I wanted Brown badly I wanted to go to Brown University because all my favorite people from high school went there, many of them writers; I wanted to go to Brown because I knew there students had autonomy over course selection and I was used to picking for myself. I wanted to go to Brown because...it felt like a natural fit. And because I drank the elitist cool-aid, sorta. I didn't exactly approach the process with an open mind, more like a targeted mind that was open to me getting what I wanted most... "I can see myself there!" I said. And so said everyone else. Sometimes, everyone else's predictions for you feel annoying. But it's most annoying-- and probably also most accurate-- to imagine that all of that conviction could be irrelevant. Continue Reading …
Destiny
Claim Your Education
Claim our Education? What you talkin' bout, Willis? In common speak: we go to college to "get" an education-- yes? And sometimes we "get" our knickers (don't cringe: it's a cliche) brains in a bunch trying to figure out where to do that. This school or that school? OMG this University? Or OMFG THAT University? Butter side up or butter side down? I don't know and neither do you. But I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it means to get an education, and how you know when you've gotten one. And one little word-- a shift in semantics-- could change how we think about all this-- and ourselves. Claim = Call Out Adrienne Rich, poet, activist and teacher, cautioned in her commencement address, "We are not here to receive an education, we are here to claim one." I love this. But what's the difference? If you've read much here, you know I have a long history as a Classics nerd and scholar. So when I look up the etymology to consider WTF Rich means, "Claim" --> from the Latin "clamare" = "to call out." So I think about what people do from rooftops on New Years. The exhilaration and breathlessness and leaning into the next thing, hoping for things to always be getting better. Education is not a thing. It is an action; it is something-- poor fool-- that you do. It's not something you "get." It's not, actually, a product at all. Even though the consumer can be baited, education is- or should be-- beyond capitalism. You can sit down with a wise person anywhere. You can teach yourself almost anything online, thanks to the Glory of Youtube. You can even teach people how not to get their knickers brains in a bunch. Education is a long, mystifying process of ingesting knowledge. Then, a longer process-- that keeps happening far far beyond graduation-- of turning that knowledge into who you are and how you operate. So it is not just part of your resume, but your raison d'etre (I use French when I need to be taken seriously). Tall Continue Reading …
Have Essay, Will Travel
It is exciting when I get to travel with my students for the long haul. Francesca, an irreverent and deeply talented student I first taught when she was in 8th grade, is now a writing colleague and itinerant scholar. She's left school, again (yes, you can leave school for good reasons)...to travel and write and to write about travel as a state of mind. Here's just a fraction of her story, and how her college essay became an important touch-stone on a journey of inner and outer travel that is not yet done. Francesca obligingly wrote this for you, as a case in point that your college essay can be so much more than a thing you write to get into college. (It also makes me pleasantly squirmy to be a protagonist/antagonist in such a fine story). Francesca's College Essay Story Travel Back When I walked into Sara’s house in the summer before my senior year of high school, late for our meeting and out of breath, I had no idea what I wanted to write my college essay about. Sara offered me a plate of avocado toast, and as I ate, she had me free write on a couple on prompts. I had seen Sara infrequently over the past few years, but in 2009, when I was in eighth grade, Sara and I had travelled around Europe and Northern Africa together. For a school year, she had homeschooled my sister and me, teaching me English, writing, history, Latin, and anatomy. We had spent many hours together most days of the week. Our year of traveling felt simultaneously central to my identity and far removed from my real life. It was like a dream that I couldn’t fully remember, but that continued to affect me in my waking hours. That is, it was like a dream I couldn’t fully remember until I sat down at Sara’s kitchen table with a slice of avocado toast and realized that, of course, my personal statement would have to be about our trip. Revision and Remembering I was very proud of the essay I wrote with Sara. I had never worked on a piece of writing so intensely, though I loved to Continue Reading …
Do something amazing, make amazing things
Here are some people who are actively doing creative things that are elevating and amazing. Because sometimes we need to focus on what's life-affirming (and not this crappy political morass). The force of the imagination can open a tightened chest. Check out three these mighty real folks: Three Amazing Artists with a message My former student, Jordan Hiraldo, who made it out of a tough childhood on the streets of New York City. He realized by keeping his ear to the local scene, he could do something amazing with his lens and capture artists in their everyday hustle. Because, let's face it, we have to hustle. Check him out here. My colleague, teacher, friend, Holly Wren Spaudling, whose off-grid childhood primed her for a life of inquiry and poetry as inoculation against cultural madness. Check her out here. My guide Maya Angelou, whose childhood trauma left her elective mute at 7 years-old. She found her voice again only after a savvy poetry teacher refused to listen to her work if she wouldn't read it aloud. Here is Maya's insistent message to young people: "You are all we have." Listen to the whole journey here. (Get your tissues/snot sleeve ready!). Prompt Yourself Up How about you, amazing person? What creative impulse runs through you, and how can you let it all hang out-- like, now? (Because I can't keep listening to these confirmation hearings, it's killing me, I'd rather look at anything even remotely amazing that you make-- yes, you, really). How has your childhood shaped you? How have your unique conditions given you a unique eye-- and what does that eye see? What have you made lately? Can you reach for some materials now and release your imagination, just because? How will you be part of setting us all free? These are the questions that art can often answer better than fact alone. Do something amazing, and show it to us. The world needs this everyday. Continue Reading …
Read this, then write yours: Letter to Change Lives
A Letter to Guide Us Essay intensive didn't really know what to say after the election results came in. We couldn't even write you a letter defending you, whoever you are, or properly post our views. We had whiplash and tried to cure it by staring straight into the maelstrom of social media. Then, we went right to the feet of the most articulate person we know: Martin Luther King Jr. (He's a close friend). Just so happened we teach his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" every year, and on Nov 8th we were right in the middle of its protest and panacea. From WTF to Why This Fortunate? King's"Letter from Birmingham Jail" should be read in every school, jail, and waiting room. He used ignorant criticism of his work against racism, materialism, and cancerous bigotry as a chance for extreme creativity. His opponents (in the CHURCH, mind you) handed it to him. They asked that King-- who they labeled an "outsider" and "agitator" who should mind his own business-- to puh-lease let racism proceed at its merry awful pace in Birmingham. King could not concede. Well let me just write this one letter first... In pristine, respectful response, in a public letter, King laid out his entire non-violent resistance platform and its historical necessity. Opportunity is wherever you decide to find it King took opposition as opportunity. The result, started on bits of toilet paper from his jail cell where he was serving time for the truly demonic offense of "parading without a permit" (sound familiar?), is one of the most important documents of our time. If and only if you'd like to know how to write well, mastering what grammar, syntax and allusion can accomplish, elevate discourse with your oppressors to hold them to their highest selves (which may not exist-- this is where the imagination is handy), logically lay out an exhaustive plan for achieving common humanity. If you don't, look elsewhere. Maybe at cat videos. What King's Letter Made Continue Reading …
Do you really know what you want?
What you want most right now might not turn out to be what you actually want. This is a big deal when you start telling me about your hopes and dreams to go to XYZ school, and no way would you go to LMNOP school, because you want QRS for sure. You intend to write a convincing essay about that future. You want to be sound like you know. In our essay writing sessions, we do some digging under the narrative of what you want. Sometimes real personal growth lies in the other direction from what your mind has been fixated on. How do you know what you want? Let me tell you a little personal story. Way back before the towers fell, and New York City went into a post-terror slump, I knew I wanted to train to be a yoga teacher. In my final spring at Brown University, I had studied intensively with a great teacher. Everyone should be so lucky. Of all the days spent on the sweat-slick mat, I remember one particularly: after a 2 hour practice, in complete silence on the meditation cushions, a student let out a hefty fart. The whole room erupted in laughter, as if we were but 12 years-old. (This is why I love, and will always serve, 12 year-olds.) That no one chastised us, made us feel immature or small, let me know that I was in the right kind of room, with the right kind of people, reaching the right kind of enlightenment. One that wouldn't exclude the basic pleasures of human life, or frown too hard on the physical bodies we really have, in all their less than perfect moments. In New York City, I practiced near the school where I taught Latin, skipping my lunch period to get chakras cracking. When I told my exquisite instructor I was interested in doing a training, she (who is now is a full time commercial real estate agent and brings equanimity, or at least compromise, to the roots of all aggression that way) recommended an infamous "teacher of teachers", Alison West. This teacher stopped me in my tracks Over the phone, Alison's communication was Continue Reading …