Essay Evaluation: “Learning in

and finding an education which she could use to structure herself upon. Many of

her faults in her essay lie in trying to get her point across. She does not seem to set forth the focus of her essay very well.

Hook starts out explaining her troubles, where she outlines her wants as a child and how her mother tried to manipulate her and her siblings so their yearnings for those material objects would cease. She tied this in with stating how she dealt her life later on, when she came to points in her life where she desired material things that she could not necessarily afford. Her way of dealing was basically put forth as this “belittle my desires, and my desires will cease”.

One may think of this as an immature way of dealing with this problem. She then

claimed she all together stopped desiring, thinking it would be harmful for her

to even desire at all, and life was more peaceful with this repression.

Is this even practical? How can one claim to repress their desires all their life for such a reason? Repression is known to always be a repentant way of dealing wi

. . .
They seemed more down to earth and explanatory, instead of her previous complaining tone.

A very applaudable accomplishment which is to be noted is her being accepted to Stanford University, such a prestigious university which is very difficult to gain entrance in, and even more difficult in her case- a minority transfer student from a mediocre college. Yet, wasn’t she just complaining about elitists and predominantly white areas? Soon after she claimed to have found a common bound between those people and her, which line was delivered to us in an indifferent tone. She said, that even after she received her doctorate, she still did not find herself.

Her commentaries on her first experiences at Stanford were enjoyable to hear.

As far as her dislike for the ways of certain people in college, they seemed too conventional to be worth mentioning. She spoke of girls with a lot of money, so called "elite’s", etc.

Her closing paragraphs went back to her complaining tone. It is indeed that she went through quite a struggle, and her accomplishments were something to be applauded for, but she made everything, even things that were with good outcome, sound pity worthy. th things because eventually, those things repent come back to haunt one.

Although Bell Hook’s essay of her as an African Americans struggle of finding a happy medium of education and being accepted carried some sort of a “griping” tone, if we allowed ourselves to see deeper into her battles for acceptance in comfort, we begin to sympathize with her. She came back to explaining that there were intersections between race and class, and they were hard to overcome. Then she tells us how she will never find a place for her, and that there is no educational setting that the underprivileged or working class children can find complete acceptance and comfort. Instead of expressing and showing how she managed to be admitted here, she took apart her difficulties in coming to California and readjusting.

Common topics in this essay:
Bell Hook, Stanford University, African Americans, Bell Hooks, complaining tone, race class, acceptance comfort,

Approximate Word count = 817
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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