This week I had the privilege to write for Romper about my 5 year old son apologizing to me for 2+ years of his mom-direct anger. His words stopped me in my tracks. Reflecting on his gesture made me ask lots of questions. At what age can kids apologize, and mean it? When do we (adults, grown ups) owe them an apology? What does rupture and repair look like in families? I turn these questions over to you with a bunch of other questions attached like barnacles. Continue Reading …
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I promise you don’t have “Nothing To Write About”
A common complaint: "I Have Nothing to Write About!" One of the most common things I hear from students at the beginning of the school application process is “I have nothing to write about!” Parents and professionals tell me all the time they get this response when students must answer personal questions about themselves. And as a parent or professional, you know your kid or student is brimming with great ideas, yet when they sit down to write, they produce-- nothing. You remind them what's special about them, but “I have nothing to write about!” they complain. And they probably (think they) mean it. I've been there too. Good news for students: it's really unlikely! You made it this far in life, you definitely have something to write about, you’re just not convinced you do. That usually means it’s just too hard to get started, you feel insecure, you’ve convinced yourself your ideas are poor in advance, or you aren’t thinking specifically enough. The best way to cut through the obstacle, whatever the reason, is just to start! Below I share my favorite tips for doing so. Try them all until something works, because something will. Continue Reading …
What the teens taught me on 9/11
TO mark the anniversary of 9/11, I'm not going to dispense college essay advice. I'm going to let the teens in this story speak for me. And to my teen writers and applicants, remember that how you reflect on your memories now will change over the years, and that we love you, and we need you to be you. What The Teens Taught Me As a First-Year Teacher on 9/11/01 When I worked in a prestigious NYC private school as a Latin teacher, my first hour of my first day teaching, as a total newbie, was September 11th 2001. The Sept 11th. I was 21 years old, barely out of college, a mere four years older than my oldest students, at the same school I had attended 6th-12th grades. I had been a teacher officially for all of 10 minutes when the first plane hit. That bright morning, the workmen on the roof across the street went berserk, shouting and cursing fantastically and pointing at something our view obstructed. My classroom was on the 9th floor, and the high school students ran to the window excitedly to look for the cause of the fracas. ”No matter what is happening outside the window, what’s happening in here is always more important,” I chided them--because of course it doesn’t get more exciting than the opening spiel to a Latin Language course. They ignored me. I didn’t know then that the ending of verbs would not be the most important thing, or that certain verbs--crashed--could grind everything, including our world as we understood it, to a halt. Continue Reading …
Yes, your college essay topic can be your grandmother, or your torn ACL
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 …
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 …