The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

34 the orphanage up the road, after they received their brand new pair of shoes. Regardless of their direction, those small, sore feet would take baby steps the whole way. Over 7,000 miles away, in an air-conditioned home, I sat in a swivel desk chair with my feet grazing the carpet as I kicked them back and forth under the computer desk. Amidst my endless contemplation of millions of little feet around the world searching for a home, I found myself taking baby steps of my own. I read about the jigger clinics in Uganda in my free time because of my interest in third-world missions and medical relief. Little did I know that my interest in missions would connect to the research paper I was writing about international adoption. In my composition class, I was assigned to research a topic that had major societal implications. After researching, I was required to write a persuasive essay explaining why my reader should or should not choose, in the case of my topic, international adoption. Hours a day sitting at the wood desk in my home office, staring at the blurry white computer screen and looking for just the right article to suit my topic left me bewildered, lost even. I felt immobilized by the statistics before my eyes; the situation was worse than I thought. Researching international adoption turned out to be a life-altering experience for me at the age of seventeen, just one year older than the cut-off for adoption. In the afternoons between school and work, I felt exhausted during the hours of staring at the computer screen. I selected research articles, found applicable quotations, and worked towards figuring out how to put them into a logical sequence that would articulate the point I was trying to make: thatAmericans should make international adoption a priority. On one particular afternoon, I sat in my home office with Bonanza, Gunsmoke , or some other old western television show playing on the T.V. to the left. My dad relaxed in the leather chair behind me at his glass top desk, snacking on cheese and crackers, eyes glued to the T.V. screen in the corner. I felt an overload of distraction in the room, but I had to focus so that I could type. I struggled to coax my overwhelming feelings out through my fingers and onto the computer keyboard. I wanted to express the ache I felt for the shoeless, homeless, motherless, and fatherless children of this world. I clicked my black Paper Mate pen continuously while