The "Why This College?" essay may be a supplement, but it's really important! After you finish your main personal statement, having to write the "Why This College?" essay can trigger your impulse to exaggerate, bullshit, or regurgitate-- three common pitfalls. Don't. Instead, aim to do your best writing, thinking and match-making on the "Why This College" essay. Here's how. First, understand the "Why This College?" essay as another golden opportunity to show who you are and why you are a fit for this school. Show some enthusiasm, and build up confidence in your college list. Remember, no question on the application is really a waste of space or time; each should be treated as an opportunity to add to the picture of yourself you are creating for colleges. Each written supplement is a chance to be convincing, make your case, and land a sweet date. Here are three common pitfalls to avoid, and what to do instead for your best "Why This College" essay: "Why This College?" essay Exaggeration: If you eat a meal at my house and then tell me I am the best cook ever, I might grow shy (Who, me?), then a little worried about your judgment (Are you sure you think that?), then move on to disbelief (That's not true!), then dismissal (You don't know anything about good cooking). If you spend time (and precious word count) on superlatives and hyperbole, the admissions team may go through that same thought sequence as well, and it probably won't end in your favor. They KNOW they are not THE BEST IN THE WORLD AT EVERYTHING. But what if you instead say to me, "Wow, I have never had kale with garlic that tastes this good, and I should know, because I am a green vegetable junkie!"? Then I might believe you. You've given me a highly specific and accurate compliment. You've shown me why you are qualified to make this assessment. And you've contextualized it in a bigger picture of your tastes and preferences. We're cool! Can you think of a parallel example for Continue Reading …
Writing
Have Essay, Will Travel
It is exciting when I get to travel with my students for the long haul. Francesca, an irreverent and deeply talented student I first taught when she was in 8th grade, is now a writing colleague and itinerant scholar. She's left school, again (yes, you can leave school for good reasons)...to travel and write and to write about travel as a state of mind. Here's just a fraction of her story, and how her college essay became an important touch-stone on a journey of inner and outer travel that is not yet done. Francesca obligingly wrote this for you, as a case in point that your college essay can be so much more than a thing you write to get into college. (It also makes me pleasantly squirmy to be a protagonist/antagonist in such a fine story). Francesca's College Essay Story Travel Back When I walked into Sara’s house in the summer before my senior year of high school, late for our meeting and out of breath, I had no idea what I wanted to write my college essay about. Sara offered me a plate of avocado toast, and as I ate, she had me free write on a couple on prompts. I had seen Sara infrequently over the past few years, but in 2009, when I was in eighth grade, Sara and I had travelled around Europe and Northern Africa together. For a school year, she had homeschooled my sister and me, teaching me English, writing, history, Latin, and anatomy. We had spent many hours together most days of the week. Our year of traveling felt simultaneously central to my identity and far removed from my real life. It was like a dream that I couldn’t fully remember, but that continued to affect me in my waking hours. That is, it was like a dream I couldn’t fully remember until I sat down at Sara’s kitchen table with a slice of avocado toast and realized that, of course, my personal statement would have to be about our trip. Revision and Remembering I was very proud of the essay I wrote with Sara. I had never worked on a piece of writing so intensely, though I loved to Continue Reading …
Do something amazing, make amazing things
Here are some people who are actively doing creative things that are elevating and amazing. Because sometimes we need to focus on what's life-affirming (and not this crappy political morass). The force of the imagination can open a tightened chest. Check out three these mighty real folks: Three Amazing Artists with a message My former student, Jordan Hiraldo, who made it out of a tough childhood on the streets of New York City. He realized by keeping his ear to the local scene, he could do something amazing with his lens and capture artists in their everyday hustle. Because, let's face it, we have to hustle. Check him out here. My colleague, teacher, friend, Holly Wren Spaudling, whose off-grid childhood primed her for a life of inquiry and poetry as inoculation against cultural madness. Check her out here. My guide Maya Angelou, whose childhood trauma left her elective mute at 7 years-old. She found her voice again only after a savvy poetry teacher refused to listen to her work if she wouldn't read it aloud. Here is Maya's insistent message to young people: "You are all we have." Listen to the whole journey here. (Get your tissues/snot sleeve ready!). Prompt Yourself Up How about you, amazing person? What creative impulse runs through you, and how can you let it all hang out-- like, now? (Because I can't keep listening to these confirmation hearings, it's killing me, I'd rather look at anything even remotely amazing that you make-- yes, you, really). How has your childhood shaped you? How have your unique conditions given you a unique eye-- and what does that eye see? What have you made lately? Can you reach for some materials now and release your imagination, just because? How will you be part of setting us all free? These are the questions that art can often answer better than fact alone. Do something amazing, and show it to us. The world needs this everyday. Continue Reading …
Crappy Moods, Comedians, and the Writer’s Cure
Crappy moods: they happen. (Reader, are you straight-jacket-ed by a particularly crappy mood currently? Cut right to this Louis CK cure. Road-test the comedians' corrective. And come back to read the rest of this later.) Crappy moods are like reverse rainbows, showing up when weather conditions are darkly unfavorable in inner or outer environment or both. At their best, crappy moods facilitate discharge of the nastier emotions. and move on. You know the drill: kick your drawer shut, and break your own toe in the process. Slam household items around. Be snappy at those you love. Mope and mull. It's not usually a pretty picture. But Crappy Moods sometimes settle in like shower mildew, and can put a serious cramp in your creativity. Comedians: they help. Your Crappy Mood is an orchard ripe for picking for comedians, who can find the humor in anything-- the less seemingly funny it is, the better. Your irrational or irritable behavior is already slightly ridiculous to anyone who's not you. A comedian laughs not just with you, but at you. And you'll want them to. Because then you'll have to laugh at yourself, and this is the healthiest way to return to creativity, sanity, and general equilibrium. Let Joan Rivers explain Joan Rivers told Larry King, "I purposely go into areas that people are still very sensitive about and smarting about, because if you can laugh at it, you can deal with it. That's how I've lived my whole life. I swear to you - and I'm Jewish - that if I were in Auschwitz, I would have been doing jokes just to make it OK for us." But to deal with it, you have to know that it's there in the first place. Crap Under the Radar Crappy moods happen more frequently and more fiercely when something is bugging us just under the radar of our awareness. Some unaddressed stressor, or maybe a small mountain of them. Some factor out of our control, like whether or not-- emphasis on not-- our writing is universally loved. Or, more to the point Continue Reading …
Be Curious
Easy to Advise, Hard to Do: Stay Curious By now, you've pressed submit on your college applications. Or your child has. Or your friend has. Or someone you knew as a baby has. Or you're reflecting on an upcoming big decision that is is-- at this point out-- of your hands (more on hands in a moment). How can you keep from dying with agony over what the results will be? Be curious. And by "curious", I don't mean obsessed. And I don't mean neurotically rehearsing possibilities. "Be curious" urges and instructs you to find in yourself an open state of friendly inquiry into the present. As in, the present. As in, the present. I didn't know any better back when I'm a hypocrite. When I was waiting for my college letters, 8 million years ago when humans had just sprouted opposable thumbs, I couldn't maintain the equanimous tenet of "Be curious" (about your experience). No, I had the worst nightmares of my life, things I couldn't even believe my imagination could come up with, in an other-wise generally PG-13-rated brain-scape, and content I don't feel comfortable rehashing in this blog. But almost 20 years later, I still remember those dreams vividly. So you can imagine how much they sucked, and how much my mind was hijacked by worry about what I could not control. This is why I can say confidently that if you can "be curious" instead of "being consumed", your time will pass a lot more enjoyably. An exercise in curiosity with opposable thumbs Your opposable thumbs are going to be your ally in this moment. Check 'em out. Stick 'em up. Gaze at their tips to steady your attention. Make them kiss each other like I did as a kid. Be curious about your hands, like a baby (or a stoner, but that's a different matter) might be. (Haven't been around a baby in a while? I've got one whose diapers you can change with your opposable...). Here are simple activities that allow you to test your opposable thumb's usefulness-- for essay writing and more. The Continue Reading …
Who Empowers Us to Speak Up?
Speak Up Like the Daddy Mack of Eloquence MLK Jr.'s writing gets me thinking about how to help my students speak up about what they know and see to be true in this world. The brutal stuff. The beautiful stuff that exists alongside the brutal stuff. King's the Daddy Mack of eloquence--whatever you think of him, it's hard to discredit that bit. His writing, and his speeches, speak up in ways that land sound bites on t-shirts, yes, but they also unmask how our institutions and attitudes systematically undermine and destroy our humanity. He puts the painful and critical ingredients of social justice into phrasing so musical, so clear, so rich with common references, that it's hard not to listen. That's a marker of great writing-- even if you didn't want to, something makes you listen. The reach of good writing is farther than you think To tune MLK Jr out is like tearing your eyes away from a TV where a major accident is being reported-- hard, near impossible. I want his cadences to get into my students-- of every color and creed-- by osmosis, repetition, sustained exposure. I want them to write better despite themselves. This blog focuses on how the practice of good, clear writing, by a writer who is aware of his or her values and character, can get you into (your dream) college, but the reach of good writing is and should be much bigger and bolder than just that. Punch above your weight It's true what they say: silence is not just the opposite of speech. The truth might move at light-speed when it's finally set free, but to speak up, we first have to slough off the weight of a thousand slumbering elephants in our shared room. They are in the classroom, too, those heavy taboos that stop humane progress. My dream, my prayer, my practice, is that every child in every school be empowered to punch way above his or her weight, to speak up with voices that cannot be ignored because the writing is too damn good, and to send the elephants back to Continue Reading …