Essay/Term paper: Personal essay on hamlet

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Personal Essays

Personal Essay on Hamlet

I remember my fourth grade year as if it were yesterday. My homeroom teacher, Mr.
Anderson, would stand at the front of the room each morning at 9:15, and wait
patiently for us to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, like clockwork, at
exactly 9:17, as my class of 28 sat down, he would set up a magic trick,
pretending each day that something was going wrong during the set-up. As Mr.
Anderson did this, he would often tell us a story that in some way or another
related to the magic trick he showed us. Then, as he finished the trick, he
would tell us the moral to the story.

Now a days I don't have someone there for me constantly saying what I should or
should not do. I often find myself in situations in which I must be the one to
decide if, for instance, I should go to a party or to the bars, or stay home and
concentrate on the massive amounts of homework that have piled up. It is at
times like these when Mr. Anderson's words of advice float though my head. The
one I hear Mr. Anderson saying most often in the back of my mind is one that,
until now, I always thought he created. I say this because all of the other
morals were obvious ones that, if I had not already heard, I eventually came to
hear quite often. Until I actually went through the list of quotes at the back
of the play Hamlet, I automatically assumed that Mr. Anderson was a genius. For
I am taling about the line, "brevity is the soul of wit," in which Polonius is
talking to the King and Queen.

When I see "brevity is the soul of all wit," I translate it into Mr. Anderson's
words: "Brevity is the heart of success." As a fourth grader, this was difficult
for me to understand. I would listen to each moral, and memorize each one with
such determination, that sometimes that is all that I did: Memorize. I never
really took the time to study these quotes. Now that I am older, many times I
find myself referring to these words of wisdom with a new outlook that I truly
understand them.

As I wrote my college essay, I came to understand that admissions counselors
were not going to want to read papers that were four typed pages long. I
realized that it was possible to write an essay, get across my point, and keep
the paper within two typed pages. It was then that it cam to me. Mr. Anderson
was trying to say that if you do a task with all of your effort, it does not
matter the length. A three page paper that answers a question is better than a
five page paper that goes on and on about nothing.

Now that I think about it, it isn't that ironic that Mr. Anderson knew that
quote. After all, english teachers are required to take Shakespeare courses in
college. What is humorous though, is that it took me eight years to realize his
moral was taken from one of the greatest play-writes of all time. From now on,
whenever I think of the quote "brevity is the soul of all wit," not only will I
think of Mr. Anderson, but of the play Hamlet as well.