Shift your perspective from "I'm gonna die!" to "End of life" insight Probably the last thing on your mind while writing your college essay is your end-of-life perspective. Now, it's also true that, while working on your college applications, you might catch yourself saying things like: "I am gonna DIE from this stress!" or "I will DIE if I don't get into XYZ school!" But actually: you won't die. You are being figurative. (And here's some comic relief for you. Go laugh.) However, at the very moment you swear, "This workload is killing me" (no, no it isn't), many people actually are dying. And the dying frequently say painfully honest, instructive things. We're going to mix it up a bit. Take a break from the pressure and anxiety of the application process. Consider instead the refreshing and challenging vantage dying people can offer-- all of us. End-of-life influence on your essay Your college essay, if it's to be anything other than a hurdle and obligation, is an opportunity to get honest in that same way. This 650-word spotlight on you gives you unique opportunity to look closely at your life, let go of what isn't working (on the page and off), and to say something fresh. Something that at your end-of-life self might give a high-five. Kerry Egan, essayists and end-of-life chaplain, culls some brilliant advice from the dying here. It's advice in the form of their wistfulness, of their regret. Most wish they could have listened to their inner impulses and just loved themselves, their bodies. For whatever those bodies were, for all that those bodies did. Read their words, and soak in them. A love like that Can your personal essay be an act of rebellious love? Why not? What if you adopt this end-of-life perspective, and love yourself, truly? Your one and only body, the service it does for you and others? Can you even include in that love whatever is wrong with you, or whatever other people say is wrong with you, and Continue Reading …
Destiny
Use your imagination to give up
Tony Morrison's "Give Up!" I have a crush on where your imagination can get you. I also have a crush on Toni Morrison, largely for her refined art of the simple sentences that slap you. This kind of writing startles you into productive awareness (ahem: aim for that in your college essay!). Take this quote: "Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down." (Song of Solomon) Oh, right. Continue Reading …
Be Bold in Your College Essay
A bold kid on a mission to write When I was in fourth grade, I was obsessed with opera. And I had a bold teacher, Mr. F, who was lanky and fierce in creativity and temper. He always smelled like coffee. Luckily, he also was obsessed with opera-- some of the same ones. And, like me, he liked to write. Mr. F, however, was a musician who had actually written and produced an opera. About the revolutionary war. For fourth graders to perform. In a public elementary school. I was 9. I told Mr. F I wanted to write an opera. And what did he say? Go for it; I'll help you. This encouragement is what each of us needs to be equally bold. Someone saying, Got dreams? Got something to say? Go for it; I'll help you. What did I know then about ambition? I wore paisley print stretch pants, velour shirts, and Velcro sneakers, to give you an idea. I was still eating pita-and-peanut-butter-and-honey for lunch every day, and throwing my invariably mealy apple in the over-sized cafeteria trash can (and why was it over-sized? Guess!). But even with no feel yet for literary structure, never having written lyrics, I still thought I could write an opera. And I started right away on my dad's long yellow legal pads. What I wrote strangely resembled my favorite opera in character, in plot and....I had no idea how one would compose song. Do you get it? I could do none of the things required to actually write an opera, but I still THOUGHT I COULD DO IT. As soon as I was supported, I got started. I was bold. Self-doubt was not even in my vocabulary. I think the opera is somewhere in my parent's basement now. I don't need to see it because I'm embarrassingly confident how bad it is. But I'm so proud of that kid. In your college essay, be like a ballsy fourth grader.. Here's the deal: your work is only as bold as you're willing to be. And sometimes we need a hand at our back, a voice in our ear saying, Go For It. Sometimes we need to switch our seat at the Continue Reading …
My college essay got me what?
My college essay got me in....to this It's 8AM on a Wednesday. I am 19 years old, drinking my 14th cup of weak college cafeteria coffee, staring at an ancient Greek verb. Eistha. I'm supposed to know something about this. I have clocked in exactly three hours of sleep. I know about as much as you do, reading this, right now. The verb stares back at me, equally uninformed. My life looked like this chart. My professor, Alan Boegehold (who died this week, 17 years later) is looking out at the two of us expectantly-- because, you got that right, there are only two of us in that class--, a map of Sparta under his thumb. The map is fuzzed at the edges, to appear antique. This is the battle that would change everything. If that everything means anything to you, now, thousands of years out. (But for you battle nerds, this.) Boegehold is recapping for us where all the warships are, waiting to attack a certain strait. He's so into the heated stakes, a scholar's video game. At this moment, the minor things matter the most-- is the verb in the future? Is the ship pointed a hair to the right? I'm wishing I had bought a Starbucks.The kind as black as night should be if you don't live in Brooklyn and if there is no moon. My college essay is to blame To get here-- this school, this class, this major-- I wrote a very very very (apparently) convincing personal essay for my college application essay-- BY HAND. That's right, by hand. In hand-writing. It was about a junior-year school trip to Spain, where I stayed with a family in Barcelona. On the first day there, I confused two nouns-- mariscos (seafood) and maridos (spouses, husbands)-- and so informed my host mother that I don't eat a lot of things, but I do eat maridos. Meaning, husbands. Instead of mariscos, meaning seafood. The car went silent. I have no idea how I concluded the essay, what lesson or trait my personal essay took pains to show. Maybe the importance of detail, the weight of a Continue Reading …
Sometimes No is Yes: The Rejection
Give It Up for Rejection Raise your hand if you love rejection, y'all! How about a letter, formally letting you know you've been rejected? How about rejection from that one college you really thought was a safety, or that other one that held all your elaborate dreams in its gated grip? Seth Godin to the Rescue This week, I went on a Seth Godin blog binge. I recommend it: he takes unlikely, creative positions on the most common topics, and I needed some unlikely thinking, because changing baby diapers gets predictable. Luckily, I found Seth's very very smart, tart and brief post on how there is no sense in reading between the lines of a rejection letter because there is nothing there. Usually when we get rejected, our inner critic goes on a criticism carnival. Tears apart the language for truth. Or we snuff out its snide remarks with a vice of choice. Or we assume, dungeon door clanging shut, that the rest of our lives will have all the worth of soiled diapers. A Tale of No and Yes Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a girl-- no, not me, but related to me. She was told by her (prestigious, infamous independent) high school's headmaster, who was an Intellectual Giant and known well by adcoms, that she could piss on a piece of paper and get into her then dream school, XX College. Well, she didn't take him literally (she had common sense), but she did apply with the goal in mind that if piss alone could get her in, surely prose and a nice academic track record would more than guarantee her spot. Wrong. The rejection letter hurt worse than bladder surgery, to push the metaphor. Not only did she not get admitted to XX PISS-ME-THERE College, but she didn't get into any of the other schools on her list either-- reach or safety, realistic or aspirational. Except one. We'll call it: School WTF? A school she'd added as after-thought. A school in which she had no interest; a school which, had she had any choice, would Continue Reading …
Featured Student Writing in The Cornell Sun
His writing put the R in Rising To be fair, Jeremiah--a rising senior with emphasis on the word Rising-- didn't need a lot of help from me, his college essay writing coach at JPMorgan Chase The Fellowship Initiative (TFI) to write effective essays. Rather, confident prose seemed to rise up out of him. He was a writer, a deep and global thinker, and the kind of kid who, if it was the only quiet spot, did his homework in the bathroom. He put the self in self-motivated. And because of his circumstances at home, he did a lot of writing in the bathroom. Which might already tell you enough. Unlike many of my students, who face self-doubt, procrastination, or writer's block, he did not need that much prompting to produce his college essay -- he had a story in mind and banged out his personal statement with determination. And fancy subordinate clauses. He is the kind of kid who you can be sure will reach his goals-- ruthlessly, if he has to. And by the time he gets there, he'll have new, bigger goals that supplanted the earlier visions. His writing never shies away from these dreams. He comes from a tight family where education is central. where philosophy is part of parenting and excellence is expected, no matter what. As featured in The Cornell Sun So by qualification and persistence, he made it to Cornell University, but what happened there is the real juice I can't disclose here. I am featuring his writing, a recent article in the Cornell Sun. His article shows that strong writing and game-changing thinking go hand in hand. Such probing as you'll find in his text are what words are for, and the opportunities they create in the hands of young people. Words can lift the dust of complacency, and open the avenues of the mind and heart that can, and should, lead to critical reflection and compassionate action. Thanks for the opportunity to feature your writing, Jeremiah. He can be reached for causes big and small or to answer Continue Reading …