College application season means advice and anxiety come at you from all corners. It's easy to lose heart. Are you able to spend time wondering (not worrying, but wondering) about the future, or are your days too crammed with test prep, school projects, responsibilities at home? Are you trying to crunch a bunch of facts and make them add up to your "dream school" or "reach school" or "safety school"? (Or you trying to visualize the next chapter of your life based on what attracts you, what challenges you, what pushes you, what makes you feel at ease?) Are you trying to declare that you already know what you want to study, so that you can go ahead and be convincing and study it? Hold on. You know that deflated feeling when your crush likes someone else? You know that deflated feeling when you are hungry and stuck on a subway? You know that deflated feeling when your parents want you to talk to a distant elderly relative about how school is going? That's the feeling that happens to us when we don't listen to our hearts. Luckily we can always reboot. Continue Reading …
meditation
FAQs on writing with us
FAQs you wanted to ask (but didn't) on writing with us at Essay Intensive's Summer Intensive Q: I see you guys meditate in your writing intensives. That's a little weird. Do you have to be enlightened to take an Essay Intensive workshop? A: No. But wouldn't enlightenment be a great side-effect of writing a successful college essay? And relax-- it's just for about 10 minutes of each day. Treat it as an experiment. To us "meditation" is a method of accessing what is best and most natural in ourselves, and of putting our stories in the broadest possible perspective. You don't even have to be able to cross your legs. But you could also choose to continue writing your college essays feeling stressed and edgy-- your call. That's just not what we're about! Q: And yoga? And self-defense? Again, these are support tools for your Big Goal: Write the Essay (while feeling good). Yoga is a system of cutting through self-limiting patterns and the ways we keep ourselves small and constricted without knowing it. In short, it helps us to open up, be more ourselves, with less tension. And self-defense is unbelievably fun, which you are definitely not having enough of as part of this Serious Process--- teaches us to deliver with impact, to assess our environments, to use only what we need. How perfect for producing great writing! And as an added benefit you can kick the *** of anyone who challenges you on your essay. Q: You guys seem smart. Will you puh-lease write my essay for me? A: No. No! Well, wait-- will you come change our baby's poopy diapers at 3AM? Then we should talk. But barring that-- no. It's unethical and pointless (admissions officers have a special ear for crafty and overdone adult-ese). And you should run the other way from anyone who offers to do so...right to our baby's diaper station. Q: What if I'm not a writer, and I'm not really into getting better at being a writer? I just need to get this college essay done! A: Continue Reading …