10 minute training exercise.
Here is the question, recently posted on quora.com
What should I write my college essay about?
Before you read what follows, get a stopwatch. Give yourself 10 minutes. Answer it. I dare you.
My 10 minute response is below. I dare you not to read it before you do yours Any takers?
If so, then you have just demonstrated you are the kind of person who will stand out at virtually any college or university. This may, of course, not be a good thing. Most want to fit in.
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| still from film "Apocalypse Now |
Apocalypse Now. Statue of Liberty, Breasts.
Got your attention? Good. These fragments I have shored against my ruin (you get points if you know the reference).
Since I am involved with some films about education right now, let me use this trope. I have used it in speeches on the topic you raise. Most people approach the essay topic as though it were a pitch for a major motion picture. Starring you, directed by you, written by you and yes, produced by your parents. The problem with this grand approach is that it is almost always wrong. In the amount of space you have, you cannot create a Titanic narrative. You can tell me some stuff, but abstractions are the verbal equivalent of a long shot in cinema. They may help set a scene at some generic tropical beach with a coconut tree and a Friday nearby, but as drama they will fail and fail in ways that mean you end the one shot you’ve got sounding like everyone else involved in telling (not showing) a grand narrative that is your life story.
Think of it this way. Admissions people read your essay in a matter of a minute or two. Longer if it is great or laughably bad, but like editors for magazines that get thousands of literary submissions for every issue, the readers have learned to think fast and slow (Kahnemans's term from his book).
So telling us of Europe or your lifelong musical trauma as a result of a Tiger mom, or your winning song at a school competition as a result of your Tiger Dad or some abstraction or another does not usually work. There are always exceptions, but not many.
So what is the verbal equivalent of a two minute film? A commercial or a trailer or a music video. Or, if you are just a bit more cynical, a sound bite sized story on TMZ. In all these cases the key, please forgive me, is the car chase. Cut to the chase. Get us into detail. The slap to the face, the pie scene, the PSY scene, the little green men who set up a city on the tines of your fork, the invisible cities that Calvino creates in one page, the red fox that just ran across my open green in front of my house and headed for the woods. Not big bad wolves but little foxes. Fairy tales? By all means, but not a how to: I saved a postage stamp sized part of the world with a one week service project. Let them see you sweat. Nike sells this way. Or see if you are talented enough to dream a tear from someone who has read 50,000 essays. Umberto Eco's lists an interview with a body part. A heart that isn't. A mind made up of metaphors.
Do you see? Have you followed? If not, then I have failed. But I tried to give you a voice. If you could not connect, it is thus. (Who on god's earth uses this word? You?) We speak different languages. I am not able to convince you that my voice is interesting (the dullest and flattest earth of a word in admission).
I have said in many articles to take a risk. Will you? Are you ready to jump out a plane with a camera attached to your head and capture the sound of the air? Can you make this music? I don't know. I mostly can't. It's hard. But if you can sing or film or appeal to the realm of the senses then you have done it. Brought us back to the world we live in. Except it is your world. Let us crawl inside for a minute.
Maybe it will be a place we think others will want to crawl in too. Then you will be sharing a room with a view other than yours and they will too. This was written with my flat fat foot pressed down as hard as I could. I have places to go and people to see. I have a movie premiere in a few hours. But the deluging onwardness of all this is a hint. Get words down. Stop staring at a blank page. Do not be a mute inglorious Milton. Start writing. Then edit. Keep your eyes wide open. Or wide shut. You choose, but just do it. Ah yes, the cliché. What a whimper instead of bang. Now it's your turn.
This took 10 minutes to write. It might be a start. For me. Every admission book says show don’t tell. Few do.
Got your attention? Good. These fragments I have shored against my ruin (you get points if you know the reference).
Since I am involved with some films about education right now, let me use this trope. I have used it in speeches on the topic you raise. Most people approach the essay topic as though it were a pitch for a major motion picture. Starring you, directed by you, written by you and yes, produced by your parents. The problem with this grand approach is that it is almost always wrong. In the amount of space you have, you cannot create a Titanic narrative. You can tell me some stuff, but abstractions are the verbal equivalent of a long shot in cinema. They may help set a scene at some generic tropical beach with a coconut tree and a Friday nearby, but as drama they will fail and fail in ways that mean you end the one shot you’ve got sounding like everyone else involved in telling (not showing) a grand narrative that is your life story.
Think of it this way. Admissions people read your essay in a matter of a minute or two. Longer if it is great or laughably bad, but like editors for magazines that get thousands of literary submissions for every issue, the readers have learned to think fast and slow (Kahnemans's term from his book).
So telling us of Europe or your lifelong musical trauma as a result of a Tiger mom, or your winning song at a school competition as a result of your Tiger Dad or some abstraction or another does not usually work. There are always exceptions, but not many.
 |
| TS Eliot quote |
So what is the verbal equivalent of a two minute film? A commercial or a trailer or a music video. Or, if you are just a bit more cynical, a sound bite sized story on TMZ. In all these cases the key, please forgive me, is the car chase. Cut to the chase. Get us into detail. The slap to the face, the pie scene, the PSY scene, the little green men who set up a city on the tines of your fork, the invisible cities that Calvino creates in one page, the red fox that just ran across my open green in front of my house and headed for the woods. Not big bad wolves but little foxes. Fairy tales? By all means, but not a how to: I saved a postage stamp sized part of the world with a one week service project. Let them see you sweat. Nike sells this way. Or see if you are talented enough to dream a tear from someone who has read 50,000 essays. Umberto Eco's lists an interview with a body part. A heart that isn't. A mind made up of metaphors.
Do you see? Have you followed? If not, then I have failed. But I tried to give you a voice. If you could not connect, it is thus. (Who on god's earth uses this word? You?) We speak different languages. I am not able to convince you that my voice is interesting (the dullest and flattest earth of a word in admission).
 |
| Marathon, Beirut |
I have said in many articles to take a risk. Will you? Are you ready to jump out a plane with a camera attached to your head and capture the sound of the air? Can you make this music? I don't know. I mostly can't. It's hard. But if you can sing or film or appeal to the realm of the senses then you have done it. Brought us back to the world we live in. Except it is your world. Let us crawl inside for a minute.
Maybe it will be a place we think others will want to crawl in too. Then you will be sharing a room with a view other than yours and they will too. This was written with my flat fat foot pressed down as hard as I could. I have places to go and people to see. I have a movie premiere in a few hours. But the deluging onwardness of all this is a hint. Get words down. Stop staring at a blank page. Do not be a mute inglorious Milton. Start writing. Then edit. Keep your eyes wide open. Or wide shut. You choose, but just do it. Ah yes, the cliché. What a whimper instead of bang. Now it's your turn.
This took 10 minutes to write. It might be a start. For me. Every admission book says show don’t tell. Few do.
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