Magic, Spells, and Words

For those of you who read some of my posts, you know I try to get experts to share their wisdom about education, or business, or admission etc. One particular topic shows up the others: writing. I have been lucky enough to share the insights of well-known and not so well known authors as well as the essays students have written when applying to selective schools.

Today I get to share advice from someone I would call an expert on admission essays. Her name is JoJo Xu. Her insights come from recent experience. Her honesty, humor and most of her advice to talk about the magic demonstrate she knows as much or more than many pundits who talk about this topic. Her words respond to the following question that was posted on the website Quora.com.

What should I write my college essays about?

Any suggestions? I’m just looking for prompts and things, no plagiarism

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I’m a current senior in high school and have survived the grueling process of writing college essays. (Currently waiting for college decisions and trying not to die from anxiety.)

I’m no seasoned admissions officer, but I’d like to share one small experience I had during the writing process that made me cry, laugh, glare, and slap some faces.

So my friend showed me his essay for some feedback.

It was one of THOSE essays. You know, the essay drenched with long and complicated vocabulary no likable human being would actually use in real life. The perfect, cookie-cutter, puke-inducing essay. He wrote about how he helped build an orphanage in the Dominican Republic (gag), how he raised money for the local animal shelter (rolls eyes), and how he volunteered at a hospital (yawn).

BUT.

A tiny speck of pure gold stubbornly shone through his muddy, shapeless, lump of an essay.

While he was volunteering at the hospital, he often stayed beside the bed of a cancer-inflicted girl. He knew she was receiving proper care, but she was often alone and bored, her parents too busy working to visit and the doctors not finding it necessary to nurture the girl’s feelings.

He showed her his magic tricks — he’d pull a quarter out of her ear, make flowers appear out of nowhere, and, the best trick of all, make her laugh and feel like a happy, little girl again.

What he actually wrote was something like this: “I demonstrated my magic tricks in an attempt to alleviate a cancer patient’s intense boredom.” And then he went on to talk about his other duties while he volunteered there. I don’t remember what the rest said.

All I remember was grabbing onto my friend’s shoulders and shaking him to the point his head was about to fall off, screeching, “DAVID YOU IDIOT. WRITE ABOUT THE MAGIC. YOU LOVE DOING MAGIC. FORGET THE DOMINICAN ORPHANS AND THE RESCUED PUPPIES. Talk about how you brought magic and joy back into that little girl’s life! Talk about how you showed off your magic tricks at Homecoming and a huge circle of people from all kinds of rigid social cliques (jocks, band geeks, underclassman, upperclassmen, etc.) surrounded you to watch and point and laugh and yell. TALK ABOUT THE MAGIC.

And this buffoon had the audacity to stare at me like I had gone mad. I stared back, astounded to find stubbornness and narrow-mindedness in his eyes. We attend a rich public school that ships several kids off to the Ivy League each year — he felt he was REQUIRED to talk about all his “life-changing” and impressive experiences.

I wanted to slap him. He embodied everything I hated about the college process and my sheltered, rich suburban school — everyone pretends he/she is perfect and blindly aims for the Ivies because it’s the Ivies. I’m pretty sure he thought I was trying to sabotage his essay since I was suggesting doing the unimaginable: don’t brag about helping the damaged and the needy.

*Deep breath*. Got a little off topic.

Anyway, my point is, your topic doesn’t have to be out of this world. Not everyone has a dead mother, low-income status, or some handicap in life.

But write from your heart (cringe). Find something you find meaningful (even if it’s something as “normal” as volunteering at a hospital, participating in a club, or getting a job). Then add a spin to it and make it your OWN. Make it special to you, so that it doesn’t sound like any other kid could have the same essay or experience.

Oh, and make sure it says something about you. Talking about your grandfather being a Holocaust survivor is an intense and captivating essay (if written well) but what does that show about you?

I know you asked for prompts, but for a college essay, the most important thing is how you write the essay and connect with it. Type “college essay prompts” in Google and you’ll get pages upon pages of responses (not like anyone reads after the first page anyway).

Use language a bright, creative, interesting, and most importantly, TYPICAL teenager would use. Talk about what you like, what you think about — REAL experiences.

Dare to sound like yourself — like an actual teenager with aspirations and faults and loved ones and regrets.

Don’t be like my friend David. Don’t be afraid to sound magical.

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Here’s the thing. If JoJo had submitted this as a part of her application when I worked in admission, I would have immediately stopped my flow through unending applications and written her an email saying how she had done exactly what she told her friend to do: talk about the magic.

In this case I am not talking about an act in front of a crowd that reveals sleight of hand skills; instead it’s the sleight of mind that appears, as if by magic, through the words on the page.This trick is subtle and has to do with turning words into gold. One of my all tie favorite quotes comes form a writer whose sentences are as good as almost any writer I have read: William Gass:

Here’s the secret behind the trick: JoJo takes her voice and shows us what she tells David to do in the last three paragraphs of her response:

Use language a bright, creative, interesting, and most importantly, TYPICAL teenager would use. Talk about what you like, what you think about — REAL experiences.

Dare to sound like yourself — like an actual teenager with aspirations and faults and loved ones and regrets.

Don’t be like my friend David. Don’t be afraid to sound magical.

JoJo is not afraid to sound magical, not afraid to be an actual teenager, not afraid to be bright, creative and interesting. JoJo does what I tell anyone I talk to about writing essays to do: show and tell and do it well.

I do not know what schools JoJo has applied to, but whichever one is lucky enough to enroll her, should think about giving her a chance to conduct a workshop for prospective students on admission essays.

I would like to thank JoJo for giving me permission to post her words here. I would also like to wish her the best of luck as she and untold thousands around the world await the magic words they hope they will read on their email in the coming days and weeks: “You’re in!”