Personal essay class

Today I took a Personal Essay Workshop from Media Bistro. Liza, the instructor, gave us really helpful feedback and I can't wait to re-work my essay. Really! It's priceless to be able to share my work with a group of strangers and get critiqued. Don't get me wrong, it's also intimidating to workshop a piece. I'm pretty attached to my essay, and readers aren't always attached in the same way. How could they be? Some things I need to work on: not overusing parentheses, including more scene/dialogue, and putting more of myself in the piece. Some good stuff: my writing has a strong voice and there were a couple of sentences that I could move to the lede. Anyway, that's enough specifics. I'll let you know how the revision process goes.