Are you stressed as all hell about supplements? Are you starting to get stiff in your language or overwhelmed by the sheer number of prompts, that all feel vaguely similar? I'm here to give you a pep talk about the “Why This School?” essays that are most challenging for students to write well. Are you starting to write supplemental essays that sound like: “The majestic campus enthralled me and I imagined myself walking down the path to the dining hall….” GAH. Take a big step back. 3 things to remember that will help you avoid common pitfalls: 1) supplements are a dating game 2) go beyond 1-click research to authentic interest 3) don’t tell them what they already know (OK, and four-- it’s OK to sound like you.) These Tips Will IMMEDIATELY Make Your College Supplements Suck Less The supplements are a dating game and you don’t have to treat them any differently. You might be amazing, and the school might be amazing, but how does that help you be amazing together? It doesn’t. I’ve read so many “vanilla” supplements, with a lot of “right” words but no distinctive flavor about the individual applicant. If you and this school are really committing to each other (which you are), then use the supplement as a chance to weave in your particular interests. Tell them a little something you didn’t focus on elsewhere-- that you’ve been deconstructing family toasters since you were 3 and are interested in their engineering track. Or maybe you spent all of middle school browsing the library and you’re interested in literacy classes. Or maybe you grew up in a very small town and you’re so excited about their campus cultural initiatives. Make yourself an attractive person to date and commit to. 2. If you try to stack your supplements with “1-click” research, you look lazy. Dig into their website! Take a virtual tour and come up with a list of questions. Notice specifics. What research are their professors doing? What is student life like? Go at least Continue Reading …
prompts
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 …
Reverence
For what do you feel reverence? Maybe even total and unmitigated reverence? This morning, I read a poem by Major Jackson which began with this line: "I thought by now my reverence would have waned/..." (If you don't already subscribe to poem-a-day, why? You can do it right here. Tracy K Smith, Poe-La of USA, is curating April.) The poem goes on..."the unrestrained/ joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped/ string from God, slowly shifting and soaring, when the decayed/ apples of an orchard amass beneath its trees like Eve's first party..." (O these phrases: Dropped string from God! Eve's First Party! And the catch-breath of the line break!) I feel reverence for the perfect over-brewed bittersweet cup of Jasmine tea, the kind any connoisseur would gag on. (Of course I googled how to spell "connoisseur." But now I feel reverence for those who can spell it correctly without googling). What is exhilarating to me, might be boring to you, and so too the reverse. Writing with this Jasmine tea beside me is like having a harsh and loving editor on hand-- one who both assures you you are awesome and you can do anything, and cuts out everything that is not that from your page. The tea is also a vitalizing force (YOU CALL IT CAFFEINE, I call it magic), a rich earth brown. It also connects me to a many cultures across the world where tea is taken Very Seriously. (One look at our gas station tea bag selection--with brand names like Bigelow, which reminds me of middle school jokes about, well-- things middle schoolers make jokes about-- tells you America is not one of those cultures that reveres tea generally.) Many good writing teachers have issued a caveat that you should not build a dependency between your creativity and any beverage (it's a crutch and potential obstacle). BUT I SAY, HAVE YOU HAD THIS PARTICULAR CUP? And also I have such reverence for the sunrise stabbing between buildings on my city block, and the 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 …
Understanding the Common App Essay Prompts 2018-2019
"I read the Common App Essay Prompts, what do I do now?!" If the suggestion, "Just write an essay you love!" is too vague for you, here's help breaking down the Common App Prompts 2018. Some people prefer to let the essay prompts be jumping off points. That's fine too. Trust your mind. But if you're looking for deeper breakdown of the Common App 2018-2019 prompts, this guidance is for you. It was published in TeenLife Mag back in July but...I was busy having a baby and didn't get to post it. Now that baby's been had! You'll find the advice is relevant and hopefully a nudge towards...just writing that essay you love. Excerpt on responding to the Common App Essay Prompts 2018-2019 "Here’s the deal: When it comes time to write your Common Application college personal essay, it’s not really about the prompt. It's what you do with it, and how deep you go. Each prompt is a doorway into a story you want to tell, something distinctive you want to share. You have to know a few things to pull this off: What the genre of personal essay requires of you generally (general purpose of the essay); what each Common Application prompt is asking for (decoding the question); what possible responses are available to you (your life experiences and what you’ve made of them). You’ll find tips on the first two here and our tips on the writing process. Then, you’ll have to go inward. We can’t tell you what you’ve lived, and if we could, we’d be depriving you of the real work." The full post can be read here, on TeenLife, where you'll find tons of other useful information. Need help with your Common App Essay? We have expert advice for you so when you're asked what you wrote about, you'll say, "Oh, I just wrote an essay I loved!" Contact us for details. Because details are where the good stuff is. Continue Reading …