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Powerful People Pause

March 14, 2016 by Sara Nolan

The "fail" pause and the perfect pause I start almost every essay support session asking students to read-aloud their college essay drafts, and for most it's like asking them to read the omens in my baby's dirty diapers. I can't count the number of times my students lower their eyes and barrel through the read-aloud, with nary a pause. Well, that's not true: they take one pause at the beginning, the "fail" pause, and the last and only time they'll inhale for the duration of their read. A puree of words, no connection to the audience (me), no pacing to measure impact or resonance. I can hardly hear them, and they can hardly hear themselves. They zoom through the read, like the Dalai Lama will condemn them to Samsara, or Obama exile them from the US, if they take too long or stumble on a sentence. (That's why DL and BO are sitting up there in the photo looking so compassionate, right guys?). Lose me or hold me? By contrast, my Whole Heart Connection teacher, Thea Elijah, can hold a whole room with her pause. Nobody snickers, squirms, or gets nervous.  No one checks their phone or doubts her credibility. The silence is not awkward.  It is very very very full. Everyone just waits for her to begin speaking again. How come? Two kinds of pauses Thea describes it this way: there are two kinds of pauses.  There is the pause where the speaker disconnects from the room (the audience), goes inside, and gets lost in their own stuff.  They have "lost touch with the field" (i.e. the rest of us. Hellooooooooo, come back!). But then there is the very different kind of pause where the speaker stays connected to the room (the audience) but stops speaking long enough to check-in inside. Like an energetic, mighty octopus, the speaker is still completely aware and part of  "the needs and the nature of field" (i.e. the rest of us). The first kind of pause is the lost cause.  You can make a come-back from it, but basically you've given your audience a  Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Exercise, Integrity, Practice, State of Mind, Uncategorized, Wisdom Tagged With: audience, college essay, communication, Dalai Lama, Obama, Pause, read aloud, Reading, Speaker, Thea Elijah, Whole Heart Connection

Procrastination got your college essay? Try this!

October 28, 2015 by Sara Nolan

Is your college essay due this weekend, or next week, and you've been procrastinating epically?  Here's how to beat the procrastination paralysis and crank out a college essay by deadline. Note & Plug! The photo featured above shows gung-ho participants in a customized Essay Intensive college essay writing workshop, Just Write, at The TEAK Fellowship.  They beat procrastination, just like you will, and punched out some quality personal essays!  So, speaking of-- back to you. The moment is Now It's beyond crunch-time. You're panicking that you don't have time (because you screwed yourself) to be all that you need to be in your college admissions essay: insightful, creative, authentic, reflective, and thoughtful.  (You're wrong-- keep reading). You're seriously considering writing your college essay on your dog's midlife crisis as you watch him limp after spastic squirrels. And ending it with a line about the pointlessness of striving in this world. Think again. Let your dog have his own crisis. Seize your loaded moment for what it's worth, and use our tips to write.  Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Practice, Revising, Solutions, State of Mind, Writing Tips Tagged With: audience, conclusion, first lines, freewriting, good topics, introduction, positive traits, procrastination, prompts, Stanford magazine, topics, writing tips

Finding the best reader for your college essay

September 1, 2015 by Sara Nolan

You've done the grunt work writing your college application essay draft and you're not sure how you feel about it. Moment of truth: who is the best reader for your essay now, before it's time to submit the application? Who should vet your ideas? It matters who you pick, and here's why. The obvious possible candidates In some cases, the reader is decided for you: you have to turn a draft in to your English teacher, your guidance counselor, your college counselor. In other cases, a family member wants to weigh in as a reader-- your well-intentioned parents, your I've-gotten-you-this-far guardian, your brother who's already in college and should know, and so on. In still other cases, you've hired someone, supposedly for their skill at reading and evaluating your essay: your college coach (if you have one), your essay coach (if you have one). DIY? Whatever your situation looks like, when it comes to writing, it's rarely a good idea to do it all on your own.  You already know what you meant to say in your essay, and it can be hard to have critical distance necessary to see its flaws and omissions.  You're apt to be predisposed to love or to hate it, to cling to your ideas whether successful or not, and to supply background information that a reader ignorant of your life story won't be able to. All of these things cloud your ability to be your own best reader. So while you must reread to revise and edit well (Never submit an essay without doing this, duh!), you should NOT be your only reader. Recruit family, friends, and flatterers? Your parents and guardians, because they have loved you for so long, and probably changed all your poopy diapers for months, might have their own agendas about what they think would be the best topic, given that they know so much of the history of your life, and may also assume (rightly or wrongly) they know you better than anyone.  But they are usually not experts in the requirements of this genre and, beyond that, it's important  Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Feedback, Revising Tagged With: admissions officers, audience, college essay, feedback, getting started, parents, readers

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At Essay Intensive, we are listening for the Big Challenging Questions to arise–physically, mentally and emotionally. We jump, word-ninja style, at the chance to be stimulated and engage in a true conversation.

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