Don’t Trauma Dump: Writing the College Essay

We are writing personal essays in my high school English class. The exams are done, the air is warm, and we have completed our ALICE drill.

I tell them they cannot Trauma Dump. They cannot take whatever toxic mess that they had to live and walk through, then dump it on the page. It’s not good enough, they must write more. I write the key phrase on the board; “What did you do next?”

They nod. They have written disquisitions of foster parents, absent parents, cops, and Covid. They edit their stories of heroin recovery, relapse, and loss into 650 words. This generation has seen its share of trauma. Machine gun philosophers shoot up elementary schools; Covid deniers cough out their litanies in their faces; The Supreme Court encircles their future and the police either choke them or wait for the shooters to finish. The air keeps getting warmer, the water keeps rising, and the Polar Bears need to eat. They have plenty of material.

God bless them, they shout the slogans, walk out and march. Climate Strike, Transgender Rights, and Covid protections. George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, Michael Brown. Parkland, Buffalo, Uvalde.

I have been an English teacher for a very long time. I have worn a jacket and bow tie in front of students who graduated, went to college, got jobs, had kids, and sent those same kids back to my classroom. In a previous age, I had to counsel students not to write the essay where they remembered their grandfather’s words, focus all of their energy, and won their town the race. The world is full of race winners, I said. Write about something else. Not your dog, not your grandma, Something Else.

My generation wrote about Something Else. If I pull out my 1983 yearbook and look at what it includes (and ignores), I know that trauma was not restricted to the current woke generation. We also saw our share of trauma. My graduating class went to funerals of drunk drivers and their victims, cancer victims, and overdoses, then stood around smoking afterwards. We were abused by priests, coaches, teachers, and boy scout leaders. Reagan joked about starting the bombing, pollution lined the streams, and the good church going white folks screamed at buses. My personal essay, for college, was about Something Else; a creative writing class.

But this generation won’t write about Something Else. They need to trauma dump, even if it doesn’t include an uplift, a lesson learned, and bruised path forward. They offer testimony instead of Something Else. They bear witness. My mother walked out. My father died with a needle. My coach made me stay after practice for a special performance.

It’s exhausting, distressing, and true. The essays are all scars, healed and pink, but scars nonetheless. And they bare these scars for all to see.

The Class of 1983 had our scars. But we hid them under leather and lace, in drugs and danger, in pride and pain. They emerged into our middle age, festering and infected. We held onto Something Else under there was nothing else. Then, we saw ourselves again, for the first time.

In that, the class of 2022 has marched past us. What has been done to them is not their shame. What has been done to them is not their fault. What has been done to them will not be hidden. Instead, the scar is visible, the testimony given, and the future embraced. After they received all of their education, in school and out, these students are moving forward with their arms bared and their eyes open.

I still want them to write about what they will do next.