Strain does not equal gain Feel like you're straining to look like Somebody Special in your college essay? Are you "Being somebody" in your writing that feels removed from the truth-- and rubs (even you) wrong? I am always looking to help students find ways to claim who they are in their work. Nonetheless, I did not expect a zen talk on non-separateness and compassion would teach me about how we can try too hard in our college essay, strain futilely, and, by so doing, miss the point entirely. They tell you what's up at the zendo At the inclusive, radically spare Brooklyn Zen Center zendo, Rev angel Kyodo william Sensei takes a well-earned sip of tea after a long talk on healing what separates us from each other. She lifts her face with a confessional smile and light laugh; a framed iconic, black-and-white of MLK Jr. on the altar across the room looks openly back. Her body is solid as a stone buddha: "My students say to me, why do you teach if you hate people?" She chuckles, touche, and the community members laugh with her-- what else can we do? She nods: "It's true. I do hate people. But it's not because I hate people. It's because I'm so tired of everyone trying to be somebody, and somebody they are not." angel looks around, as if to catch us in this very (common) act. Don't we all want to be a tad more awesome, together, memorable, attractive, something? Suddenly it's as if our subconscious intentions-- to Be Somebody Other Than Who We Are At This Uncomfortable Moment-- are on nanny-cam. And keeping us miles apart from each other. But Your pen prefers You! You can see this urge run rampant once a student picks up a pen to write The College Essay. Angst, however subconscious, directs the composition, just as it can direct our self-perception, and the background noise is something like: To get into XXX school, I have to be Special, who looks and sounds better than I am. Who I Really Am couldn't possibly suffice. But, actually, as angel Continue Reading …
Wisdom
Coming from Love
Love was a great teacher for me this year. Love insisted on many a mini-essay in her over-used, under-understood name. Here is what I learned. My sister had her first baby this November, and I was with her for the 26-hours of unrelenting labor. If you think writing your college essay is hard, try delivering an 8lb+ baby without pain medications. Labor is messy, ancient, and happens on its own inexplicable timing. No human arrives but by some version of this route. All of our mothers, somehow, bore it-- whether assisted or unassisted. This is you and me I am talking about, and our exodus from the mysterious biological soup women's bodies somehow brew. When my sister's baby came out, she was unnamed, and screaming. She already had wordless opinions about her new circumstances and the trial of leaving my sister's body in order to have her own body, her own existence, her own self. I felt bonding hormones helplessly rush through my bloodstream in response to the newborn's fresh cries and reddened womb-dusted skin. The hormones came in surges of Jedi-style loving protectorship which make you think, true or not, you can stall barreling trucks in their tracks, hold up collapsing buildings, and bear to change runny diapers at 3AM--while you fend off attacking tigers with your middle finger. My niece Nora is a little over a month old now. She spends much of the day asleep, re-assuming the shape of the womb, preferably against your chest. She gives you the most earnest stare while you whack her harder than you'd think to get her to burp, and then she adds in a little gas-bubbly fart as a P.S., a digestive afterthought. This girl blasted open my heart the way water spews from an open hydrant. I mean I was down on my knees because of the magnitude of my love for her; there was nowhere even to put this love, it was unwieldy, the size of the universe, it had to be compressed into baby-gentle kisses. Ever loved like that? This kind of love is humbling Continue Reading …
How to start your best college essay? Mind your Mind
Your essay is mental Your college essay starts in your mind and with your mind. It seems like your college essay begins on the blank page, I know. But all words have a murky pre-history in the mind. So it's important to know what our minds are really like, what conditions in there are shaping, selecting, and producing those critical words. If we're serious about writing with the "sincerity" and "honesty" colleges hope to detect, then we better know what drives us. And the biggest threat to progress is not examining our minds for the problems they make. So when you-- the writer, the student-- mind your mind, you increase the possibilities for great outcomes in your college essays, and (since real life matters) in the world. Better word and better world. This is why our college essay projects at Essay Intensive begin with the state of your mind and end with the transformation of your life. If you agree that it could be cool to give this essay bigger context, meaning and impact, read on. If not, you know, go have a snack and get on to writing! Dr. King did it Dr. King knew how to write what was on his mind, but not without looking skillfully at what was in it first. Along with many other unsung civil rights activists, Martin Luther King Jr worked (himself to death) for a better word and world. As is true for of your best personal writing, language was his power tool-- the familiar language of the people, but used in new, stimulating, and even acrobatic ways. To change what people do, you have to change how they think. And how they feel. Direct them towards positive possibilities, even (especially) in dire circumstances. This doesn't take SAT words. It takes something much more basic. A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us in "The Letter from Birmingham Jail"; this unrelenting honesty and urgency of the letter is admirable. Every year, reading it with my 7th graders, I cry. I ask them Continue Reading …
There’s more Inside! Your gutsy college essay…
Gut Feelings What’s more New York than a Deli with a botanical name pushing questionable health foods? Well, courtesy of my local deli comes a lesson in writing an authentic and gutsy college essay. In the GARDEN DELI window, a sign reads, “Fresh food all day.” The rub? The poster advertises the least fresh-looking food conceivable. Who you going to trust? It challenges famously. My words or your own (lying) eyes? Some delights cannot be feigned. Writer, take note. Continue Reading …
November Essay-Writing Blues? Take a Shower!
Blue over You You don’t like your current college essay—at all. It revolts you: the written word should never have been invented. It’s late November: you’re freaking out. Your essay tastes like stale white bread instead of the perfection you could have said. Stop. Take a shower. Continue Reading …
On Destiny and Saying YES in Your Essay
In Taoist philosophy, it is understood that each of us is born into the world with a curriculum. This curriculum is a set of challenges and themes and things our souls are here to learn. We do this kind of learning simply by moving through our lives. Just being yourself is following this curriculum. It is said that our souls are a piece of the sky scooped out by the big dipper. Continue Reading …