Mirror Turn Lamp
What do you want to shine forth with your college essay?
A story personal essay takes a mirror and turns it into a lamp.
My students hear me say these words all the time when we work to identify the “What?” and “Why?” of the story they want to tell in their college essays.
WHAT? = Plot/What is Happening
WHY? = Significance or “So, What?”
Why is the story important?
What does the window into your character reveal?
What is your mirror turn lamp? What will you shine forth?
Years ago, I was thrilled to hear author David Shields speak at a conference while earning my MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Fairleigh Dickinson University. My favorite kind of reading is one where I “learn cool facts and stuff” while engaging in a personal story.
His book The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll Be Dead does precisely that by chronicling how the human body develops as we grow and then our inevitable decline into oblivion interwoven with Shields’ life-long personal conflict with his father, who, even at 97, is seemingly stronger, healthier, and more optimistic than him.
“A strong personal essay takes a mirror and turns it into a lamp” are the words I remember hearing Shields say, and they informed the motto for my writing practice: “What do you want to shine forth with your story?”
Mirror turn lamp is especially resonant when thinking about what you want your college essay to shine forth to admissions officers about your personal character.
Like a game of literary telephone, my motto came from David Shields, and he got the words “mirror turn lamp” from William Butler Yeats, widely considered to be one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, who wrote:
It must go further still; that soul must become its own betrayer, its own deliverer, the one activity, the mirror turn lamp.
In an article in The Daily, the student newspaper of the University of Washington, David Shields cites Yeats’ words when describing self-reflection as a way to consider larger themes of the human experience.
“There’s a wonderful line of William Butler Yeats who calls it, ‘Mirror turn lamp,’” Shields said. “Basically, reflection to me is that you shine a mirror on yourself with such blazing light, such rigor, with such candor that it becomes illumination for the reader.”
For Shields, self-reflection is an ongoing process.
“To be human is to be conscious, and to be conscious is to reflect upon yourself,” Shields said. “We know that we will die and we can create, consciously, works of art, and that we are self-aware, and therefore the burden is on the writer to transform self-reflexivity, which is a given, into revelation of the human condition for the reader.”
For me, the college essay is often a student’s first experience with self-reflection through personal writing. I love witnessing my students become adept at thinking and writing about their life stories.
David Shields interpreted mirror turn lamp as shining a blazing light of self-reflection so brightly on oneself that it becomes “illumination for the reader.”
I’ve always thought of mirror turn lamp as taking something personal living in your mirrored reflection and shining that part of you out for the world to see.
Thinking about the story you want to tell with your college essay …
What does “mirror turn lamp” mean to you?
Feel free to comment or message me with your answer!