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cutting

Perfect Essay? Not a chance

March 20, 2017 by Sara Nolan

perfect shot creates an essay on target

It's Perfect, now Help! Last week, a former Essay Intensive student, T, needed help last minute help with her transfer essays, which she thought were close to perfect.  It was the usual problem: I've written it, now how do I cut it down to size? T was-- and still is-- Perfectionism's Poster Girl.  She will fight you, and did me, on every turn of phrase in her essay, every single preposition-- why it should stay, why the wording is already perfect.  AND YET SHE NEEDS AND WANTS MY HELP.  She's classy and has poise, but her affect is whisper-yelling, I LOVE IT LIKE THIS GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY SENTENCE. People who don't want to revise are in trouble as writers.  T is incredibly articulate, intelligent, and accomplished-- but aiming to make your writing perfect isn't usually the way to make it perfect. In Love with the Darlings? Is she "in love with her darlings"? Yup. She's thought so hard about every semantic and syntactic choice in the essay that eliminating something feels like a liability. Familiarity can actually lessen our critical eye. Her essays sound "just right" to her-- and yours to you?-- EXACTLY as they are.  And so it's nearly impossible to objectively evaluate what to cut. What's considered perfect is too precious to improve. Remember your audience, however.  My advice to students who cling to their work is, "Save this version for your memoirs, I can't wait to read them!" Do your job Because we have to give readers what they want. In these essays the admissions team is not, actually, evaluating whether you've turned a phrase perfectly.  They want to know that you can answer the question, and that you see your story-- expectation, disappointment, reassessment, plot turn-- clearly. And you, like everyone else who lives and breathes and hopes to apply to school, has to come in under word count-- 650. It's the great equalizer and no admissions team- or text box, for that matter-- will make an exception for you for even the most brilliant  Continue Reading …

Filed Under: Solutions, State of Mind, Uncategorized, Writing Tips Tagged With: college essay, cutting, perfectionism, revision, word count

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