The Thrill of Victory...The Agony of Parents

RL3

1.) The opening to Jennifer Schwind-Pawlak's The Thrill of Victory...The Agony of Parents is a very fitting one. With one word she pulls the reader in. Everyone has parents, whether they are present or absent so anyone who reads her essay should be pulled in for one reason or another. I definitely was. Schwind-Pawlak could have started with soccer right off the bat. Not everyone is a fan of soccer, so some of the audience probably would have turned away. Her focus was parents not soccer. I think she did just right in the direction she went.

3.) Playful. That would be the one word I would chose that describes the tone of the essay. While there a many moments when Jennifer Schwind-Pawlak is dramatic in her explanation and precise in her description, most of her story is quite fun and humorous. How she talks about her relationship with soccer in the beginning while she contorted her "fingers into chubby pretzels while singing The Itsy Bitsy Spider" made me laugh. When she mentioned how the only thing important to her was "looking cool while running down the field chasing a spotted ball," I could not help but smile. And when Jennifer talks about how she "inched toward" her coach just "to let him know [she] was there, I chuckled knowing how many times I myself have been in that situation. Trying to get someones attention oh so subtlety. All around, this essay made me laugh or at least crack a smile.