"Messay" Process Your college essay might be a mess before it's amazing. I have many students freaking out when their essay is in the messy inchoate stage. Trust the writing process to move from a-mess-ing to amazing! You know what happens when the sun begins to rise? That's just the idea of the day beginning. It hasn't figured itself out yet. It's a hot mess! The whole sky goes crazy, and it tries out all these different colors. They are not the same colors, or in the same order, as yesterday's sunrise. You know why? Me neither. The sun is just going through a process. The atoms have moved around and swapped outfits. They blaze and reorganize. Take notes for your college essay! Beautiful Oops = Mistake Composting I read my kids a book called Beautiful Oops (if I'm really honest we lost our copy, but stick with me). I recommend everyone get their hands on it and absorb it. This is a how-to book designed to help the perfectionists among us calm the F down. It's also for those who can't handle their mistakes and meanderings as a natural part of the process. This book says-- no such thing as a mistake! Take that coffee spill, that misshapen tree, that sentence that is tomato sauce dribbled on your prom outfit, and turn it into something else. It was getting you to your art all along. In fact, that might be your stroke of genius. It's messy before it's sweet I have a lot of students who come to me very early in the college essay process. They are stressed the F out, because they are not sure what they are writing about, and the essay isn't coming out looking finished, in 650 words. That advice thread on Reddit didn't make their essay get born whole. Prince Ea's magic words didn't conjure it. The messy process of creation is a bit uncomfortable. Hey now! Is the sun making a big deal about its sprawl? Should my kids never scribble scrabble in the process of drawing a dragon (it breathes fire, yo!)? Is it OK that I have to step to the left and right Continue Reading …
Writing Tips
Common App Prompt #4 is “Grateful” and Then Some
Common App #4 Is New and Gratitude Never Gets Old With the addition of the new Common App Prompt #4, students are encouraged to find something positive in their lives they can reflect on-- and this is a good thing. The prompt reads: “Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you?” The Common App website even links to Angela Duckworth’s Character Lab where you can learn more about why science is giving a big thumbs up to gratitude and kindness practices. But just because it's certified as good for you, doesn't mean it necessarily leads to good writing. This is where a little guidance and some examples can go a long way. Continue Reading …
Your story matters more than ever
Does anything matter now? Yes! It's hard to think straight some days about what matters, when we've lost so much in the past year of the pandemic. We're at the 500,000 mark, in February; where is the sun, again? But in this context, your story matters more than ever. It can be hard to think well about future, about goals, when getting through the day sometimes takes all we have-- or as my friend and mentor Margaret Klawunn put it, while we're "fluctuating between boredom and terror." Colleges are trying to keep up with the new landscape, adjusting their admission requirements to accommodate student realities, the boring, the terrible and the indelibly altered. Your story, when you find it, is neither boring, or terrifying. It's perfect, and your job is to unearth it. 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 …
The Secret of Youth-Writing Prompt
What is the secret of youth? The secret of youth is the subtext of many commercials, crappy diet plans, and plastic surgeries-- none of which I recommend pursuing. (But you know what I will recommend? Writing!). The secret of youth is also something we discover when we get space from our fossilized concepts of how things are. Teenagers have the hard and sometimes gratifying job of shaking us more grown people out of our comfy delusions. But little kids can do that too, just by being themselves, engaging with the world at face value. 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 …