Sitting at home, watching TV, and playing video games all day seem like the least productive routine ever but is it? One can definitely be more productive than that, but it doesn’t mean they’re completely useless either. This is a story about bad life decisions, and how I accidentally turned them into something productive and truly precious to my heart.

When I was 11, I moved into a big house that truly mesmerized me. As I was walking into my new bedroom, my jaw instantly dropped. It was a big bedroom with blue colored walls, a huge bed, starring directly into a 32 inch TV with a PlayStation 2 connected to it. It was everything a boy my age could ever dream of.

“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.” Virginia Woolf

This anthology presents 50 selected personal narrative essays by the students of Study Program of English, Faculty of Cultural Studies, Universitas Brawijaya who were taking Genre Based Writing Class. The personal narrative essay is one of the three genres that the students learned and practiced in this class.

This book is expected to give an opportunity for the students to tell their personal experiences to a wider audience and to get inspired to write more. While reading the book, the audience will be able to catch a glimpse of what memorable experiences these young writers have. Some of these experiences are beautiful, some others are upsetting, scary, or sad, but all of them have taught an important lesson to the writers.

Editors

Cover
Foreword
Contents
Class A
     The Perks of Being a Lazybones for 5 Years
     We Didn't Live Alone
     A Visit to Hospital
     My Makeup Journey
     Let the Words Bleed: How Failure and Tears Brought Me to Many Victories
     Living Away from Home
     Carving a Dark Cave Full of Thorns
     The Miracle of Self-Trust
     How Toxic Relationship Affect My Mental Health
     Losing My ATM Card
Class B
     My Childhood Nightmare
     My Most Stressful Competition in University
     Hiking Prahu Mountain
     Self-Diagnose
     Babysitting Experience
     Having Intership at The Vice President Secretariat Office
     My Trip to Bali
     I Am Not A Hero
     The First Surgery of My Life
     Become an Accelerated Student
Class C
     My First Catch
     Self-Escape from Coronavirus
     Worried about the Person I Respect
     A Not Too Bad Memory
     Escapism: How I Used My Hobbies to Cope with the Pandemic
     The Journey of Finding My Interest
     Driving Test Struggle
     My Unexpected Holiday Tragedy
     Precious Memory in A Box
     The Day I Decided to Change My Life
Class D
     Late For an Interview
     Challenges to go to A University
     My Tiring-But-Remarkable Organization Experience
     Being A Brave Person
     Punctured by A Piece of Metal
     Don't Want To But Have To
     The Unexpected Disease
     Losing Cell Phone At A Soccer Stadium
     Lost And Found in Hong Kong
     Nearly Expelled from High School
Class Internatonal
     Living Far Away from Home
     A Beautiful Angel
     An Embarrassing Moment that Affects My Life
     To be part of An International Organization
     My High School Life
     An Amazing Experience with My Best Friend
     My Experience Building a PC for The First Time
     Twice's Concert
     A Short but Memorable Trip to Japan
     Unforgettable Hogh School Character Camp