An 8th grade autobiography project

Literary terms

Before graduating from the 8th grade at Bennett Elementary one of our graduation requirements was to write our autobiographies. This was in addition to the constitution exam and the basic skills exam. To be honest I'm not sure if this was something required by Mr. Z - my 8th grade teacher - or if this was something required by Bennett School itself.

I do remember that I just had little clue as far as what should go into an autobiography. There wasn't much guidance as far as what to do with this assignment. As was common practice back in those days I never really sought out any guidance or direction for this assignment. As a matter of fact after having turned in a rough draft under threat of flunking, I definitely did get the editors treatment from Mr. Z as he threw the first few pages he didn't like into the trash can. OUCH.😠

Either way my autobiography back in the 1990s was written by pen on a thick stack of notebook paper. It never occurred to me to type this on a computer and then print it off. Bennett School at the time had a wonderful computer lab on the third floor with either IBM or IBM clone PCs. As a matter of fact it wasn't common for any of us to have used a word processor on a computer to complete this assignment. It's interesting how times have changed where computers have become a common appliance not just at school or work at home also. And we carry a computer with us now whether a laptop, tablet or even a smartphone (Android or iPhone).

I just had to include this video of a dot-matrix printer that was very common over 20 years ago in computer labs. [VIDEO]

What this means is that as cringeworthy as my autobiography was written as an 8th grader many years ago, I never saved this to a floppy disk or any hard drive at all. For all I know my handwritten copy had been filed away in a cabinet for years only to be forgotten about. Or it's probably been discarded long ago and admittedly I haven't thought about that rather groundbreaking piece of  literature in years.

To be honest the focus of my autobiography at the time was school. I don't think there was much talk about what happened during the summers other than those three occasions I had to attend summer school or the holidays . I'm sure there was some mention of issues with fellow students or some authority figure at school. I do think that whatever was written by me back then was just plain cringeworthy. Perhaps this would be a very difficult read for me now.

I wonder if Bennett students before they graduate are still required to write their autobiographies. As much as I hated that assignment back then, perhaps one piece of guidance for today's students is to take stock in their lives as it is at that point and be as creative as possible. Perhaps they can still use that computer lab on the third floor.