Assignment 1: Commissioned Essay

 The best photo I've ever taken. I call it "Senior Year"

The reason I've asked you to come up with a list of "30 Things About Me" is because we are going to use it as a source of inspiration for your first reflective essay.  As a group, we are going to go over these lists and suggest possible directions for each of you.  This might sound odd, but basically you are going to be commissioned to write an essay for the rest of the class  -  or more simply forced to write what other people want.   

The reason: sometimes it's easier to be told what to write instead of being left to your own devices.  Things to focus on:

• Writing for an audience.  
• Connecting the unconscious dots.
• What I find interesting about "me" might not be what people are most interested in.

Consider this as a shopping list of ingredients that compose your life.  The class will pick out a few of the ingredients which you will have to add to your own anecdotal cookie dough.  Hopefully, you end up with a surprising batch of delicious cookies, even if you don't like raisins.  I hope that makes sense. 

I hope to get you writing as many essays as possible, and you might even find that you discover your winning essay accidentally.  I don't think you can really write "too many" college essays, and as you write you will often find that a certain shoe suddenly fits.  Between now and next fall, you need to produce something you are confident and happy with, and something that won't put admissions officers to sleep.  Keep in mind that these people read (i.e. skim) thousands of essays, and if we can't hook them with something honest, unique, and non-nonsensical by the end of the first few sentences.... your essay might end up in an uncertain pile.

The act of writing a college essay can often be a solitary endeavor where putting pen to paper is stressful.  What do I write?  And then, who do I show it to?  In my experience, sometimes my best writing came when I was told what to write, and when I knew it would be shared with more than just one person.  So, for this semester, try and treat this class a "writer's workshop."  Your participation, feedback, and essays will graded in line with these steps:

• Step 1: Your list.  This list should be interesting, listing 30 different and unique anecdotes/facts/beliefs etc. that define you as a person.  These have to be numbered, so we can make suggestions as to which numbers might add up to create a good thematic essay.  Hopefully they are more than a short statement.
• Step 2: Discussion. During in-class discussion, please assist your peers and contribute ideas on how to structure and spin a good narrative.
• Step 3: Outline.  Based on the feedback in class, you come up with a structure and some ideas in a brainstorm.
• Step 4: Execution.  You post your essays, and each class we schedule three to be work-shopped.  Everyone has to offer 3 things they liked and three things that "aren't working."  The idea is to offer "constructive feedback" and not "criticism."
• Step 5: produce a final draft that has been polished after a rigorous critique.

My goal is to help you produce not just a good essay, but maybe a writing sample that you feel is your BEST.  As well, as a teacher, I'd like to get to know you all better.  Remember this rule:

• The goal of a college essay is to get the admissions officer thinking: "I'd like to meet this person. This person is ready for college." 

An interesting article from Princeton's Dean of Admissions

http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/24/guidance-office-princeton-answers-1/

She answers "just how important is a college essay?"

Good College Essay - Seewan

I finally got it.

                  I finally figured out why female superheroes tend to be not as romantic. Spiderman has Mary Janes, and Superman has Lois Lane. But what about Wonderwoman? Batgirl?

                  When people think of the word “hero”, it usually elicits an image of burly man with masks and capes or with yellow jumpers and fire hose. Or sometimes, it recalls an image of ancient historical figures whose works and feats seem too far away from the lives of ordinary people. However, to me, that word elicits an image of Jain Kim, a petite girl with a large smile.

                  I like to say that I’ve always been full of passion and confidence, but in fact, that hasn’t always been the case. I wasn’t shy, but rather insecure, preferring an one-way debate with curly letters in books to clashing with my peers. A boyfriend? That was a fairy tale. I was too baby-faced, too content, and perhaps even complacent to think of such matter. The stuffed dolphin that kept its place on my bed for more than ten years was enough for me. Maybe in my dreams after all the lights are off, but not in this real side of the world.

                  Naturally, I had no intention of “competing” when I first took up climbing. It was in the urge of my mother who worried about my seemingly feeble stature and lack of exercise that I went to the nearby climbing center. (I broke my glasses twice as I tried to play in a basketball game.) When the trainer pointed to the wall that I’d eventually be climbing, I turned to mom and rasped,

                  “Mom, you’re serious? With my height?”

                  The wall was 15 meters high, but certainly comparable to Mt. Everest. It was not even perpendicular, slanting at an awkward angle that reminded me of those action movies with secret agents. And all I had to prevent me from falling into the doom was a rope thinner than my own thumb and a safety harness with Velcro that did not seem too sturdy. Me? Climb that? No way.

                  But only a couple of feet away, there Jain was, climbing up and down the wall as if she was bitten by a radioactive spider. And she was a good two inches shorter! On my way home, I grumbled to my mother, accusing her of trying to kill her own daughter, but deep inside, my thoughts were filled with that tiny Spiderwoman.

                  I was inevitably drawn back to the facility, day after day, staring at her feats with awe while my own climbing made tangible improvements. It wasn’t until I asked the manager her whereabouts that I learned that she was ranked first in the world and that she had gone to Italy to compete.

                  The first in the world. It was like finding out that my next door neighbor was a Nobel Prize Laureate or an Oscar Winning actress. Suddenly, the walls of my world started to shake apart. I’ve had numerous people who shaped my life: my brother brought me to the world of science, my mother to self-reliance. But it was this tiny girl with beautiful smile that let me see how tiny my world was. Now was time for me to take up my own share of medals in domestic competitions. Dreams were no longer limited to beds. They started to invade the areas of reality.

                  One day, I finally gathered up enough courage to go up and ask Jain a question that I had kept in my mind for long.

                  “Why are you so passionate about climbing?”

                After all, there’s not much fame or money involved in this fringe sport; I’d never be able to play baseball with Alex Rodriguez, will I?

                “Because it’s there.” She replied.

                Someone needs to reach the top. Someone needs to travel to Mars, and someone needs to cure the cancer. So, why not me? Why don’t I go for it?

                “Er…. Do you have a boyfriend?”

                She broke into a hearty laughter and shook her head.

                “I don’t have time for that.”

                See? I figured it out.

Good College Essay Example - Heeku

  “You betrayed me on that snowy mountainside! Your reasoning was that my blind belief in destiny was evil! I see your point now, actually! But you know what, Irithdelle ElFalan? By betraying me and letting yourself slay innocent humans of the north, by seizing the HawkEye with force and using it for your personal enjoyment, you turned evil yourself! Evil! Evil!”

I cough as he finally lets me go—my main character, Jeicale Riverstone. My already husky voice is now croaky from shouting too much. Jeicale is furious at Irithdelle. So am I. I lie back on my chair, rub my bloodshot eyes, push my laptop away, and gratefully play Maksim Mrvica’s “Exodus,” a piece I often listen to after writing tense scenes. It feels even more special this time because this scene is the climax of my first full-length, 600-page English novel, The Lost Heroine.

Seven years ago, as a complete sponge inspired by excellently-read English audio books, I began to write without planning a childishly-structured story titled The Magical Mansion, in which a desperate young kid unsatisfied with reality breaks away into a magical mansion awash with fantastic adventure. Though full of embarrassingly cliché characters and shameless homage to Harry Potter spells, The Magical Mansion still has meaning, which can be found in the clumsy opening sentences of the story: “I will write a story about a magical mansion from now on. You have to listen carefully. The main character is me.”

On and on I wrote short stories in English, persistently, totaling sixteen in the end. Yet none but the first has the actual me as its protagonist. Being my first story, written by an English novice who could barely write, The Magical Mansion has multiple errors and drawbacks and is easily the plainest of all. Yet in reading over the story and seeing that the protagonist found comfort in a fantasy world and not in reality, I saw that the story was actually about my desire to escape from the villains of reality.

Back then I used to have a black and white view of the world, one in which there were either heroes or there were villains. My alcoholic father, the man who used to tie me to a swing to prevent me from looking into ant holes, was the major villain. My mother, the woman who always rescued me from my father and cuddled me in her arms, was the ultimate hero.

Naturally, my earliest stories are strictly designed so that the bad guys get thoroughly beaten up by the good guys. Omnipotent, I achieved in my stories what was impossible in the real world. Creating my own worlds was one way for me to cope with reality, by being in a place where my father the bad, bad villain could not interfere. Both worlds, the one inside and the one outside, were black and white.

Slowly, though, they grayed. My later short stories and novels no longer have flat, “hero-or-villain” characters. Irithdelle, for one, is neither a hero nor a villain. Or, she could still be both. In the book she betrays Jeicale and his gang Lunarelle because she thinks his blind adherence to destiny is wrong and evil. However, she lets herself become evil as well, abusing her magical powers to make humans obey and fall to her cause. Not unlike her, many of my relatively recent characters are flexible, versatile, and multifaceted.

This change—no, metamorphosis—took place because the originally dichotomous worldview I had been sticking onto made sense no more. I had begun to see the gray in people as well. Yes; the graying sensation was not limited to my imaginary world. The real world was a feast of colors. My once black father, too, turned gray and then blossomed into a parade of rich, vibrant colors. Actually, it had been the black shades on my eyes, not an inherent blackness of my father, that had forced me to see him in black. And when I took off the shades, our relationship spurted from adversity to a more normalized father-son status. Then it bettered, with smiles, jokes, and, above all, mutual understanding. The place I had dubbed hell was all of a sudden home again.

I entered high school filled with these new spirits, and found myself capable of conversing with a wider group of people in a school brimming with students with unparalleled individuality. The Lost Heroine began there. Naturally, the plot was richer, longer, and smarter, for I put together the tale by drawing elements out of real life—people, happenings, contexts. The world was a bigger and more colorful place for me now. It wasn’t only my characters that had turned gray.

I put my laptop on my lap again and erase the last three sentences I just wrote. Jeicale doesn’t have to tell the readers Irithdelle is evil; her being multifaceted has already been established. I will convey something else through him. I start yelling again, and so does Jeicale: “Friendship, Irithdelle, is more valuable than anything else in this world, and you defied it!” No. It is too plain. I erase. It goes on.

College Applications: 50 Essays That Worked

Like I said before, this book "might" help you out and/or put you in the mood to produce or one-up.  Not all essays are actually that good and I think that's a good thing.

I'd like to focus on "off beat" essays, and I found a sample from the book at the following link:

Off-Beat Essays

You can click on Alexis Spero's essay further down in the introduction.  I'd like you guys to write an "off beat" essay for next class (the next class we workshop).

Amy Tan - "Fish Cheeks"

I tip my hat to Mr. Menard for suggesting this one.  You may know of Amy Tan. She's almost as impressive as E.B. White, and her essay, Fish Cheeks, is probably more useful to you.  It's 503 words, and it says a lot.  It's fun, it's fast, it's simple, and yet really dynamic. And when I googled it I found a version of it with some good questions/exercises below. 

So do read it, and do think about it. 

Fish Cheeks

By Amy Tan

~

Reading in order to write

As I've said before, I think the act of reading is key to improving your writing.  It's like taking the right kind of gun powder and carefully pouring it down the barrel of your musket... until you are ready to take aim and shoot at your chosen target with utmost confidence.  IF you read the right stuff you'll find your fingers hitting the keyboard with a bit more ease.  I also think it is best not to wait.  Write as soon as you finish reading.  Challenge yourself to write something just as good (if not better) than that thing you just read. 

The book I recently signed out from the library, called "College Essays That Worked," has advice from admissions officers in it.  One of them says every student should read a few E.B. White essays before they get started.  If you don't know who E.B. White is, then you didn't cry as a child when Charlotte the spider had to say goodbye to her best friend Wilbur, the pig, in "Charlotte's Web."  Mandatory reading for Canadian school children. 

I googled and found several essays he wrote for the New Yorker during the 40's and 50's.  He has a style of writing that makes use of a lot of synaethesia in an emotional way.  He definitely shows without telling.  His sentences roll along cadently, rife with images and sparkles.

What the critics say on Amazon about an anthology of his essays:
 
"What I like about White's essays is that they can be counted on to be insightful, amusing and well-written. White approaches an essay like a pleasant conversation....Anything and everything is food for thought, although you can be sure that White will broaden the scope of his topics to include the world at large. New York, he concludes, is a concentrated version of many worlds, "...bringing to a single arena the gladiator, the evangelist, the promoter, the actor, the trader, and the merchant."


"Best of all, White's insightful commentary does not require intense concentration or endless analysis to get the gist of what he is trying to say. You can sit back and relax when you pick up a book of his essays, knowing you won't have to grapple with unfamiliar or awkward language. This is not to imply that you won't find yourself thinking about what he has to say. It's just that his approach is so matter-of- fact, easy going and accessible that you feel you've been invited to tea or are taking a leisurely stroll as the essay unfolds. I read White's essays the way some people read mysteries or romance novels. They are entertaining without being too demanding, and are a great way to set day-to-day concerns aside. Treat yourself to a good read."

"White has got to be one of the finest writers I've ever read, expressing in 5 graceful words what it takes others paragraphs to do. What other essayist expresses his thoughts and ours so unself-consciously, so economically and, yes, so magnificently? None that I have come across.This collection contains a mixture of period pieces from his years at the New Yorker magazine, including "Here is New York," and perceptive pieces on everyday events of life, such as "What Do Our Hearts Treasure?" Each essay brings a smart outlook toward life, an incredible ability to describe ordinary events vividly, and the melancholy and sentimental perspective that dominated White's life. This is undoubtedly the finest collection of American essays in the twentieth century."

 I encourage you to read a few of his famous ones.

E.B. White
This is New York (1949) Full Essay / Excerpts
Once More to the Lake (1941)
Farewell My Lovely (1936)


Note:  While digging around on the internet to find EB White's essays (which you are actually supposed to pay to read), I came across "a list of 7 things all writers should know" written by the one and only Kurt Vonnegut.   If you don't know who he is, you should.  He's also "one of the greats."  And this great put on his list that every writer should read EB White.  Here is Mr. Vonnegut telling it like it is: