In our “Moment in Time” project we all selected a moment that was somewhat important to us in some way. This moment could have changed the way we look at things, made us get more in touch with certain feelings, or got us into something we love and will continue to do for the rest of our lives. We began by brainstorming possible moments to write about by answering a few questions about times or things that we’ve experienced in our lives. I ran with my answer to a question along the lines of: when was a time that you experienced immense fear? We then had to describe this moment in narrative form as though we were reliving the moment with the readers right there beside us. We needed to make the readers feel like they were there and make them feel, see, smell, and hear what we did in that moment. In our writing we also needed to incorporate the things that make a good story (a hero, the hero suffers, the hero is a changed person by the end), as well as including story grammar (setting, rising action, attempts, results, etc.). Through this project I learned a lot about how much more of an influence story grammar has in my writing now, rather than they did in my past writing experiences and classes. I also never realized that good stories have a hero that suffers and changes throughout the course of the story, so that was something I was glad to learn and something that I cause in the future in all of my narrative writing. Why do we tell stories? We tell stories to share our own or others experiences, fiction or true, sometimes to entertain, help sympathize, teach a lesson, or just because our teacher requests us to. Even if that last one was the reason for some of us, I’ve learned that writing about my own experience has made it all that much more rich and meaningful. Writing this story has also made me realize how much this specific moment has meant to me and how much more confidence it has given me over the past few years. Rewriting this experience has also made me realize how little trust I put in myself, as well as why I dislike heights so much. Narrative writing is a nice way to let things out that you’ve been holding in or haven’t really put too much thought into. Being in touch with past events as well as making your own up and allowing your imagination to run free helps writers grow. After all, it wouldn’t be any fun if you kept your writing within the box and didn’t venture out to grow, would it? I wish I had been better able to incorporate the all the things I learned through this project to my expectations. I had a hard time going more in depth with the dialog and characters because I didn't remember any specific, clear, or heavily relevant things to include. I wish I had done the highlighting that we did in class the day it was due before hand so that I could have refined my writing a bit further before I turned it in. After doing this critiquing on my own I realized that I could have made my verbs stronger and more descriptive. I was satisfied it the time with how my story had been for a couple days, only making little changes here and there because I was happy with my story and didn't notice much more I needed to change. About a week into this project I realized why I have always had such an issue with climbing and heights. When I was in 5th grade I went rappelling with my mom and she was hooked up wrong and got flipped upsidedown and backwards. Not to mention I was already scared out of my mind. Doing this project and conferencing with Stephen also helped my realize that I have lots of trust issues, particularly with trusting myself. It was both saddening and eye opening to realize these things. I'm so glad that I chose to write my story about this moment because it more aware of who I am and how much this even influenced me.