mind

Your essay is mental Your college essay starts in your mind and with your mind. It seems like your college essay begins on the blank page, I know.  But all words have a murky pre-history in the mind.  So it's important to know what our minds are really like, what conditions in there are shaping, selecting, and producing those critical words.  If we're serious about writing with the "sincerity" and "honesty" colleges hope to detect, then we better know what drives us.  And the biggest threat to progress is not examining our minds for the problems they make. So when you-- the writer, the student-- mind your mind, you increase the possibilities for great outcomes in your college essays, and (since real life matters) in the world.  Better word and better world.  This is why our college essay projects at Essay Intensive begin with the state of your mind and end with the transformation of your life.  If you agree that it could be cool to give this essay bigger context, meaning and impact, read on.  If not, you know, go have a snack and get on to writing! Dr. King did it Dr. King knew how to write what was on his mind, but not without looking skillfully at what was in it first. Along with many other unsung civil rights activists, Martin Luther King Jr worked (himself to death) for a better word and world.  As is true for of your best personal writing, language was his power tool-- the familiar language of the people, but used in new, stimulating, and even acrobatic ways.  To change what people do, you have to change how they think. And how they feel.  Direct them towards positive possibilities, even (especially) in dire circumstances.    This doesn't take SAT words.  It takes something much more basic. A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us in "The Letter from Birmingham Jail"; this unrelenting honesty and urgency of the letter is admirable.  Every year, reading it with my 7th graders, I cry. I ask them  Continue Reading …