![\"a](\"https:\/\/images.unsplash.com\/photo-1707175834439-5cd610af6ba4?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxNXx8aXZ5JTIwY292ZXJlZCUyMGJ1aWxkaW5nfGVufDB8fHx8MTcxMDc2ODY2Mnww&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&q=80&w=1080\")
<\/figure>Over the course of the months we worked together, this student repeatedly rose to the challenge of self-reflection, linguistic analysis and word craft that a successful application essay demands. <\/p>
For those of you who\u2019ve never had the pleasure, application essay questions ask young people to write about a person who\u2019s influenced them and why, a mistake and what they\u2019ve learned from it, an achievement of which they are most proud, etc. <\/p>
Sound easy? <\/p><\/div>
You sit down and craft an artful self-narrative that demonstrates your excellent personality, exemplary qualities and (incidentally) literary sophistication in under 500 words. At age 13. <\/p>
Week after week, my student and I tackled noun phrase repetition and adverb placement; that was the easy part. <\/p>
Mulling over what to write about and what it meant<\/em> was the hard part.<\/p> How many of us ask of our memories and relationships: why this? Why them? What does this say about me?<\/p> Most, I suspect, do as I do and let fragments flutter and flirt through my brain without pinning them down. It\u2019s time-consuming to think so much. It requires effort. There lurks, always, a threat the examined memory might reveal something about us, or another, that we meant not to see. <\/p> The application essay process is a clever meta-filter whose aim is to observe who rises to the challenge. The end product is successful insofar as it demonstrates a student\u2019s commitment to the task\u2019s critical and analytical process. Which is, in itself, a proxy for the applicant\u2019s potential. <\/p> At 13, it is tough to distinguish oneself by what I\u2019ve done<\/em> unless a student has achieved atomic fusion in their garage, or discovered a new subatomic particle, in which case, they are unlikely to be asked to write application essays. <\/p> To chronical past triumphs is not the point of an essay. To sift through one\u2019s life, identify turning points and articulate their meaning, is. <\/p> One\u2019s own experience feels axiomatic, inevitable. A student who can take an axiom, turn it around, prise it apart and discuss its inner workings has a rare capacity for intellectual development. <\/p> Their brain is future proof. <\/p><\/div> Social, technological and environmental changes are accelerating. The future will be wind in the hair of those who can only answer the stated question.<\/p> At the wheel, or at least safely onboard the craft, will be those who learned to engage with the unwritten interrogatives underlying that question. <\/p> Learning to write a powerful essay is a fantastic learning exercise \u2014 whether or not a student is applying for anything.<\/p> One of the central tenets of how I teach writing is that the finished product is not the goal, ipso facto. The most successful essay, article or story is the one that shows the most thought, growth and effort, not the one that most nearly meets an arbitrary standard of correctness. <\/p> \u2018Correct\u2019 is limited and specific, but knowing how to think and communicate is infinite and timeless. <\/p> <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Writing in an uncertain world<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142721144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"woman](\"https:\/\/images.unsplash.com\/photo-1488632398184-7d12d01a1702?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw4OXx8cmVmbGVjdGlvbnxlbnwwfHx8fDE3MTA3NjkzNzF8MA&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&q=80&w=1080\")
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