DRAFT I
When I was six years old, the power went out at my house. Pouring rain drummed against the windows and lightening bolted across the sky. My uncle glanced at me, crossed the dim room, and took a seat beside me on the living room floor.
“Did you know thunder is the sound of angels bowling?” he whispered. I hesitantly lowered my hands from my ears and listened. It sounded just like a bowling ball gliding along a glossy wooden floor. He was right.
I didn’t cover my ears again that night, or the next time it thundered, or the next. It is intriguing that the way my uncle arranged his words allowed my fear to be diminished. In fact, it can be useful. Dhruv Khullar, both a physician and an assistant professor at Cornell University, notes that metaphor can “offer patients an avenue to express their emotions and exert agency over their conditions”. Not only is metaphor beneficial in overcoming childhood fear and within intensive care units, it can be used to help any individual better understand a concept. Generally speaking, a metaphor’s role in how we perceive our bodies and pursue health is inherently positive.
DRAFT II
When I was six years old, the power went out at my house. Pouring rain drummed against the windows and lightening bolted across the sky. My uncle glanced at me, crossed the dim room, and took a seat beside me on the living room floor.
“Did you know thunder is the sound of angels bowling?” he whispered. I hesitantly lowered my hands from my ears and listened. It sounded just like a bowling ball gliding along a glossy wooden floor. He was right.
A metaphor, voiced in an instance of time, had diminished my fear that night, throughout the course of the next storm, and the next. Although a cure to a childhood fear does not sound so complicated, this approach can be applied to greater circumstances. A very important domain in which this figure of language is controversially used is within the medical field. Dhruv Khullar, both a physician and an assistant professor at Cornell University, notes that metaphor can “offer patients an avenue to express their emotions and exert agency over their conditions”. It is evident that metaphor can help people with illness understand their conditions and consciously make decisions regarding the next step in their healing process. To a large extent, a metaphor’s role in how patients experience sickness and pursue health is inherently positive.
I liked how you used a personal example of a metaphor that helped you get over your fears than followed it up with Khullar’s explanation of how that happens in the medical field having a they say and I say like this right at the beginning really strengthens your argument
I think that instead of writing “the next time it thundered, or the next” possibly try “the next time it thundered, or the following”. I feel like it flows a little better instead of using the word next again. I find I write “that” a lot in my own work so, I try to see if my sentence will work without it and if it does I delete it. I feel it makes the sentence flow a little better.
I like in your second attempt that you really connect your own experience with going into the prompt itself.
The only thing I can think of that may need changing is how at the end you say it is basically “evident” that you are right which may alienate people who are instantly skeptical of your point especially if you say it before proving much