Sample Walk Through (From Textbook Draft)

Sample “Walk Through” (from textbook draft)

Evelyn Minick, “How Families at Home Cope with Military Deployments”

About Evelyn’s paper:

When her instructor asked her to choose a topic that she had first-hand experience with [see sample assignment on page XXX], Evelyn (whose husband had been in the military for a couple decades) knew she wanted to wanted to write about the military life. She began by brainstorming the following potential topics.

Topics related to military life:
--military housing (or on-base housing vs. off-base)
--military base = self-contained town
--stereotypes around military life/military families (how TV/movies get it wrong)
--having a family budget and living within it
--how families cope when loved one is deployed
--kids’ adjustment to new schools (etc.) when military family is transferred
--the military tradition (multiple generations of your family in the military)

Invention: Freewriting and Brainstorming

Evelyn used freewriting to explore several of these topics in more depth. Her first two rounds of freewriting are shown below.

First round of freewriting: Military base as self-contained town
A military base usually feels like a town in itself. The base is right next to another, regular town (usually—unless it’s way out in the middle of nowhere), but it’s almost like a separate town, a town that has gas stations and its own huge store (the BX). Also has its own fast food restaurants (example—Burger King). Its own movie theatre. Even has its own education center where you can take college classes (at least the bases I’ve lived on usually have that). What else does it have? Skating rink (roller skating). Recreation center/gym. Hill for sledding in the winter. Chapel for religious services. Its own library (don’t have to go into a separate town to check out a book—plus the base library can get just about any book for you). But it’s not exactly the same as any other town. Security. Security like you wouldn’t believe—for a good reason! Gates where they check your I.D., secure fences that they monitor around the entire base. People who have never been on base before are nervous about that, but it’s normal for any family that’s lived on base, any type of military base. I guess I’ve mostly been thinking about Air Force bases. Wonder if army bases are that much different. Are they laid out the same? (My cousin has been in the Army for nine or ten years. Should send him a Facebook message and find out how similar or different an Army base is from an AF base.) You can get what you need right on base. That’s my experience. But would you want to always stay on base?? Me, I like to get out and explore—not just the base, but the town, the whole region if I have enough time and a car to explore with. Think I’ve wandered off my topic. Wasn’t I going to write about how a base is like a town? But I’m wondering if I might want to talk about getting out and exploring the area…Maybe that idea will work.
Second round of freewriting—How families cope when a loved one is deployed:
Well, this is a complicated topic. It’s not easy to cope when your husband is deployed for months at a time—or your wife, or your mom or dad I guess. (I could write about this from my perspective as a spouse who is not in the military but who is part of a military family. Or I guess I could look at it from my son’s eyes. Maybe it’s different for him. But how is it different? I should ask him I guess, rather than just assume I know how he felt when his dad went overseas…) Okay, so it’s not easy. But I need to explore—I guess I need to write down some things that make it tough. For one thing—that person (your loved one, the person who is deployed) is not there to talk to. The simple conversations but the ones you have to have! Conversations about practical things…which bill we should try to pay extra on this month, or whether the car is worth repairing or not. But then there are the other conversations you need to have with that person. Telling them you love them. You can write that in a letter (email), but saying it to his face—that’s different. And there’s other stuff that makes a deployment hard for those left at home. The missed birthdays, or school plays, the excitement of a teenager getting her first job and coming home and wanting to tell Dad (or Mom) about it. It doesn’t even matter how far away your loved one is deployed. (Well, maybe. Maybe not. If they’re in a war zone, you’ll worry more. But even if they’re not—let’s say they’re in Florida and you’re in Maryland—you’re going to miss them and yeah, you’ll probably worry too. How could you not worry!) On the practical side—having to do everything for yourself, going from being a two parent family in our case to single parent all of a sudden, at least temporarily—the parent who is not deployed ends up becoming the go-to parent every day of the week, it’s all on you. But military families are good at toughing it out. They support each other. They are there for each other. A neighbor will come over sometimes and help out the family by cutting the grass (when we were living off base, and the block was mostly military people), or babysit a couple hours. Military families all sort of understand what a deployment does to a family. It doesn’t have to be an awful situation, even though it’s not fun to be away from your loved one. Not easy for the person who is deployed, either!

She followed up this second freewrite with more specific brainstorming on military deployments.

Things the deployed person will miss:
Birthdays, anniversaries, maybe even the birth of a child, child’s first words, loss of child’s first tooth, parent-teacher conferences, some achievement (promotion at work?) of the non-military spouse, Thanksgiving dinner and the chance to argue about football afterward with brother-in-law
Struggles or rough times the family goes through on its own:
Illness (e.g., flu, energy-draining case of mono), disappointments (daughter or son with broken heart), death of a pet, getting bills paid when money is tight, balancing the schedule as a single parent, loneliness, maybe a sense of isolation if you don’t know many people on base
Ways families can cope:
Letters (old-fashioned kind…handwritten!) and cards; emails and text messages; social networking (if the deployed person has access to those sites); cell phone; family blog; Skype or other video-conferencing tools; care packages in which the kids include something they’ve made

The invention activities Evelyn engaged in convinced her she had something worthwhile to say on this topic, and the topic meant a good deal to her. Before starting the first draft of her essay, however, she wrote a couple of brief notes to herself.

Message I want to get across to my readers:
It’s sad when your loved one is deployed. But you can make the situation better for you and your family. That’s what military families do.
Question I keep asking myself about my readers:
Will my readers even know what a deployment is? Not everyone has been in a military family like me.

Drafting: First Draft

Here’s her first draft.

Military Deployments
As you can imagine, military deployments affect all the people involved, both the person who is deployed and the loved ones at home. A deployment can last from 6 months to 15 months (or even longer). Whether the person deployed is headed to Afghanistan or will be stationed six states away, there’s a big adjustment ahead for everyone.
The person who is being deployed, for starters, will face plenty of packing and preparation. However, once they arrive at their destination, there’s a good chance they may have a hard time dealing with the birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestones that occur while they’re gone. (I know two men whose children were born while they were overseas; also, I know someone who became an aunt while deployed and the niece was walking by the time she first met her.) The military does a pretty good job of feeding its troops, but it’s not the same as home-cooked meals eaten with spouses, children, and long-time neighbors. The deployed person faces challenges.
If you are one of the people staying home during the deployment, those long and lonely days without your loved one will probably be the longest 6 months of your life. Every day, week, and month goes by at a snail’s pace and all you can do is wait, and wait, and wait some more. You might find it easier if you do not focusing merely on the end of the deployment and try to live your life normally by doing the same things you would normally do like running the same errands, going to school, eating out, and having fun with friends. But still, you will find yourself missing the person who is deployed, and you will wish they were present for all the occasions when families normally want to be together. This time is a major challenge for the entire family; you need to be honest with yourself about that.
Sometimes, there are sicknesses and even deaths in the extended family and you don’t have a shoulder to cry on because your spouse or parent isn’t there to help you get through it. Then, there’s the stress of having to do everything by yourself like paying the bills, getting the car fixed, cooking, cleaning, driving the kids to/from sporting/school events, and getting the kids ready for school. Your kids will miss the family member who is deployed; they want dad or mom to be there.
Living without your loved one temporarily isn’t all bad, especially when you work through it as a family. Sometimes families pull together more when they face difficulty, and a military deployment does count as a difficult time. Other military families, people who know what this experience is like, often manage to help out. Families survive deployments. It can be done. But the experience is not an easy one, and every family has to find ways to cope.

Redrafting: Outlining

A couple days after writing that first draft, Evelyn wanted to get a better handle on the ideas that had popped up in her essay. Consequently, she created a quick, informal outline of that draft’s contents.

“Military Deployments” – quick outline of what is in my first draft:
Paragraph one:
--how long a deployment can last
--deployments are a big adjustment (my main idea)
Paragraph two:
--person who is deployed has to pack, get ready
--they’ll miss a lot while gone (special days, family meals)
Paragraph three:
--for ones at home, time drags
--still have to carry on with life (errands, spending time with friends, etc.)
Paragraph four:
--stressful situation for parent at home AND the kids
Paragraph five:
--not all bad…can work through it as family
--sometimes military families help each out during deployments

Redrafting: Reflections

After looking over this “what’s in the draft” outline, she wrote a brief reflection in which she discussed what was actually happening in that first draft and what she was thinking about doing differently in her next draft.

I started off with just this general idea—deployments lead to a big adjustment. And that’s true, they do require everyone to adjust. But even though I originally set out to cover all the people in the family (that is, how a deployment would affect the member of the military, then the spouse/partner, then any kids they might have), I notice that I spent a lot more time on how the family AT HOME adjusts. I guess I have more to say about that. I’ve been the spouse at home. Haven’t been the one in the combat zone. I know from talking with my husband some of what he has experienced while deployed, but still…I think I really want to focus on the people at home. Also, when I reread this draft it kind of seemed like I was just putting three main categories of information in the essay (deployed spouse, spouse at home, kids) and it almost felt like three mini-essays instead of one essay where everything is pulling in the same direction. So maybe that’s one more reason I should narrow my focus—so that I can go into more detail on the people who are left at home.

Redrafting: Peer Editing and Draft #2

Evelyn’s peer group ended up pointing out many of the same issues. Consequently, in her second draft, Evelyn decided to narrow her focus. She also developed her main ideas in much greater depth. Her new draft is a few pages longer than her first.

How Deployments Affect Military Families
Being a part of a military family definitely has its pros, but like all things, it also has its cons. Having a family member in the military also means that there’s a 100% chance that they’re going to deploy to an overseas location, likely in a combat zone. As you can probably imagine, deployments in general have a tremendous impact on families everywhere. When a loved one is deployed, it forces the families to live without that person for at least 6 months (in some cases 15 months), go through life without them by their side during special occasions (i.e., birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc.), and it leaves each family member hoping and praying that wherever their loved one is, that they’re safe and out of danger. It doesn’t matter if your loved one is being deployed to Florida, Iraq, or Afghanistan, deployments still give us (the families) a sense of loneliness when they’re not around. Many of us with a military spouse or parent have unfortunately experienced firsthand what life is like while a loved one is deployed for 6+ months.
At first, 6 months don’t sound like much. In reality though for those affected, it seems like an eternity. Those long and lonely days without your loved one will probably be the longest 6 months of your life. Every day, week, and month goes by at a snail’s pace and all you can do is wait, and wait, and wait some more. During those 6 months without them, days seem to take forever to finish and then when you wake up in the morning, you realize that it’s only been a mere 24 hours that have passed. All you can do is count down the days, one by one, until they finally come home. I found deployments much easier to cope with by not focusing merely on the end of the deployment and trying to live my life normally by doing the same things I would normally do like running the same errands, going to school, eating out, and having fun with my friends. It’s not healthy for you or the deployed member to believe your world would come to a screeching halt just because they’re gone even though living life is much more difficult without them there with you.