Katherine Elacqua -- "The Journey Was Worth It"

Good work in this essay on the assigned passage from Wild.  I think it might be 
a bit too strong to call Cheryl Strayed's state a "moment of bliss" as you do 
on page 3 and again at the top of your final page.  Note that in the previous 
paragraph, she says she is "staggered with emotion."  I think that means she's 
still really close to the start of her real healing process and she's still too 
close to painful memories (about her infidelity to Paul, etc.) to be really blissful.  
Also, while "self-acceptance" (as you say in your concluding paragraph) is a big part 
of the change in her at this point, I think the realization that she was right to 
make the break with her past and try the hike is maybe even more important.  It's
not only that she knows she cannot change the past (the "self-acceptance" part), it's 
that she now knows it was right for her to try to change her future.   But you 
have analyzed what Cheryl Strayed says about how she got to this place very well.  

The connections you draw with the CHQ theme are also very good, for instance in 
this sentence: "Though Strayed doesn’t really address how one should live when the 
journey is more important that the origin or destination, she clearly acknowledges 
the importance of her journey and raises that very question herself."  The one thing
I would say there is that I hope you see that our purpose in making that our theme 
for the year was not to provide you, our students, with any "easy" answers to those 
questions.  Instead, we want to encourage you to ask those questions too and perhaps 
to start to find answers for yourselves.   

On the writing side, I think most of what you have here is good.  But there are
also a few awkward sentences such as this one from the first paragraph:  "Doing 
so is incredibly detrimental because, when one is absorbed with the problematic 
aspects of their life, it’s almost for them to improve their situation."  First, I 
think there's something big missing there!  Didn't you mean to put in "impossible"
before the "to improve their situation?"  The other problem is that "one" and "their" 
don't "play together" very well.  It would be better to say something like "Doing 
so is incredibly detrimental because, when people are absorbed with the problematic 
aspects of their lives, it’s almost [impossible] for them to improve their situations" 
(note: "people" is plural to match the "individuals" in the first sentence, and then 
I made "lives" and "situations" plural to match "people").  Or, if you want to keep 
the "one" and make everything singular, I don't think you need to reiterate the 
"for them" and "their" since it's clear you are talking about what's going on in 
that one person's life.  You might say "Doing so is incredibly detrimental because, 
when one is absorbed with the problematic aspects of his or her life, it’s almost 
[impossible] to improve that situation."   


   Content/Evidence -- A-

   Structure/Mechanics -- A-