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 …
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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 …
COVID and College Admissions: Time to Get Genuine!
Last night, I felt heartened listening to the Applerouth college admissions panel on post/COVID college admissions landscape. It reaffirmed a hopeful facet of our current tragedy, which is acute here in New York City: that some things could change for the better-- namely, increased access to higher ed, a more genuine and equitable admissions process. And some really great essays. :) The warm panelists spoke about all aspects of admissions, but at Essay Intensive, we're always thinking about the written portions. And as a writing coach, I was thrilled to hear how excited the panelists were for the essays to come! They were encouraged by what gets stripped away, the pretense in applications, the excess of striving to be The Best and Most. But they are even more pumped about what gets expressed: students having no choice but to be their genuine selves telling colleges who they are--without the Circus of activities and commitments speaking for them. Smaller lives that mean a bigger deal. The panelists had some concrete advice for high school students of all ages at this time of stay-at-home orders, that aligns fully with what I’m always telling them. This is not about what or how to study, and it’s not about scores and metrics: Do something goofy!Enjoy whatever you can Work on your Time managementRead booksSpend time with your parents or family-- have those deep conversations, have the difficult conversations-- don’t put off meaningful conversations. Be guided by your passion to learn-- and learn something! This is forced self-reflective time like you might *never* have again in the same way! (And hopefully not for the same reason). And (honest) self-reflection is college admissions (essay) gold! What do you do when you suddenly have time? When left to your own devices? What’s inherently interesting to you? These are practically college essay prompts, living in your head and day to day decision making. The pay-to-play stuff is Continue Reading …
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 …
Develop Your College Essay like Spreading Peanut Butter
Americans eat something like a billion pounds of peanut butter per year--and most students feel, at their most eye-roll-y moments, like they write about a billion college essays (all those supplements!). If you want to develop a good essay, however, we could learn a thing or two from our popular staple peanut butter. The Peanut Butter /Writing Process My older stepson, K, is a bit obsessed with pb&j. Turns out it's also the #1 choice of pre-game meals for the NBA (though they could afford caviar!), and most non-allergic elementary school kids (who scoff at caviar!). As soon as K walks in the kitchen, the possibility of pb hijacks his decision-making process. He pulls out the bread, the oversized jars of pb and local honey, and gets to work. His heart throbs. The thing is, it's torture watching him make it. Because he takes so very long, spreading that peanut butter. He runs the flat edge of the butter knife over and over the bread until there are zero lumps. The pb is exactly smooth. And 10 minutes have passed, maybe more. He devours it in three bites. Develop, delete; create, destroy; produce, consume; repeat. Why this makes me want to lose my mind is a good question-- it's not my time or my sandwich. Your college essay is not mine either. And I don't lose my mind over it, nor should you (except in the healthy way that sometimes we need to lose ourselves to find ourselves). However, I think we could consider K's approach to peanut butter spreading as one of the perfect metaphors for a common problem-- the essay that a writer did not develop evenly sometimes misses the mark. So what do you need to consider to develop a strong essay? Not a flimsy, disappointing sandwich? How to develop your college essay (quick & dirty): don't over-expend on the intro include enough backstory vivify with scenesmake some meaninghave realistic aspirationsconnections should be freshin conclusion, DON'T SAY IN CONCLUSION!--but give me a gift! Put it 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 …