every test on time and do every assignment that was due and to be friendly in front of everyone.