Pity the Poor Readers

Within a month or so a great sigh of relief will go up from all the high school seniors who have applied early to college. For some kids that sigh went up yesterday.These kids will feel wonderfully ‘done,’ having filled out every line on every application, in many cases using the electronic Common App that has made life so much easier in that it allows students to enter only once the information that is then disseminated to all the schools to which they seek admission.Likely this had been the first time in their lives that they have struggled to give an account of themselves in the dread 500-word essay that most schools require.As both an old teacher and someone engaged in the writing game over many years, I have been asked to look at many such essays, so I know what effort is involved for the poor kids who have to rummage through a whole mental attic for the memory of that experience, or person, or core belief that has made the difference for them.I feel for them.I feel too for the parents who, if they have told their seniors once have told them a thousand times to just sit down and WRITE the darn thing.And mostly I feel for the people in the nation’s college Admissions Offices, who, after reading these essays all day long at work must then take their hunched shoulders and their strained eyes home and read many more of them at night.They will be doing this for the next six or eight weeks with the Early Action and Early Decision kids, and again in a few months when the blizzard of Regular Admission applications start arriving.What a job for all concerned are these college essays!And yet what a fine exercise it is for young people to be writing them. To have to tell what has moved you, steered you, made you weak in the knees with fear or hope or unbounded joy.High school seniors may think they will do this only once and can then walk away, in that slam-the-book-shut, cap-the-pen sort of way but it isn’t so. All our lives, in all the best and most memorable conversations we have, we are saying what we believe.We may not always wish to be saying these things but we are saying them just the same. ‘Who we are’ shouts loud over our heads all the time, as that sage of Concord Ralph Waldo Emerson once remarked.And so we do well to bring this ‘Who am I?’ question into conscious awareness, at regular intervals even.I hold in my lap here three college essays I have found in my files and am moved all over again by their opening sentences:“As I look back over 17 years of family parties and crowded holiday tables…” begins one. Begins another, “Walk through any high school and you will hear some kid shouting this insult:...” Opens a third, “Through a sky blue screen door, we passed from the bright sun of a mid-summer day onto the back porch of my Great-Grandmother’s house….”The authors of these sentences were all high school seniors mightily sweating the college essay, and yet in the end all three managed to write something simple and heartfelt.I am so glad I still have copies of them, because they remind me that once you sit to the task, it isn’t that hard at all to speak your truth.Still, I want to say God bless the kids doing who are trying to do that now.And also the families who support them.And MOSTLY the poor professionals who will spend many hours, days and weeks reading what they have written.  

Power of the Pen

If the number of people reading these posts about the college essay is any indication it looks like I'm meant to say a little more on the topic of writing. I see that my recent bungled job of caring for a little boy might offer instruction for us all: In spite of his having written me THREE laboriously hand-lettered notes, I still did not know that the child had been standing outside our bedroom door since 4am hoping to get our attention.His first note says "When Can I get up? From Edward to TT" (I'm TT.) You can click on the word 'first' to see some truly inventive spelling. The second note, presumably written some 30 or 45 minutes later, reads "What time is it? To TT from Edward." (This one really made me groan: how could we have forgotten yet again to put a clock in the back room where he was sleeping?) At home with his parents, he is told he can't get up until 6. Good boy that he is, he assumed that rule held here at his grandparents' house.) And the third and final note, above, as anyone can plainly read - ha ha OK not really eh? - says, "I am waiting patiently. Can you pick up the other notes?" again with the piteous ending "To TT from Edward."You must admit: this is some good straightforward writing, framed in three simple 'asks'. No adverbs except the word 'patiently.' No flourishes.Why can't everyone write this way? That's what Plymouth State Professor of Finance and Economics David Talbot wonders who said this two days ago:

Your piece could not be more timely. I am sending it to my 16 students over here in Ireland. They write essays each week for their Critical Thinking class. I am constantly editing their excessive adverbs to provide clarity and strength in their writing. I hope it helps to hear it from a pro.

But pity the poor high school seniors struggling to write that Essay on Anything for their college application! Can they even help it? I'm convinced they go on filling the page with platitudes because they're nervous; because somewhere along the line they got the idea that it's good practice to write in an inflated manner. In fact an actual professional in the field tells me she too feels merciful toward them. "Susie" at collegedirection.org wrote:

As a private college counselor, I couldn’t agree with you more. The college essays are my favorite part of the college admission process. However, I do think that the majority of students will write the best essays they can if they have someone to talk with them about possible topics that they might not even have considered. Too often they are focused on what they think a college admissions committee would like to hear and not what they would like to tell them. I love the essays that students write, especially when they are enthusiastic about what they have to say.

Here's to the merciful Susie, I say. Some people, like young Edward, are willing to go on record as soon as they can hold a pencil and spelling be damned.The rest of us need kindness and encouragement and often many many years before we dare speak in our own true if croaky voices.