laws of life narrative essay

Sir John Templeton

About the Competition

Since 1987, students in communities around the globe have competed for prizes in essay contests based on the Laws of Life in Sir John Templeton’s writings. Starting in 2009, students in The Bahamas have had a contest of their own, presented by The Bahamas Ministry of Education and the Nassau-based Templeton World Charity Foundation.

Students in primary, junior, senior, and college divisions are asked to select one of Sir John Templeton’s laws of life. To compete in the contest, students submit essays explaining how that specific law is meaningful in their own lives. Secondary students also have the option of creating a short video instead of a written essay. Winners receive cash prizes and are recognized in a popular event. In 2019, over 3,000 students submitted entries.

The current incarnation of The Bahamas Laws of Life Essay Competition, which has become the nation’s most successful student essay contest, celebrated its ten-year anniversary in early 2019.

Important Dates 2024 Competition Launch Date Monday, November 27, 2023

Essay & Video Submission Date Friday, February 9, 2024

Awards Ceremony Thursday, June 6, 2024, Nassau, The Bahamas (TBC)

Competition News

2024 Competition Announcement

1 Nov, 2023 — The 2024 Laws of Life Essay & Video Competition dates and requirements are now available. Essays are due on Friday, February 9, 2024.

Visit the “ Requirements ” page for more details regarding essay rules and the list of topics by division.

Submission instructions can be found on the “ Submit Your Essay ” page.

Please contact us via email at [email protected] with any questions.

2023 Award Ceremony

13 June, 2022 — Congratulations to all the 2022 winners !

2023 Competition Announcement

1 Nov, 2022 — The 2023 Laws of Life Essay & Video Competition dates and requirements are now available. Essays are due on February 10, 2023.

Testimonials

A Successful Public-Private Partnership

In early 2008, the late Dr. John M. Templeton Jr. met with the former Minister of Education, Hon. Carl Bethel to discuss, among other things, his father, Sir John Templeton’s book, Worldwide Laws of Life , and how it could be used by the Ministry of Education. This led to the re-establishment of a successful and beneficial partnership between the Ministry of Education and the Templeton World Charity Foundation, with the annually anticipated Laws of Life Essay Competition now widely accepted as the country’s premier essay competition in public and independent schools across The Bahamas.

The most prestigious essay competition in The Bahamas.

Get Involved

2019-20 Statewide Winners Announced

The Georgia Laws of Life Essay Contest today announced state winners for the 2019-2020 contest. Cindy Huynh, an 11th grader at Brookwood High School in Snellville, won the competition with her essay about standing up to bullies. Sha’niya Rogers, a 9th grader at Westover High School in Albany, won the George A. Stewart Jr. Character in Action award with her essay about working through homelessness to achieve in school and for her family. Each of these outstanding student writers will receive a $1000 prize.

Savannah Johnson, in 11th grade at Lafayette High School, was awarded first runner-up. Faith Fitzgerald, a 9th grader at Thomasville High School, won second runner-up. The third runner-up winner was Reagan Beach, a senior at North Cobb High School. Wade Chappell, a 10th grader at North Springs Charter High School, was awarded fourth runner-up. Hyuk Lee, a senior at Lambert High School, won fifth runner-up. Runners-up prizes range from $750 for first runner-up down to $100 for fifth runner-up.

Along with state winners, awards go to 164 school winners and grade winners from 72 high schools throughout Georgia. Additional students receive honorable mention recognition. More than 43,000 high school students across Georgia shared their values in a personal, Law of Life narrative for this year’s essay contest.

Rotary clubs across Georgia conduct the Laws of Life Essay Contest through the nonprofit Georgia Rotary Districts Character Education Program, Inc. Rotary clubs members volunteer to read and judge essays, serve on the contest’s Board of Directors, and volunteer their professional expertise to help build character and ethical literacy among students. “The essay contest is an opportunity for Rotarians to illustrate Rotary’s Service Above Self motto with their community,”  said Carol Gray, Midtown Atlanta Rotary Club member and Executive Director for GRDCEP.

For the 2019-2020 contest, a total of 43,506 students wrote essays, and 48 participating Rotary clubs in Georgia awarded over $20,000 in cash prizes. Throughout the spring, Georgia Laws of Life will share student winners reading their outstanding essays via Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

Since 1999, the Georgia Laws of Life Essay Contest has impacted over 750,000 students. Inspired by the power of simple quotes, or Laws of Life , Sir John Templeton established the writing competition in the 1980s to encourage young people to embrace the wisdom of these sayings and live their best lives. In their essays, students use a law to reflect on values that mean the most to them – values such as generosity, courage, perseverance, honesty, integrity, and compassion. Teachers at participating Georgia schools select the best work from among their students to enter into the contest.

The Georgia Laws of Life Essay Contest is made possible through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.  Major support also comes from Rotary Clubs as well as individual and corporate donors throughout Georgia.

• State Winner, Cindy Huynh, 11th Grade, Brookwood High School
• 1st Runner-Up, Savannah Johnson, 11th Grade, Lafayette High School
• 2nd Runner-Up, Faith Fitzgerald, 9th Grade, Thomasville High School
• 3rd Runner-Up, Reagan Beach, 12th Grade, North Cobb High School
• 4th Runner-Up, Wade Chappell, 10th Grade, North Springs Charter
• 5th Runner-Up, Hyuk Lee, 12th Grade, Lambert High School
• George Stewart, Sha’niya Rogers, 9th Grade, Westover High School

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• Knowledge Base
• How to write a narrative essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A narrative essay tells a story. In most cases, this is a story about a personal experience you had. This type of essay , along with the descriptive essay , allows you to get personal and creative, unlike most academic writing .

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Table of contents

What is a narrative essay for, choosing a topic, interactive example of a narrative essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about narrative essays.

When assigned a narrative essay, you might find yourself wondering: Why does my teacher want to hear this story? Topics for narrative essays can range from the important to the trivial. Usually the point is not so much the story itself, but the way you tell it.

A narrative essay is a way of testing your ability to tell a story in a clear and interesting way. You’re expected to think about where your story begins and ends, and how to convey it with eye-catching language and a satisfying pace.

These skills are quite different from those needed for formal academic writing. For instance, in a narrative essay the use of the first person (“I”) is encouraged, as is the use of figurative language, dialogue, and suspense.

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Narrative essay assignments vary widely in the amount of direction you’re given about your topic. You may be assigned quite a specific topic or choice of topics to work with.

• Write a story about your first day of school.
• Write a story about your favorite holiday destination.

You may also be given prompts that leave you a much wider choice of topic.

• Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself.
• Write about an achievement you are proud of. What did you accomplish, and how?

In these cases, you might have to think harder to decide what story you want to tell. The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to talk about a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

For example, a trip where everything went according to plan makes for a less interesting story than one where something unexpected happened that you then had to respond to. Choose an experience that might surprise the reader or teach them something.

Narrative essays in college applications

When applying for college , you might be asked to write a narrative essay that expresses something about your personal qualities.

For example, this application prompt from Common App requires you to respond with a narrative essay.

In this context, choose a story that is not only interesting but also expresses the qualities the prompt is looking for—here, resilience and the ability to learn from failure—and frame the story in a way that emphasizes these qualities.

An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Law of Life — “The Law of Life”: An Analysis of Jack London’s Short Story

"The Law of Life": an Analysis of Jack London's Short Story

• Categories: Jack London Law of Life

About this sample

Words: 712 |

Published: Sep 7, 2023

Words: 712 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Summary of "the law of life", themes of "the law of life", life, death, and survival, nature and humanity, challenging morality and ethics.

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International Politics Major Places First in Collegiate Laws of Life Essay Contest

Veronika Miskowiec, a second-year Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar majoring in international politics was awarded first place in the Collegiate Laws of Life essay contest for her paper titled “A Tale of Lions and Oxen”. Congratulations Veronika! Full story

Literacy Narrative The Garden of my Mind

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Main Article Content

This personal narrative is an ode to the author’s mother. Her unrelenting love of reading and writing influenced the author’s life from the very beginning. The author is grateful to be recognized for her writing by IU East and notes that without her mother’s passion and guidance as a literacy sponsor there wouldn’t be an essay to read. The author’s gratitude goes to IU East and to her mother.

Article Details

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

• Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution License  that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.  
• Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See  The Effect of Open Access ).
• Student authors waive FERPA rights for only the publication of the author submitted works. Specifically: Students of Indiana University East voluntarily agree to submit their own works to The Journal of Student Research at Indiana University East , with full understanding of FERPA rights and in recognition that for this one, specific instance they understand that  The Journal of Student Research at Indiana University East is Public and Open Access. Additionally, the Journal is viewable via the Internet and searchable via Indiana University, Google, and Google-Scholar search engines.

Carson Gosnell is a senior from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. She is a Psychology major who hopes to later earn a graduate degree in Zoology.

Brandt, D. (2020). Sponsors of literacy. In Writing about writing for Indiana University East (pp. 244-46). (4th ed.) Bedford / St. Martin’s, Macmillan Learning. (Original work published 1998)

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Values Narratives for Personal Growth: Formative Evaluation of the Laws of Life Essay Program

Journal of Humanistic Psychology

Evidence that even very brief writing exercises can change the way people see themselves and promote more positive mental and physical health has led to increased interest in their use in school settings and elsewhere. To date, however, research designs rely heavily on samples of college students and experimental studies of writing tasks carried out in the lab. There has been less investigation of the potential impact of more naturally occurring expressive writing exercises that exist in places like schools and that focus on adolescents. The current study was a process evaluation of the Laws of Life Essay, a values-based narrative program that was part of participants’ secondary school experience. It examined participants’ views of the impact of the program on their personal growth and, given the age range of participants, allowed for process evaluation of its perceived short- and long-term effects. Qualitative, semistructured interviews with 55 adolescent and adult participants wer...

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The act of written emotional disclosure has been widely studied for the past several decades. Yet, in spite of this, there are limited studies which examine the interplay of expressive writing, self-compassion and positive affect, along with its potential to augment ego identity among students. Using repeated measures experimental design, the present research explored the efficacy of expressive writing in improving levels of positive affect among university students ageing 18-25 (M = 19.23; SD = 1.21). Participants were tested in groups and wrote either about life goals (n = 46), positive experiences (n = 49) or a control topic (n = 46). Two separate three-way ANOVA were carried out to investigate whether writing about life goals has an impact on the students’ positive affect. It further examined how students could benefit according to their self-compassion levels. Regardless of the form of expressive writing, students did not significantly differ on the levels of positive affect. T...

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Introduction: Late adolescence (16-18 years old) usually experiences a crucial period in life which makes teenagers vulnerable to mood disorders such as depression. One of the interventions that can decrease depression is writing a memoir, biography, diary, and life writing. Writing can disclose the feeling and help mind care. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of life writing therapy to decrease depression in late adolescence.Methods: This study used pretest-post-test control group design with 40 people as samples, divided into intervention and control groups. Before and after the treatment, both groups were measured using the scale of the PHQ-9A to see the depression in late adolescence of high school students.Results: Life writing therapy shows differences in mean between intervention group and control group with a p-value of 0.000 (α <0.05).Conclusion: The life writing therapy has an effect in reducing depression in students. It facilitates subjects ...

Victoria Štefániková

Prior research findings point to the efficacy of using autobiographical life-story narration as a learning tool in undergraduate classes. The current study seeks to add to the existing literature on this topic by performing a qualitative analysis across events recorded in students’ autobiographical narratives. The purpose of this analysis is to assess student learning of preselected developmental theories (Piaget, Schaie & Willis, and Erikson). Participants were undergraduates (N = 108) enrolled in introductory life-span development classes at a public state college in the southeastern United States. Participants composed three written assignments of a flowing narrative quality due at designated time intervals throughout the semester. The first assignment covered infancy through preschool (0-6 years); the second, the elementary school years through adolescence (7-19 years); and the third, early through late adulthood (20 years onward). In completing their assignments, participants c...

Research in the Teaching of English

The Long View" was driven by the aim of identifying consensus rather than working through difference, that the principles represent commonplaces rather than a principled synthesis of research, that questions of epistemology and theory central to research agendas are essentially ignored, and that views of writing as semiotically exceptional and writing development as centered in school represent serious flaws in setting the agenda. The semiotic exceptionalism of "The Long View" represents a serious category mistake (Ryle, 1949). Taking "writing" as the unit of analysis occludes the diverse semiotic activity that necessarily shapes all textual artifacts and acts of inscription. Viewing writing as sharply distinct from orality risks reigniting Great Divide theories that had so many problematic effects on research, pedagogy, and people. Seeing school as the primary context for writing development ignores the rich roles of life outside school. In short, "The Long View" takes too narrow and problematic a view on issues of epistemology, theory, and literate lives to serve as the foundation for the critical research enterprise it aspires to conjure in our collective future. Instead, I suggest that research on the lifespan development of writing needs to begin with embodied, mediated, dialogic semiotic practice as its unit of analysis and to trace what people do, learn, and become across all the deeply entangled domains of their lives.

a/b: Auto/Biography Studies

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