How to Start Off an Essay About My Experience at the Museum

You may enjoy taking a field trip to a museum, but you might not know what to do when asked to write about the experience. There are four steps to beginning an essay on the topic “my experience at the museum” that are similar to the steps to creating any essay. These steps include forming a thesis, developing an outline, determining a point of view and crafting an introduction.

Before you being writing, you will create a thesis. A thesis statement is a claim about your essay topic, usually written in 25 words or less. Without a thesis, your essay will have no direction. Each thesis should have two parts -- a topic and a controlling idea. Fortunately, the topic for this essay already exists -- “my experience at the museum.” To develop a controlling idea, your angle on the topic, consider what you want your audience to know about your experience at the museum. For example, you might write, "My experience at the museum taught me that native crafts are under-appreciated."

An outline is a guide organizing the main ideas of your essay. There are many kinds of outlines, but the Alphanumeric outline is the most common. It contains a series of topics listed by Roman numeral, and underneath those topics, details are listed by number and sub-details listed by alphabetical order. An example of this is: I. American Indian Crafts, 1. Dream Catchers, A. Sioux Tribe, B. Cherokee Tribe. Other forms of outlines include decimal outlines and full sentence outlines. No matter what kind of outline you use, plan your main ideas before you begin writing. This will help once you actually start writing your essay.

Point of view is the perspective from which your essay is written. There are three main points of view: first, second and third. First person uses “I.” Second person uses “you," "we," "us” and “our.” Third person uses “he," "she," and "one.” Academic essays typically use third person, while less formal expository essays typically use first or second person. If you are writing for a class, check with your instructor to see which point of view he or she prefers. If you are writing for pleasure, the point of view you use is up to you!

Once you have planned your essay, you can begin writing. Your first paragraph will be your introduction. In an introduction, you create an interesting sentence to intrigue your readers. This is called a "hook." You can use a surprising fact or statistic or ask a question. For instance, “When you think about art in the Louvre or Met, do you consider native crafts?” Then list a few sentences giving a brief overview of what you plan to address in your essay. Last, you will state your thesis.