This is the question I was asked to answer for my English 105H class. At first I thought that this would be easy to answer and the hard part would be to differentiate my essay from those of my classmates, but then as I began to look into what I found was far from what I expected.
Once I tried to write down a definition of what I thought documentary was I realized this was going to be harder than I had originally thought. Certainly documentary includes film, but it also includes photos, and essays, and audio recordings, and even posters. How was I to condense all of this into a simple definition and then defend that as the true definition? The truth was I couldn't and so had to take a different tact with my paper.
Now I was writing a defense over an opinion that, while valid, did not immediately spring to mind when reading the assignment prompt for a definitional essay. I have never really been known for thinking outside the box before, just quickly within a very large box. This somewhat new experience has given me great experience in examining myself and my assumptions and challenging the validity of those assumptions. It has also enabled me to think much more 'outside the box' than I had before. Who knew a definitional essay could teach you so much?
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©2005 Noah Van Dam. All Rights Reserved.