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 …
Writing Tips
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 …
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 …