Everyone wants to be involved with college essays, or at least, it seems like everyone wanted to have a part in mine. For the past three months, I’ve had a constant chorus of family and friends giving me suggestions and advice.
“The essay is the biggest part of your application! Don’t blow it!”
“Include only the most important details!”
“It has to be sob story so you can get in!”
The advice was overwhelming and every draft I wrote seemed empty and just plain bad. I was trying to answer the Common App prompt, “Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.” However, unwanted advice kept ringing in my ears. What if I didn’t want to write an essay about tragic events? What if I didn’t want that 500-word essay to define me that way? What if including just the important details didn’t work?
What was I going to do? Ignore everyone’s advice.
I scrapped everything I had written and started over. New subject. New prompt. No advice. I locked myself in my room with a pack of Red Vines and put on my iPod’s essay writing playlist. Normally, I extensively research and plan out my essays before I start writing. This time, I ignored all pre-writing exercises and just wrote all my thoughts on paper. At the end of a sixty-song playlist, a pile of crumpled paper decorated my desk. However, I finally had a workable rough draft that was all my own.
So. Now I had to have it edited. But by whom? My list was pretty short: my mom, my best friend, a family friend, and my English teacher. I chose my team of editors because they would know if my essay really captured who I was. Sharing my essay felt like sharing a piece of my soul. However, when I got said soul-essay back, it was splattered in red pen marks. Grammatical errors and places where I could tighten word choice were circled, as well as places that particularly stood out. Most importantly when the edits were done, my essay was still mine. When I finally felt comfortable with my work, I got into a staring contest with the “Upload Document” button, until I finally uploaded my finished essay. Submitting my essay was nerve-wracking, but I know it conveys who I am, and that’s the best part.