One of the biggest issues I see in student writers is reluctance to throw out a college essay (or frankly any piece of writing) that isn't working. But this is one of the most liberating and helpful things you can do. You might object: But I already put in so much time! I lost so much sleep over this version! Maybe if I just change this ONE sentence.. swap out some vocabulary words for synonyms, add a sentence about my major..?!?!? Maybe. But if you've already worked it to death and can summon the courage to admit it's not working, the Essay Angel of Mercy might whisper: o beloved writer-- free yourself and start fresh. Because maybe you're just clinging. Sometimes just being willing to throw writing out leads you to the revision solution. A clenched fist is not agile, responsive or particularly creative, even if it is strong. Sometimes, fate will throw out your essay for you! I know the pain of letting go of something you worked on so hard. LET ME TELL YOU about the time my entire grad MFA school application, all 15 pages, crashed 24 hours before it was due? I may or may not have thrown a cup at the wall. But i had no choice: here we go again. Hefty caffeine dose. 23 straight hours of work (And, yep, I did teach after that, it was enlightening). And I swear: the next version was so much better, more agile, less belabored, more honest. It was like the computer threw it out for me to do my a favor. All ideas lead to other ideas! This is where you get to trust that all that work churned up meaningful ideas and that the paths forward are many. To make a gardening metaphor: It's like clearing old roots before you can plant something new. Even if you've never planted you can imagine old dirt impacted with knotted roots-- not much fresh is going to happen there. When you decide you're willing to throw out the old essay, you tend to be less precious in the next draft. The tracks of thinking and feeling have been greased. The Continue Reading …
State of Mind
Let’s Not be Hypocrites about Learning Process vs Outcome
Decision Day marks the end point of the college application process, when high school seniors let colleges know where they are heading. It's not uncomplicated, though. This moment is the outcome and fruit of so much striving, and an event on which we've pinned a heck of a lot of hope. "Miss, I just want to hide in a corner," one student told me. And he was happy, proud, about where he was admitted. A flurry of articles are published around now about how to help seniors get anything out of the remainder of the school year. One NYT's article focused on where we lose sight of the learning process along the way and how to help seniors reinvest in themselves. Or maybe reinvent themselves, and how they think about themselves. Yes, We Could ALL Value Process More In theory, I totally agree. One of the major issues we face in education is that the learning process is not necessarily valued for itself, but only for where it might lead. That's capitalism right there, friends. But beyond that, from pre-K applications all the way to college applications, we're always telling our students to keep their eyes on the horizon- what's NEXT? Where -or what--will this get you? But how about: where am I right now? What's of value right now? What if there is more than the future that we're totally missing out on? Take, for example, my students. My middle school students at The TEAK Fellowship are some of the brightest in their public school classes. They have joined a fellowship that invests in them as future leaders, armed with the "best education money can buy." (And their financial aid packages subsidize the cost). But there is a(nother) cost: these students have, for themselves and their families, been trained to think far into the future. Everything they do is for something that comes later, hopefully. But what if you get hit by a bus? The value of "later" evaporates. Do we understand what "rewarding" really feels like? So why is it so Continue Reading …
Power of mixing
When stakes are high in writing (like, say, is true for the college essay) we can forget how much joy there is in mixing unlikely things together. This is a form of play young children know well, and shed reluctantly. Only after enough adults have said, "You can't do X with Y!" a la "You can't put a POTATO on the TRAIN TRACK!" does the kid eventually "get it" = the adult world is full of arbitrary rules, and really missing out on the power of mixing up. We need our poets to keep our language lively This morning, the power of mixing tackled me from the first lines of Terence Hayes's poem "When James Baldwin & Audre Lorde each lend Stevie Wonder an eyeball/ he immediately contends with gravity, falling either to his knees/or flat on His luminous face." I mean, lend an eyeball? Thanks, guys. We know right away we're in the presence of a player. In mixing surprise with pragmatism, absurdity with serious verbs (lend...contends...falling), Terence says: get in on this, it's going to be good. I'm not going to give you what you expect, because you don't want me to. And did you notice the rock stars in my poem? Be the kind of player who mixes meanings Speaking of players; There were plenty of the other kind of player in my high school and college (both elite institutions, GULP!), the sort who slept with girls and then thought nothing of ranking those experiences on a scale of crap to Cardi B the next morning in public lounges. The only reason those guys were fun to be around was the same reason anyone wound up the topic of their conversation: they kept it light, everything, even themselves, was a joke. I mention them because they were mean: but the player of words is not mean, though perhaps slicing. The poet players are truth-chasers. When Terence plays, we have to play along. The poem is full of nouns, and potential white-people repellent. Nods at lyrics and artistic endeavors, "inner visions" of Wonder are now populated (purpled!) with Continue Reading …
Math and Talking About Feelings
Math and I are old Frenemies. We whisper about each other behind each other's backs-- word problems indeed. In this area, it's hard to talk about my feelings-- where they came from, how gendered they might be. Maybe you can relate, or maybe you can't; maybe numbers make you feel confident, like whatever is quantifiable is also manageable. Maybe you love equations more than, say, a great burrito. For a moment, I'm looking at the other side of the story. I mostly avoid math, though I do run a business (hi!). In that business, I help students write personal essays that must meet unforgiving word or character count limits. So the math I use most on a daily basis is addition (do these words surpass limit?) and subtraction (what can we take out to be under the word count limit?). With these numbers in mind, I pull the gem sentences and phrases from the slush sentences. I'm comfortable with these constraints. I'd happily do that for you. Getting 2,071 words down to 650 doesn't scare me. Tax Day means Math Day Problems All my feelings about math resurface on Tax day, the math-iest day on the calendar. Tax day, thankfully, falls during Poetry Month. Now poetry I get. That's really moved society forward. You can sign up for poem-a-day here. Most, but not all, of my clients & students are too young to pay taxes as head of household, so they (you) are not exactly sharing my pain on tax day (yet). But no one is too young to understand what giant horse-crap taxes are. The less you have, the more you pay. I work with students from families across the economic spectrum. For complicated reasons, and due to unforgiving math, my own economic situation is sometimes perilous. It's good for empathy. If I possibly can, I offer sliding scale as an option for payment. I understand. But at least I wrote off all those books I bought. After Math Day comes Non-Violent Day So April 16th is a great day in the world of ordinal numbers because it means Continue Reading …
When Should You Start Your College Essay?
As a college essay writing coach, I get this question all the time from parents (less so from students, hmmm): when is THE BEST time to start writing the college essay? Writing process is highly individual And my honest answer is: I don't know. That's because I believe and have seen that the process is highly individual. February? April? The Summer? Fall? The minute the Common App releases their questions? To the chagrin of some parents, I really can't tell you. Exactly how long does it take a tide to pull back? Bread to rise? Continue Reading …
Caught Between Identities
Helping Teens Explore Identities Every week, I teach personal essay writing to middle schoolers at The TEAK Fellowship, and I think a lot about how identities are formed. This week, I wanted to find an essay by a trans author for them to read. This is an identity marker many students--and many adults--still feel confused about. Confusion is not unhealthy; ignorance is. One job of a writer, and a teacher, and maybe just a decent person, is to do the work to clear ignorance cobwebs from our eyes. It can be messy. We need to see them I spend a lot of time with teens, listening to them, thinking about them and what they need. Whenever possible, I laugh with them, allowing them to poke fun at adults, myself included, our hypocrisies and short-comings. There's lots of material there. I read great essays from them on the ways we've not stacked up, everything from leaving water running while we brush our teeth (though we ask them not to) to insulting their weight (when they weren't upset about it) to berating them for getting F's without asking about their days. Their criticism is for a purpose, not superfluous. They are in the process of deciding which adult identities are worth growing into. That said, I believe more than ever, our teens need to see their teachers (and, frankly, as many adults in their world as possible) stand up against erasure and misbegotten hatred of individuals and groups. Our teens need to know, if it was them at risk, that their identity, their selves, would be protected, too. Seen. Celebrated, especially. Art for all our identities That's what art, and in particular the art of the personal essay, is for (or one of the things, anyway). When we write, we look into identity closely, to understand how a person comes to be themselves, what has shaped them. To share that through style and craft. To open yourself up to others. To transmute pain. No matter who teens are in the process of becoming, each needs to know they belong--somewhere Continue Reading …