Yes, I promise, you can write your college essay topic about your grandmother, or your torn ACL. I know you heard opposite advice basically everywhere. So let me explain what I mean. I have read (and been moved to tears and laughed my water out my nose because of) college essays about grandmothers torn ACL’s You just can’t write about it in the same way everyone else does. This means: It’s not really “about” your grandmother. It’s not really “about” your torn ACL. So what is your college essay about then? It’s about the way you approach your topic. It’s about what your topic shows us about you. Continue Reading …
Uncategorized
Listening to Teens
I love listening to teenagers. The more you listen, the more they tell you. And if you're only pretending you're listening, or listening with an agenda, they know it. In a recent session, a student showed me that if I really listened, we could travel into a different eco-system, where caring for each other was part of the ecology. Out of your element, or in it? A student was telling me about his love of scuba diving. Newly certified, on one of his first group dives, he was daunted by the oxygen tank, and the thought of bumping loose a cartridge. How to parcel out the air? His nervousness made him a conservative in what he would explore. (The analogies to COVID life loom). But he was also, I think, awed by the power of being in a completely different element, the underwater ocean, that wasn't really meant for us. Not in a sustained way beyond the doing the crawl or getting rolled by a hook-shaped wave. The Sharks and the goofballs came On his wreck dive with his family (also a pandemic analogy, there?), a family of sharks--and I swear he called them nar-sharks, to which fact my five year old exclaimed LIKE NARWAL NARWAL SHARKS??-- swam by. A small flock. Other goofballs on the dive went out of their way to take a selfie of themselves with the shark pod with a long selfie stick camera. Scrambling around for the money shot. Grinning, peace signs, oxygen burbles. They were posing with their stupid selfie stick IN FRONT OF A FAMILY OF SHARKS, he said, like zero common sense. I mean, sure, try to get your picture, but stop behaving like such an idiot. His dad taught him to hang back, to see if you could get a photo without disrupting the balance and bothering the sharks. Because: BOTHERING SHARKS. Be humble, he said. These are sharks. They just want to hang out with their families. As I listened to him, he relaxed and grew funnier. Once I had given him his writing prompts for the week and we hung up, all I could think about was goofballs who Continue Reading …
Chill out writing strategies that work
I promise these are writing strategies that work... ...only if you do them. These strategies might feel uncomfortable and awkward at first, but so does being born. And that didn't stop us, did it? Both writing strategies involve a wall, which everyone has or can find. Any wall will do! Nothing special there. After you've learned the practice, you'll be able to IMAGINE a wall, but it helps at first to have a physical wall to use. Strategies that work: Being Seen Sit in front of the wall. Elevate your hips on a support or cushion if your knees are annoyed right away. Feel or imagine a tall spine and the dignity you were born with. Relax your shoulders (always). Imagine the wall is looking at you. It can see you. Its eyes are the warm accepting eyes of a grandparent, or any adult who cares for you immensely. If you don't have an adult like that in your life, invent one, or imagine your ancestor, or a really loving person in a movie. Your only job is to let yourself be seen. Keep relaxing. Don't try to hide anything from the wall-- it's just a wall! When you feel done, get up, but don't feel the need to snap out of it. What if the people in your world could really see you? What would they see? Strategies that work: Breathing Fully Start the same way: sit in front of your wall as comfortably as possible. Imagine the wall has a mural on it. Imagine the coolest, most vivid mural you can think of, or look one up, first, so you can have a bright image in mind. But just one problem: this mural has somehow become covered over in dust and funk! As you inhale, imagine and truly feel that you are slowly drawing a layer of dust off the mural, revealing a gorgeous, exciting piece of art. As you exhale, imagine that you are scattering the dust, revealing more of the art. Breathe in very slowly, so none of the dust goes up your nose: you are just clearing space. Breath out gently, so that the layer of dust is scattered lightly: you are Continue Reading …
Good news on Winning College Essay–Julian Jimenez, Princeton
Julian Jimenez's winning college essay begins, "Here comes Satanás... Behold his fiery, mischievous, defiant glory." I know: a risk. Just the kind that apparently makes admissions teams sit up and then salute. I had worked closely with Julian on his main college essay and supplements--if they don't take him, they're confused, I'd think. In admissions, though, criteria are complex. Excellent writing stands out, but it doesn't stand alone. Though the tone was often playful, I knew he wasn't playing. So when I saw his long list of impressive acceptances in the email, I was not surprised, but my heart did crack open. You'll remember my name Julian was dubbed "Satanas" as a child; Satan may have a really bad reputation in many circles, but we know what that figure does well is convince others to do things. In this case, his power of language (y'all are going to know my name!) held sway over admissions officers. They remembered his name and they put it on their BRING IT list. Committed to Princeton Julian wrote: "I'm proud to tell you that I have committed to Princeton! I actually got into roughly 90% of my top choices including Dartmouth, Columbia, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Swarthmore, University of Notre Dame, UCSD and UCSB , and a few others." Now, if you follow my admissions essay work, you know I am not an Ivy Preacher nor swayed by school branding that's not backed up by substance and stellar education. Any school must be a potential a fit for that applicant. (Because, no, the Illustrious Ivies are not a fit for all, nor is their egregious price tag). But in this case, the enormity of the nations top schools saying YES YES YES CHOOSE US speaks volumes about Julian's renovation of his entire life, and his family's life and prospects. His was the kind of family this country claims currently to not want within our borders. Voice to and through the struggle Most of us have no idea what some students struggle through to get even a decent Continue Reading …
Our Stories and Our Storms: Writing Advice for Disruptive Times
I hope he wouldn’t do it, and he did it. He eyed the paper, he took the marker, and he scribbled over the figure of a fox he had drawn. “It’s in a storm!” My four year old announced, grinning. To him, that made it perfect. You can’t save someone else’s art. But, damn, how I felt the urge. My perfectionist instincts, and urge to preserve, makes me want to rescue his art from this habit. But that was such a cool fox! I want to protest. And now no one can f-ing see it! But parenting, like teaching, often means letting a process just unfold. Awwwwwww meeeeean, said the baby (Translation, “Aw, man!”)-- one of the only phrases in which she puts two words together. She peered at his scribbled-out drawing, assured she’d picked the right reaction. Awwwwww meeeeaaaaan, she repeated, (we’ve taught our kids this phrase as a response to frustrations). She looked around to see who was appreciating her timing. I’m thinking that might be the title of my autobiography. But it’s his art. It’s his vision. At some point between 2 and 3 years old, my son became enchanted with storms of any type-- real, imagined, violent, gentle, didn’t matter. Every story we told got his “And then a storm came!” added to it. Didn’t matter if your story took place in the sunny land of Perpetual Yodeling and Jacked Up Good Moods. His narrative twist was predictable: A storm would blow through it, and that would make it perfect to him. A story without a storm was like a story without a character or plot-- not really a thing. He did the same stormy flourish of scribbles to the drawing of ET he’d made on his brothers' whiteboard, after we broke his heart with that movie. Ditto to the practice sketches of aliens in profile-- my husband, the figure artist, had taught him how to do. His speech bubbles read backwards in all caps "I WILL NEVER PEE!" true to his stubbornness. All were scribbled out by the merciless storm. My reaction is Continue Reading …
Change with the Change: Writing Advice for trying times
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 …