How My Grandmother's Passing Taught Me the Meaning of Loss

Crystal's feedback:

"First, you really capture what a lovely person your grandmother was and how important she was to you, which helps underscore the deep loss you felt. I also love your descriptive elements and metaphors throughout, but be careful with overusing metaphors (they lose impact); make sure to tie them to specific aspects about loss, too. Some key areas are hurting the cohesion. First, the POV is not consistent; it would be better to pick one (first person perspective would be ideal). Second, consider refining the phrasing in your thesis to a more logical flow of details and to present info framing the focus around your grandmother’s death and the lesson about loss/life that taught you or how it helped shape your definition of loss; right now, it’s not even clear whose death you’re referring to until deep into the essay. Third, the between-paragraph and (sometimes) between-sentence flow feel clunky; there's nothing creating smooth connections or connecting each paragraph clearly to your thesis statement right away in the body paragraphs. In some areas, the focus seems to stray from loss itself to more descriptive/background details about life with your grandmother. Those details are important, but they should be woven into a discussion about loss rather than take over the narrative. Fifth, I like that you're focusing on what you took away from the experience to show a broader life lesson, but the way you've incorporated it in the closing doesn't come full circle to your thesis. Rather, it seem more like you're writing about learning a life lesson and not defining what loss means to you--depending on which of those two aspects is your ultimate goal, you should ideally either adjust the thesis/focus throughout the essay and/or adjust the conclusion to circle back around to your thesis statement while summarizing/synthesizing your main points about how losing your grandmother shaped how you define loss (and why). If you need to follow a strict essay structure, you'll want to avoid presenting new information in the conclusion as well. Finally, there are a significant number of sentence structure, grammar, and word choice errors that hurt the narrative, too. If you need really focused guidance on addressing those aspects and the other issues highlighted above with more detailed and very specific guidance, adjustments, and suggestions, I recommend having your essay edited. That would allow you to get very tailored and specific advice and direct edits to the text to help you pull everything together and really make your reflection shine."

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