Panic Season
Is the pressure to stand out shutting your high school senior down? Start small.
Since everyone is trying so hard to stand out with their college essays, what if I wrote mine as flat and dull as possible? On purpose.
When a student stayed after my college essay writing workshop to ask this question, the first response that popped into my head was, “How would anyone be able to tell?”
Having read hundreds of rough drafts over the years, I could easily see how what this rising senior imagined as an out-of-the-box idea for their college essay would be mistaken by admissions officers as another piece of boring writing.
Students enter my summer workshops with the daunting expectation of writing an essay like “nothing anyone has ever seen before.” This hyper-focus on the end product too often shuts students down before they write a word.
Unfortunately, the pressure to write a college essay that “stands out” is baked into the process. It’s simple for me to tell students that an effective college essay doesn’t list accomplishments but tells a personal story. What’s hard is asking them to open a window into their unique character in 650 words.
Writing personal narratives is already vulnerable before you add in all the stress of college admissions. I often share with my students that whenever I hand over a first draft to friends or editors, it feels like I’m saying, “Here is my heart. Now tell me what’s wrong with it.” One way students avoid the discomfort of describing themselves on the page is by thinking up high-level conceits that will WOW admissions officers before doing the work to find their story.
I can also relate to the pressure of worrying about the end product before writing a word. Have I really been so busy teaching college essay workshops and private coaching that I haven’t had time to work on College Essay KJ?
Or is the worry that, as a writing instructor, everything I write here must “stand out” shutting me down?
Most seniors I work with this time of year are polishing their personal statements and tackling supplemental essays. The others are in panic mode (or their parents are!) because they haven’t finished a draft or even started their college essay.
My best advice for high school seniors who have entered panic season is this:
Start with the left-corner brick.
It is a paraphrase of the advice author Robert Pirsig gives in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to a student in his college rhetoric course. She is having difficulty getting started when capturing big things on the page.
He suggests she narrows her focus; instead of taking on an essay about the whole of the United States, she should try to write about her town of Bozeman, Montana. When the girl remains stuck, an exasperated Pirsig tells her to,
Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.
The girl returned later with a lengthy and outstanding piece. Once she focused on her essay brick by brick, the words started to come, and she couldn’t stop writing.
Years ago, when I was stuck, I wrote “Start with the left-corner brick” on an index card. I hang a corkboard above my desk wherever I go and pin that old index card to the upper left-hand corner.
A simple but effective solution to the big ask of the college essay is to start small. Brainstorming exercises such as “Listing” and “I Remember” help students get out of their heads by putting something down on the page.
Mining memories for specific details that show what makes you and your experience completely different from any other person’s similar experience is the first step to writing an essay like “nothing anyone has ever seen before.”
First, you have to write what’s true. Then you can make it good.