I am usually pretty good about proofing for grammatical errors. My professor said my paper had a lot of grammatical errors, but I can’t seem to find them. I would like someone to please look this over and let me know what I did wrong so I can look out for it in the future. This is a Reader Response Essay. Thanks for your help! (See paper below)

Anna Quindlen of Newsweek published the article titled “Members of the Class of 2004”. The author wrote this article in May of 2004, and although she directed it to the graduating class of that year, graduating students of the prior and future years alike, as well as parents of the graduating students, would all be able to relate to her speech. In an apologetic form, Anna Quindlen expressed to the class of 2004 her deepest pity and sympathy for what is being expected of this generation. She used slight comparisons of former generations to this current one to differentiate between the ideas and standards children and young adults of this day have to live by. This magazine journalist used reality television show titles, such as “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and “Survivor”, as a play on words to emphasize what is being pushed into a way of thinking and way of life rather than mere entertaining television programs. The author also expressed how fast-paced everything is now that it gives little time for the youth to stop and think about what is truly important in life. I believe that society today has made it incredibly complicated for any young adult to attempt to achieve even the simplest goals in life, and the quality of life has been traded for quantity and price and at a much faster rate.

In the first few paragraphs of the article, it was alarming and quite saddening to envision the picture the author painted of the fast progression and degradation of the collage industries in the current time. My attention was caught when she related that in her day she could manage to pay her own college tuition with summer wages. If someone were to say that they were doing that in the present generation, I would question the college they are supposedly attending. When the author mentioned “companies that will throw up instant walls to turn a one-bedroom apartment into a place where three people can coexist”, I was disgusted by the idea that quality of lifestyle and education is compromised for mere money and space.

It was creative the way Anna Quindlen grasped the attention of her audience by using some of today’s reality television show titles to relate to the normal way of living in today’s society. Using the term “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and answering “Everyone. Although a million doesn’t buy what it once did,” the author assumed her graduating class watches this show and would laugh at the irony of how little this amount of money means in today’s day. College loans alone could take more than a quarter of that amount to pay off. In those terms, a million dollars doesn’t necessarily seem like that much, sadly to admit. The author also used the reality television show “Survivor” to associate the demands of this world with everyday family, career, and extra-curricular activities. By creating this parallel, the author expressed the immense pressure and difficulty in keeping up with what is expected of us all. I liked this association because I’ve already experienced many of these stresses in life and can relate them to “surviving” rather than enjoying life.

Out of the entire article, what saddened me the most was a concern the author quoted from a student graduating that year that her achievements might, to her and her family, be considered failures since the price of living and obtaining materials is so much higher now than it was for previous generations. What is sad about this is that the student wasn’t putting too much pressure on herself in terms of what she wanted to achieve, but rather how she was expected to achieve even the “American Dream” with it costing so much more money now. The student goes on to state that she “just wants everything to stop moving for a while so that [she] can think.” It is disappointing to think that life focuses so much on earning enough money, and the demand for making and doing more is so pressing that students who haven’t even entered the “real world” yet are afraid to even step out into it because it’s all going too fast to make any sense.

The author did a wonderful job in expressing how society has become too demanding of its children for them to have any hope for their future. It has compromised the integrity of what it can offer its children because it wants too much more too fast. It has created the illusion that happiness can only be achieved by how much money one makes but has made it nearly impossible to make enough money. And it has discouraged its children from believing their dreams can actually come to pass without at least having to struggle in an unimaginable degree in most cases.