Passage 1:
“That manila envelope my mother gave me was a careful curation of what counts as my education records.” Audrey Waters, “Introduction: The Manila Envelope”
Paraphrase 1:
“My education records are cautiously organized in the manila envelope my mother handed to me”
Paraphrase 2:
“My mother gave me my education records which were deliberately grouped into a manila envelope.”
Paraphrase 3:
“What is considered to be my education documentation is attentively organized into a manila envelope.”
Passage 2:
“This was one of those moments of clarity: of all the work I’d done in school, only a fraction was meaningful work.” Audrey Waters, “Introduction: The Manila Envelope”
Paraphrase 1:
“Compared to all the work I’ve done, just a ratio was significant, that was instant purity.”
Paraphrase 2:
“Relevant work was just a fragment in relation to all the work I’d done in school, how accurate.”
Paraphrase 3:
“It became certain that just a snippet of the work I had done in school was purposeful.”
Reflection:
I chose Audrey Waters, “Introduction: The Manila Envelope” because I thoroughly enjoyed reading the introduction. It grabbed my attention very quickly therefore I wanted to look into the book a little further. Paraphrasing the passage helped me understand how the narrator felt about the manila envelope, his school work, and the significance they held. After completing this exercise I learned as a reader/writer that paraphrasing is extremely helpful and I should start doing it more often since it changed the way I viewed the story.
