The words you never want to hear from your doctor, car mechanic, or in my case, your psychic.

            She opened her eyes and straightened up, eying me like she was reevaluating her original impression. “I’ve ever done a reading for someone with as many… how do I describe it?…As many lifetimes… in positions of power. Like royalty.”

               This was my first time visiting a psychic, although I’ve believed in reincarnation my whole life. As someone who is usually left to defend my beliefs to those who raise their eyebrows, I’m quick to denounce psychics, claiming they’re usually just charlatans out for your money. But something about Jennifer intrigued me when I first met her. She was self conscious of her profession, mirroring my acceptance that we were both members of a minority in this half of the globe.

               “There was one high up in Egypt… ancient Egypt. That one didn’t end well.” She grinned at me sheepishly. “I know it’s sort of grim, but are you interested in hearing a little on how you passed?” She slumped again, eyes closed in concentration. Twenty-six twists of her necklace later she rejoined me. “The one in Egypt you were hit in the back with… a weapon I don’t recognize, like a spear, but different. It went through your back, right about here,” she reached forward and brushed my collarbone. Goosebumps ran up my spine.  I have a scar-like birthmark where she touched, hidden by my shirt.

                 I spent an hour inhaling every word she spoke, wanting to believe everything she was telling me, but wary of being taken advantage of. I learned that my fear of cars stems from my most recent life, and that the American South will resonate deeply within me, because I “carry a lot of baggage from down there.”  I also realized that who I am is deeply affected by who I was. My experiences in past lives have left impressions that define me, for good or bad.  My history as a ruler gives me my dignity, and lent me the self confidence I needed to become Student Body President. My “past” in the South adds to my rebellious side; I’m hard-headed and willing to fight for what I believe in.  Lives in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Central America give me a sense of curiosity about the world that I hope will never fade. Jennifer called me a “product of extremes”; I’ve reached a balance that allows me to enjoy my present life while learning from hard times behind me.

               In my Psychology class, we studied the issue of how personality is determined: nature (genetically inherited treats) or nurture (the effect of environment and peers).  But if Eastern religions are correct, maybe a part of us is determined by experiences farther back than birth. Jennifer’s words come back to me: “You can tap into your past lives and think ‘I have that royal background to me.’ You know what I mean? You can pull from that.”

                           -Tessie Murphy

            The analogy to writing struck me immediately. Ray Bradbury described the writing process as proceeding from a “mulch,” his word for the gathering of materials that he “dumped” into his brain—comic books, toys, news articles, conversations, observations—that interact until they produce the germ of an idea.  Gathering is the act of first acquiring those specifics.  Later will come the generalizations and observations that specifics produce, but initially, students need to gather the basic materials that will pin down their arguments, give flesh to their descriptions, provide pictures for their narratives.

          In Fact and Artifact: Writing Nonfiction, Lynn Z. Bloom similarly argues that before we can write, we must first have a collection of ideas and materials, no matter their relation to each other: “You assemble scraps of description such as appearances, actions, moods, details of setting or clothing.  You provide bits of relevant historical information about the subject’s ancestry, career, past life, typical milieus.  You might intersperse snatches of dialogue among these to illustrate a relationship, activity, or state of mind.  Each piece of information is connotative and evokes in the reader a reaction to the larger unit that it suggests, like thinking about the genius of Leonardo da Vinci by looking at a reproduction of Mona Lisa’s smile.”

          We can call this brainstorming, prewriting, listing, or research, but it needs to be taught as a specific and independent activity.  It is important to take time to do a gathering session, to brainstorm and get ideas on the page because writing that is vague or general lacks dimension and credibility.  Abstractions clarify while specifics exemplify.  Abstractions provide a view from the mountain top, but specifics reveal the foundations of the slope.  So as part of the gathering process, recall incidents, remember conversations, write down sensorial details, or ask questions of a friend or family member who shared the experience with you. 

          Honor Moore, in explaining how to write a biography, explains how a picture emerges only after we have first gathered a heap of material: “Sometimes a scrap of paper or a photograph suggested further investigation….I went through attics, discovered forgotten suitcases of drawings and letters, met distant cousins who offered watercolors and paintings, picked through dumps, and haunted museum libraries. I scoured newspaper archives in Boston, New York, Chicago and the Library of Congress.  Though by the time I began my book, much had been discarded, my grandmother, fortunately, rarely threw anything out, and so I accumulated an abundance of material–scrapbooks, family photographs, sketchbooks: in biographical terms, a treasure trove” (Twelve Years and Counting: Writing Biography).

          As educator Dr. Gabrielle Rico argues when she writes about clustering, it is important to temporarily shut down that part of the brain that wants to censor, reject, or discard material long before we’ve decided what we want to do with it.  Writers need one segment in the writing process where weighty ideas are pushed to the side as they gather foundational material.  Look at this act as a preparation similar to cooking: before the cake exists, we place on the counter the eggs, sifted flour, cup of sugar, tabs of butter, and teaspoon of vanilla.  The cake will rise; for now, open the cupboard doors and rummage.

“Don’t say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”   -Mark Twain

“The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen, if recognized.”   -Charles Simic

       Blue Car, writer and director Karen Moncrieff’s film about a teenage girl’s struggle to survive late adolescence, features a classroom scene between Meg and her English teacher, Mr. Auster.  When Auster presses Meg for details on a poem she is writing about her parents’ separation, she isn’t sure what he’s seeking.

             “Was there a particular time you felt bad,” he asks, “or you just felt bad in general?  So what happened when your dad left?  Was it day or night?”

            When she responds, “Night,” Auster pushes for more.

            “Did he say goodbye to you when he left?  Ms. Denning, I want you to write about that day.  In detail.  Write about the weather, write about what you were wearing, what you were thinking.  Be specific.  A whole world emerges from little details.”

            Meg is still uncertain what he’s asking for, so Auster leans back in his chair and provides an example.

            “When we buried my son, I’d forgotten to put in my contact lenses.  And I stood over him, and before they closed the coffin—trying to fix him in my memory, I could see the red from his sweater and his blue pants and there was a scab on his forehead that, um, it hadn’t healed—it was from a bicycle accident—and I could feel that scab when I kissed him, but when I looked at him, he was…well, he was out of focus.”

            He looks at Meg.  “So when your dad left, what were you doing?”

            “I don’t remember,” says Meg.

            “Okay, forget that I’m here.  Close your eyes.”  She does.   “Where are you standing?”

            “By my window.  In my room.”

            “Did your dad leave in a van or a taxi or—“

            “—A car.”

            “A car.  What color was the car?”

            “Blue.”

            “Okay.”  Auster picks up a fountain pen and hands it over the table to Meg.  “Go on.”

            Moncrieff has captured the essence of instruction in this scene: drawing out of students the details of their world they have forgotten or dismissed as unimportant.  They invariably stare at blank sheets of paper or computer screens, unclear what they should write.  The inevitable student response to the instruction to brainstorm is, “What should we brainstorm?” My response is, “Anecdotes, quotes, descriptive details, facts.” I call these the building blocks, the components, of all writing. From these foundation pieces, writing emerges. Each type of writing will emphasize or require different building blocks: anecdotes and descriptive details dominate suggestive pieces, quotes and anecdotes are the cornerstones of informational writing, and quotes and facts are essential in critical writing. Indeed, like DNA structure, writing isn’t characterized by the exclusive use of any of these so much as their combination and amounts. These, then, are the elements of gathering, the component parts students need before they can structure or style their material.

Anecdotes: “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?” asked Rod Stewart, suggesting the pervasiveness of narrative.  Have you ever sat through a low-grade movie until the ending? Of course you have. And why? It’s the plot, stupid. We love stories. We can bore our students into a stupor with information, but the minute we say, “That reminds me of something that happened once,” they look up. Plot compels, creating a tension that needs resolution. Friends hold our attention when they tell us they’ve got a story about someone we know.

          “Narrative is a key structure in almost every sort of writing,” argues George Hillocks, Jr., in Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice.  “Research reports provide a narrative of what the research of the subjects of observation did.  Closely argued court decisions often provide detailed narratives of the events leading up to the need for a decision.  Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics present brief narratives with details carefully chosen to illustrate distinctions between true virtues and seeming virtues.  Even business reports and manuals include narratives.  For qualitative researchers, narrative is an important research tool.  Indeed, many qualitative researchers strive to include the kinds of detail that make the resulting documents empathic.”

          I illustrate the effects of narrative in class by telling my students the following anecdote:

          I once entered the lobby of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco and seated myself in a large chair. While enjoying the illusion of being rich, I watched three men in trenchcoats enter the lobby, all of them wearing shades, all of them carrying newspapers, and one of them holding a briefcase. They sat down across from me and in        unison unfolded their newspapers and began to read, keeping their sunglasses on. After nearly fifteen minutes, again in unison, the three folded up their newspapers, rose, and departed through the front door. And left behind the briefcase.

          This story never fails to create silence.  Students stop taking notes, their eyes locking on me. When I pause at this point, someone demands, “What happened?”

          “I don’t know,” I respond. “I made it up. But the point is, you’re all focused on me now, and every one of you wants me to continue, which is more than I can say about your attention when I’m lecturing.” Anecdotes grab us; our breathing slows down slightly when a tale begins. Anecdotes light up writing, divert us, illustrate what we mean in ways information can’t. They are essential.

 Description: Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “We think in generalities, but live in details.”  Descriptive detail is painting with words, using imagery to pin down the abstract statement and give it weight. It is what teachers mean when they urge students to show, not tell. As Rebekah Caplan of the Bay Area Writing Project explains, the abstraction of “The pizza was delicious” conveys little, but providing detail does: “Mushed into the creamy orange of golden oil, the pepperoni sat, tiny bowls of grease rimmed in crusty black.” The first sentence tells; the second shows. Setting and characterization demand detail, which makes it more the province of the suggestive and the informative, but the critical is also served by description of a concert performance (in a music review) or the narration of Huck’s behavior on the raft in a literary analysis. Description is what gives poetry its power, and bad student poetry is often characterized by its absence. The student who writes bad verse often chooses the abstract over the specific detail. When one of my students composes a lament along the lines of, “I don’t know why he left / He said he loved me / Now I wonder what I’ll do with all this free time,” I respond, “I don’t want to hear the complaint; I want to know where you were when you found out it was over, what you said, how you were dressed, what he acted like as he spoke to you.” I want to see the break-up. Describing the war in Serbia in “Every Hell is Different: Notes on War Writing,”  Christopher Merrill explained how he accumulated his materials: “In my terror I took notes, not because I expected to survive, but because the act of writing calmed me down.  I recorded almost every conversation, story, and joke.  I described my surroundings in minute detail.  I timed the intervals between the rare outgoing pop of a Bosnian grenade and the ensuing blizzard of Serbian shells.  Thus by the time we went to bed, in makeshift conditions, I had a fairly complete set of notes from one day of life in a basement under fire.”

Quotes: The most common phrase in a circle of gossip is, “What’d he say?”  We want to hear the voice, the exact words. Long novelistic passages intimidate readers, but turn the page and spot a column of dialogue, and we’re tempted to jump ahead. Newspapers run “Man on the Street” columns which garner interest for no other reason than we are curious what people say. Quotes bring authenticity to writing; they move discussion from the blandness of “Some people believe…” to the credence of “Scientist Frederick Lewis asserts….” They validate, which is their appeal in critical writing when we seek corroboration from other perspectives. And they give us the human presence; when we read quotes, we travel from the general to the specific, from the news report of the disastrous hurricane to the voice of a disaster victim who sounds a little like us.

 Facts: Factual information is the math in the message. It is the distillation of abstraction into the graspable specific. Our historical knowledge takes on perspective when we hear of the genocide of 6,000,000 Jews; the desperation The Great Depression engendered becomes palpable when we learn the era’s nationwide unemployment rate was 25%; and we are sobered learning the average age of American soldiers dying in Vietnam was 19. Like all specifics, facts change what is vague into that which we can grasp. Like quotes, they suggest authenticity; and like description, they provide focus. The jumbling of experience becomes ordered when facts are developed. Facts cook down the porridge of information into a clear broth.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays: A collection of entertaining essays from the admissions officers of Harvard.

100 Successful College Application Essays: This collection stresses the need for authenticity in voice and experience.

            You.

            This is why God made the personal essay (assuming God looks a lot like a college admissions director).

            Colleges know that all those stats and fluffed-out resumes don’t convey enough info about you.  You earned a 3.53 GPA?  So did a few thousand other applicants aiming for the same college you want to attend.  Your SAT scores were 1930?  Yeah, a few hundred others got that score, and they want your seat in the freshman class.  You went to the Ozarks to help out the hillbillies over the summer?  Get in line: everybody’s done some community service.

            You get the idea.

            So the one shot you’ve got at distinguishing yourself form the herd is talking to the admissions officer directly.  In your own voice.  About the things that happened ONLY to you.  And with a touch that reveals who you are.

            Because that’s what colleges want the entrance essay to convey: you.  This is a good thing, because you’re probably a very interesting, creative, and nice person, but all those stats and figures aren’t going to convey that.  Only you can, and only in your voice.

            This is what the college essay is: your chance to present you as you are.  Because colleges want more than the brightest, the strongest, the most talented, or the best organized.  They want people who are going to fit into their community, people who are going to add to the social culture and take the opportunities their campus provides.

            And the only way they can figure out if you fit the profile is if you show them what you’re really like.  Which means this essay, first and foremost, has got to reveal your personality in a way that is both true and engaging.

            So this site is here to help.  We’ve provided links to helpful websites, as well as recommended books for getting ideas on how and what to write.  Here you’ll find some suggestions from faculty at Kirby, all of whom you can work with to get additional help.  We’ve also provided sample student essays, each strong in voice and personality, as well as sample essay questions and topics to give you an idea what the task looks like. 

            So think about the image of you you want to portray, something beyond the numbers.  Because you can’t write a good essay “by the numbers.”

This essay, which is featured on NPR’s  ”This I Believe” website, uses objects–two photos of Nick’s grandfather–as a starting point for a meditation on family and connectedness.  The piece is filled with details and anecdotes, and the tone is disciplined, yet emotionally effective.

            I have seen two pictures of my grandfather. The first was taken sometime in the 1920’s and shows a boyish figure standing in front of a wooden shed, clad in the winter uniform of a Finnish soldier. The second picture was taken in Moss Landing, California, and shows a middle aged man of strong build, standing next to my grandmother and mother on the bow of a small tuna boat named the Jay-Cee. I believe in knowing your past.

            Alex Ogren is a man I will never meet. What I know about him is only what my mother has said to me in passing. I cannot paint a picture of him out of scraps; to do so would be a sort of injustice. What I can do is say what I know. I know that he was a fisherman who emigrated from Europe after World War II, had a short temper, and was unphased by the prospect of physical harm.

            I don’t know when my grandfather was born; presumably it was around 1904. This would have given him a front row seat to the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent independence of Finland, which, though it was not at the epicenter, did not escape without unrest. He served in the army and would have supported the war effort against the invading Soviet Union during the Winter and Continuation wars. In the late 40’s he met my grandmother and moved to Washington state, and then to Watsonville, California. He operated a fishing boat and made runs on the Monterey Bay. He retired before his death sometime in the 1980’s.

            The way I see it, his past is a part of my past as well. I know only bits and pieces about my grandfather, and yet there is a level of identification that can only be seen among family members. I never heard him lose his temper, or rant about the injustices between the rich and poor. I never saw the Jay-Cee, I never saw the town in Washington where my mother was born, and I never saw Moss Landing harbor at the height of the fishing boom.

            However, I did see the fishing line he used, 800-pound test and made of braided steel. I got to see a package of the chrome lures and the glass net holders he somehow got his hands on. I got to see the plywood boxes he made, and the jury-rigged shelves he set up. I heard the few stories about his exploits: teaching my hysterical mother to drive just as Minte White Elementary School let out down the street. Or having to radio the Coast Guard after a drunken pleasure boater rammed his vessel in the middle of the bay. I got to see the epilogue of a story, and it still bothers me that I know very little about its beginning, middle, and end.

            I believe in knowing where you come from. I believe in knowing what other people did to get you to where you are now. For many people this is a complete family tree and genealogy, with annoyingly nostalgic relatives and a metric ton of old Polaroid pictures. For me, this is two photos and some short stories told without much thought.

 -Nick Wallace

Application Essays: A number of good tips about how to compose your essay.

 “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”––Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self Reliance”

             I met the Bean Counters in preschool.

            They introduced me to the Bean Tray.

            It was a simple concept. On the Bean Tray were two bowls, one filled with black beans, the other with white. Each day, we took turns at the Bean Tray Table. It was here that we learned to count: we counted beans. I, however, was a bright child. The envy of my peers, I could count to 100 effortlessly at the tender age of three. I thus deemed bean counting tedious and unnecessary.

            I clearly articulated this point to my teachers; nevertheless, I was assigned the obligatory fifteen minutes—eternity to a three-year-old—with the Bean Tray. I had no intention of displeasing my teachers, so I counted 100 beans. I then counted the 100 beans backwards as I returned them to their designated bowls. That showed I knew how to count but left me with about ten minutes. I was bored, but I knew I would not be permitted to leave the Bean Tray. So, I decided to amuse myself by pretending to be a cook. I unknowingly proceeded to do the forbidden: I mixed the black and white beans together to make bean soup.

            My teacher soon discovered my transgression, and I was duly punished. I had to separate the black and white beans I had mixed, picking each individual bean out of the giant Bean Bowl. I’d broken a cardinal rule: beans were for counting, not making soup.

Bean Counter Theorem #1:  Beans are that which cannot be divided for any purpose other than existing as beans. The bean is complete unto itself, and thus allows for no division or opposition.

          As the years progressed, I encountered several variants of the Bean Counter Theorem, for, as I have found, Bean Counters prevail in every aspect of life.

          At my elementary school, there was no institution more intrinsic, more indispensable to daily existence than The Line. If the children were restricted to the confines of a perfectly straight line, teachers reasoned, childlike exuberance would be suppressed, thus minimizing disorder. As a result, everything we did was done in lines.

          When the bell rang in the morning and school began, we were not allowed to simply gather at the classroom door; we had to line up before we went inside. Likewise, when the bell rang for recess, we could not just leave; we had to line up first. There was a boys’ line and a girls’ line, and whichever line was the straightest and quietest got to go outside first. Whenever the class walked anywhere—be it to church on First Fridays or simply to our next class—we had to be in lines. If the lines were not straight, the class was reprimanded; God help the unfortunate child who fell out of formation.

          The irony of it all was that the submissive obedience mandated by The Line simply made the children want to rebel, which defeated The Line’s very purpose. The control the teachers were trying to achieve via The Line was at cross purposes with the natural energy of children.

          A common scenario when dealing with Bean Counters.

Bean Counter Axiom #49:  Disorder—marked by the loss of control over one’s environment—is not to be tolerated. As the natural tendency of order is toward disorder, it is imperative that unleashed energy be corralled and remolded into an orderly state.

            Bean Counters continued to affect my life throughout junior high as well. In seventh grade, I became extremely bored with school. My teachers had a tendency to reduce complexities into formulas, making the marvelous into the mundane. I wasn’t being encouraged to question, to challenge, to think. And I was a little suspicious.

            So I started reading the encyclopedia.

            It began unintentionally. I was thumbing through volume 21 of World Book looking for information on West Virginia for a report. Suddenly, I realized there were lots of interesting things that began with W. I read the entire article on Frank Lloyd Wright and immediately harbored an ardent (albeit short-lived) desire to be an architect. I read about whales (and Wales).  Warsaw, Poland. Watergate. Andy Warhol. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. I even read the inordinately long (twelve pages) article on wheat. About two hours had passed before I finally found West Virginia and wrote my report. Reading the encyclopedia soon became a daily activity. I was learning interesting things they didn’t spare time for in school.

Bean Counter Postulate #128:  The shortest distance between the end and beginning of an essay is a straight line, which means you should ignore all the curious little diversions in between (like the difference between a blue and a humpbacked whale).

            More recently, I’ve had to deal with yet another type of Bean Counter. As a volunteer for the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, I lobby state legislators for passage of March of Dimes-sponsored bills. I am trying to be a voice for people who are less fortunate than I. Yet, the first time I lobbied, I discovered I faced opposition. A legislator told me that what I was trying to achieve was a good idea, but it would cost far too much money and was therefore impractical.  This struck me as incredibly illogical. What’s more important, money or the life of a child?

            Typical Bean Counter reasoning. He was only thinking of the beans.

Bean Counter Corollary #63:  Do you promise to support the bean, the whole bean, and nothing but the bean, and forswear to use the bean for any purpose other than propagation of the bean?

            As I approach college life, I look back to see the pervasiveness of Bean Counters and their philosophies. They permeate politics, seep into social issues, and clutter up the classroom.  And I have tired of them. What I desire, where I aim to spend my college years, is that environment that sees beyond the bottom line of the bean, that is not threatened by the curious and the creative, that understands—as with encyclopedias and soups—that the complexity of our existence is rarely reducible to the bean, or the formulations of the Bean Counters.

            Because I am not a bean counter. I make soup.

-Jennifer Chapski