A story about dying is always a familiar story, right? The ultimate change challenge? “They are dying!” I said, like this was a surprise or needed pointing out. The daffodils, poster girls for Spring, now looked like used latex gloves* on stubbornly green stems. My mother gave us the bunch early in self-isolation, soon after New York City had gone into lockdown. She cut them from the ruthless crop in her yard, as she did every spring when they briefly appeared. When my husband dropped off ice cream and Lysol spray (pandemic essentials), she sent them home for us--my husband, our 22 month old and our 4 year old-- to bring the outside in. The daffodils made me cry because they work. They are the symbol of arrival and transience, and they live and die boldly and quickly. They were also, very simply, from my mother. At that moment, my belly was ribboned with anxiety that she and my father, too, were facing imminent COVID transience. I imagined what so many are experiencing: final separation from us in an overwhelmed and handicapped hospital system. The fear for my parents, the longing to cling, flared up: is it ridiculous cling to summer’s bounty when autumn has already dusted the trees of their leaves? For how long can you save that last blueberry before it shrivels? But despite my contrafactual wish otherwise, die the daffodils did. I did not want to look at a dying thing on my table but I equally did not want to throw them out. Problem. Turn it into Art & Make Your Meaning So I dried them. I turned them upside down, bound their stems with a rubber band, and hung them from a random nail on the wall with a garbage twisty-tie. Their vibrant yellow faded, their vibrant green went dormant inside an unremarkable brown. But they did not rot, and they became something else beautiful. Something I could keep. I know, snooze, a story about daffodils drying. But stay with me here. Days later, my Continue Reading …
State of Mind
Reject Authority, Build Autonomy
My 7th grade class is full of "good" kids. In fact, you might even call them the "best" kids-- if you believed in ranking children. These are the kids that did all their math worksheets without being asked. The kids that were reading with a flashlight by kindergarten. The kids whose immigrant parents told them every day that if they came home with less than an A, they were going to hear about it, and so was everyone on the block. The slipper was going to come out. The Best Education Money can Buy Can't Also Buy you Autonomy These kids have already gotten far. By the 6th grade, they were accepted into TEAK Fellowship, which until 2019 accepted only 30 kids out of hundreds of applicants, to prime them for the best education money could buy. But in their case, the education would be free. It was an attempt to level the playing field, and put them in the circles where they belonged by their own merit. But what to do when-- because of your age, stage and developing personhood-- your whole body is telling you you need to strike out on your own, take risks, be autonomous? And yet, here you are, in a Fellowship, in Family Systems, that expect a lot from you? What's rebelling against authority worth? In their blood and bones, my kids understand what it is to rebel against authority. They may have read a lot about it, but most have never done it. That doesn't mean they don't know what it would taste like. Fizzzzzzzzzz and fire. They might know-- ancestrally, or because of the circles of oppression which they and their families navigate- what it means to have a colonizer breathing down your neck, making you pay at every turn for...for what? They might know what it means to not be represented in a governing body. To have people speak for you who know nothing about you, and can't handle your hair. To see that the dominant system does not have your best interests at heart, nor is able to pronounce (or remember) your last name. Gomez or Gonzalez? Continue Reading …
5 minutes in the bathroom to write your college essay
Sometimes, you bump into the subject of your writing when you're not trying-- like in the bathroom. The classier version of this is called the "shower effect"-- it's a real thing. You only need 5 minutes and faith. Often the trying itself keeps your topic at arm's length, stiffly.But not straining in trying? And simply being available? That woo-woo stuff? It often works far more effectively. GAH. How annoying and wonderful is that? JUST FIVE MINUTES? As my mentor Rick Benjamin says, "It's really five minutes + your whole life leading up to this moment." DETAILS. Give Your College Essay a "Quick Change" in the stall This afternoon, I went to the single-stall bathroom at a non-profit where I teach personal essay writing to (some of NYC's most awesome) 7th and 8th grade public school students. The door was locked, but within minutes, my student came out, fancied up: a maroon dress over a filled, collared shirt, black knee socks, and black patent leather pointy toe shoes. She was ready for her upcoming school interview. Moments before, she'd been hunched over her math worksheets, solving equations, chewing her lip and eating her sweatshirt string nervously. (Side Fact: I haven't solved an equation since puberty settled in, so I always salute students doing such worksheets, though in my case eating strings would be more productive than isolating the variable and so on. <---WHAT I RECALL FROM ALGEBRA BUT I DIGRESS.) What's I'm recommending here is, despite the number 5, not mathematical-- but you do need structure in the end. little time, big difference Thing is, I was surprised to see my student emerge from the bathroom so changed. It struck me I'd never seen her dressed up, and her whole persona and body language had shifted with the outfit. "You got this!" I told her (likely true), which is maybe the only thing worth saying right before someone has an interview. Especially when you can assume they've already done the most Continue Reading …
Student as Teacher
Or to Flip a Buddhist proverb: When the Teacher is Ready, The Student Appears! There is a cliche teachers bandy about that "our students are our teachers!" But sometimes, it's true, not just a broadly applied worldview or something we say at Happy Hour over seltzers to redeem a tough week. This summer, I got to nerd out teaching Writing Mechanics (soon re-dubbed "The Inner Life of Words") to TEAK Fellowship's 7th graders with an assistant, my former student Aaron M, who is now entering Yale as a freshman. I taught him personal essay writing and grammar when he was their age-- one of those students I knew Could Write if he wanted to. I was like, "Hey, Aaron-- (acting all casual) --could I see some of your writing?" (FEED ME!) and he agreed. "Mostly poems" he said, like they were going to be some tea-bag slogan to apologize for. Not at all. A Poem from my Student as Teacher! He often speaks like he is apologizing in advance. But "Fat", this poem he showed me? My student as teacher, totally unapologetic! He loves words, like, a lot. Sometimes shy and fumbling when he speaks spontaneously, he's anything but when he's writing. Maybe it's because I'm a mom and I'm currently preoccupied with fat phobia in our culture, but this poem (a draft, he clarified) made me stand up and salute. How come a teenage boy can figure this out, but the rest of our culture can't? Fat (A Poem for My Mother)-- **Draft, but what isn't? The skinny boy in my dorm,six-foot tall and all bones and beautiful,scoffs as he speaks of the Latin teacher he deemsfar too fatfor his youthful thirty-six years.His lips curl in disgust. In anger, even.It’s his fault. I think of my mother:thirty-six, too, and stick-thinuntil she had me. Today,she carries with her stretch marksand flab and extra pounds of fat,and I wonder if the Beautiful Boy’s lipswould curl just as tightly,spit just as spitefullyin speaking of the body that kept me safe. I wonder if he knows that each time he Continue Reading …
Family Illness as Essay Topic
There is a myth that if you haven't faced adverse experiences like family illness, you can't write a great college essay. That's BS. You can write a great (college) essay on literally anything (and I rarely use the word "literally"). But at its center, the essay is about you. Everything else is a window to you. There is another equally problematic myth that if you've faced a family illness, that's automatically great topic for your essay. It might be. It might not be. I'm going to lay out some basic considerations if you're thinking about writing about someone else's illness, loss or tragedy that impacted you. Even if that's not your situation, read these pointers to learn a little about good writing. Resources for Illness and Loss First: some of the best sources I know to help cope with loss or grief are the teachings of Roshi Joan Halifax, Stephen and Ondra Levine, Frank Ostaseki, Sobonfu Somé. Also check out Terrible, Thanks for Asking, by Nora McInerny. Is Illness or loss part of your story? Are you even ready to go there? Some of my students have experienced intense familial illness and loss---at such a young ago. When I sit and listen to teenagers tell me about how this impacted their family unit, I grip my chair and breathe with them, encouraging us to keep our hearts not slammed shut around pain. I'm so impressed by how much they handled, and, often, how they handled intense emotional upheaval without totally checking out. I do not, however, suggest they write their essays on this. My own mother lost her mother when she was 13, and no one talked with her about what was happening. Or--gasp-- the fact that she might have feelings about it. She had to deal with those herself and for years, even to this day. I get how this stuff changes everything, forever. I also get how the processing is rarely instantaneous. Here's what to ask yourself if you think you want to write about illness or loss: What qualities of Continue Reading …
When (and Why) You Should Throw Out Your College Essay
One of the biggest issues I see in student writers is reluctance to throw out a college essay (or frankly any piece of writing) that isn't working. But this is one of the most liberating and helpful things you can do. You might object: But I already put in so much time! I lost so much sleep over this version! Maybe if I just change this ONE sentence.. swap out some vocabulary words for synonyms, add a sentence about my major..?!?!? Maybe. But if you've already worked it to death and can summon the courage to admit it's not working, the Essay Angel of Mercy might whisper: o beloved writer-- free yourself and start fresh. Because maybe you're just clinging. Sometimes just being willing to throw writing out leads you to the revision solution. A clenched fist is not agile, responsive or particularly creative, even if it is strong. Sometimes, fate will throw out your essay for you! I know the pain of letting go of something you worked on so hard. LET ME TELL YOU about the time my entire grad MFA school application, all 15 pages, crashed 24 hours before it was due? I may or may not have thrown a cup at the wall. But i had no choice: here we go again. Hefty caffeine dose. 23 straight hours of work (And, yep, I did teach after that, it was enlightening). And I swear: the next version was so much better, more agile, less belabored, more honest. It was like the computer threw it out for me to do my a favor. All ideas lead to other ideas! This is where you get to trust that all that work churned up meaningful ideas and that the paths forward are many. To make a gardening metaphor: It's like clearing old roots before you can plant something new. Even if you've never planted you can imagine old dirt impacted with knotted roots-- not much fresh is going to happen there. When you decide you're willing to throw out the old essay, you tend to be less precious in the next draft. The tracks of thinking and feeling have been greased. The Continue Reading …