Example Essay

Beginning college is a new adventure for everyone.  It can lead to meeting new people, exploring new ideas, and even some pretty interesting new places.  My lifelong friend John and I moved down here from Aroostook County to try out the college experience about two or three years ago.  Since then we’ve been roommates through just about all of it, living in some pretty unique places.  We went from splitting a tiny efficiency apartment for about 6 months, all the way up to living in a huge 4 bedroom house for a year or so, and a few random spots in between. 

When John first moved in with me, I was living in a tiny little efficiency apartment over in Veazie.  The location was good, about half way between UMO and the Bangor Mall.  The commute from there wasn’t bad for me at all, unless you considered the amount of time it takes to drive through Orono when it’s busy.  The only complaint I had was the size.  The building I was living in had been remodeled from a hotel actually a few years back, and from the first time I saw it I, and anyone else I asked, could definitely tell that I was living in a redesigned hotel room.  Things were cramped there for quite a while, with me and all of my tools and projects that I was working on at the time.  Then I had to find a way to squeeze John in.  But we found a way to make it work and we did it for quite a while.  Although I do remember having to sleep on the couch a lot, for roughly the last two or three month’s straight living there.  Isn’t college great? 

From there we upgraded.  We had been stuck in a tiny little place for so long we declare the sky was the limit and started our search. We wanted a place that we could really spread our wings in.  We mulled over craigslist and newspapers for weeks on end, and finally found it.  It was a huge 4 bedroom house in the downtown area, right around Hollywood Slots.  There we had all the space we could ever want and it was still just the two of us.  The best way I can describe it would be to say it was just about a frat house.  It had huge open spaces, way too much testosterone, and frequent needs to repair damage that we had done.  Nothing could be better right?  Wrong.  Just as we were getting familiar with the place, winter started sneaking up on us.  (Winter isn’t very sneaky I know.)  The temperatures dropped, and heating oil was on the rise.  We realized about 5 months too late that even though the rent was relatively low on the house, it was going to take a fortune to heat the dang thing over the winter, especially just between the two of us.  We were left scrambling just a month before snowfall to find a new place.  Somewhere where we could actually afford to stay the winter and that meant sacrificing some of that glorious space.     

And here we are; our current residence.  This one seems to be the best choice we’ve made so far, leading me to believe we may have actually learned from our mistakes.  Who would have thought?  The new place a pretty good mix of all of the things we should have been looking for from the get go.  It’s a two bedroom house, with a sun room added on a few years back, giving us adequate space for two people.  It’s about half of the size of the large house, and almost four times the size of the efficiency.  It’s a much newer house that the large one we previously rented, with lots of upgrades added to increase its energy efficiency.  New windows and plenty of insulation means we don’t need to worry about heating nearly as must as we used to.  The electrical system could use a bit of updating from the 80’s, but other than that I don’t have any complaints, but I do still have my fingers crossed that my Xbox and TV don’t short circuit anything.

I moved down here thinking I knew it all, classic teenage invincibility complex.  But through a bit of trial and error we found ourselves a place to live that’s just about perfect for us.  If I had to go back and do it all again, I probably wouldn’t change much, other than to leave most of my things that I didn’t need right away in a storage locker.  Because over the last few years I think the biggest lesson that I learned, the lesson that I want to try and pass off to everyone I meet, is that moving is a PAIN-IN-THE-ASS.  And if you have to do it, make sure you get it right the first time, or else you’ll be stuck living out of cardboard boxes for months on end like me. 

Contrast Essay

During my childhood we always made it a point to go on family camping trips.  We would find a new national park near each destination we traveled to.  They stretched from Acadia in Bar Harbor all the way out to Mount Rainier National Park in Washington State.  We chose these trips because they suited our family, quiet, remote locations with relatively low population.  Call us woodsy if you’d like, but the air is a whole lot cleaner on the side of a mountain than it is behind a line of RV’s, and the view is quite a bit better too.  Later in life I was able to go along with friends on a few occasions to experience what others considered “family vacations”.  They tended to be big expensive trips to high population centers, Fryeburg Fair for example, and were quite the opposite from what I was used to.  Now I'm not saying family fun wasn’t had; it was just a bit of a different experience for me.

        Both types of trips can strain the family unit.  Some outdoor vacationing aspects can definitely help in my opinion though, much more than being squished into an RV with all those people on the more materialistic journeys.  On my family trips we always go camping for a few days and explore the park, trying to get a broad look at all it has to offer, and really just enjoy the amount of space we had at our fingertips.  We go out and hike or bike around on trails and end each day sitting around the campfire for supper.  They are truly family oriented vacations, and I love them.  On the other hand when I would accompany John’s family to the Fryeburg Fair, things were always more of a rush, almost hectic sometimes.  Lateness, distractions, and the general chaos of too much going on would sometimes plague the success of their family outings.  And I unfortunately had to find out some of it firsthand.   The stress of trying to do too much would sometimes put family members at odds with each other.  Varying opinions of what to do, where to eat, or when to be places were just some of the sparks that could start a blaze.  And those are just no good, because I was going to have to spend the rest of the trip cooped up in an RV with them, and there was just no room to vent anger in a place like that.

        Money, money, money.  Got to have the stuff, and got to spend it too.  For example whenever we would go to the Fryeburg Fair it was always the same routine.  Parents would give the kids their allowances for the day and then set them free on the world.  Free to spend on anything and everything you can at a fair.  And we sure found enough places to do so.  Deep fried dough, blooming onions, greasy burgers, the list trails on.  All of course with the usual fair price-rate hike applied, but it still seemed worth it.  And although delicious and appealing at purchase, that is just about where the beautiful story ended for the food.  My family’s experience on the other hand was quite different. At a National Park the only thing you can spend your money on were silly knick-knacks and bundles of firewood.  But that didn’t mean there wasn’t and good food to eat, my mother made sure of that. 

        Now I can’t justify standing up front and saying that our camping trips are better than any other trip, because we do still have our fair share of mishaps and accidents, but we deal with them as they come and choose to move on.  Now it’s not much fun when you have to be told what to do and when to do it by the weather, but we still seem to have a good time.  We are steadily on the watch for dark clouds on the horizon, those that may leave us damp and cold, or even worse without a dry place to sleep.  We’ve had a few times when Mother Nature told us to turn around and go home, but for the most part it only takes a night rest in a hotel to give us a fresh start.  Now rain, sleet, and snow may not affect the RV as much when parked at the Fryeburg Fair, but being over there isn’t always a picnic either.   Fussy city-raised neighbors to deal with, overpriced deep-fried foods to attempt to digest, and to many places for losing money than you can shake a stick at all can lead to some not so fond memories.

        I enjoy my time with my family, and I will always look back on our trips fondly, hoping for more in the future.  I was raised discovering these types of places, and hope to take my children on similar discoveries.  I value each and every time I get to go out and spend time with my family, as I'm sure everyone does when they reflect on the time they got to spend together, no matter the type of trip.  And I suppose that’s what it all comes down to, whether or not you come away from an experience positively.  It doesn’t really matter what type of trip you go on, what matters is that you try your best to have everyone there you care about, and to make it the best it can possibly be.