701: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 1: My Desk & Magic) with Amanda McRaven

(upbeat music) - Hi friends and welcome back to the podcast. So this is a brand new series that we're starting and it's called "On Becoming," the art and craft of personal storytelling. In this series, we'll dig deep into college essays from past students, talk about why we love them and how they came to be. And for me, this title on "Becoming" is not just about the craft of writing, like how a story came to be, but it speaks to what I believe the personal statement is at its best, which is a record of a student's becoming. The beautiful, sometimes messy, hopefully meaningful process of students learning to better understand themselves and articulate their values and really find their voice in the world. So whether you're a student parent or counselor, I hope you find something meaningful in this series. In this first episode, I sit down with Amanda McGraven, who is one of my dearest oldest friends, and happened to be my first hire at college essay guy as an essay coach. Amanda's an artist, a teacher, a director, a storyteller. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, and she's a veteran educator with over 15 years experience, helping coach students through this college essay process. But what I love about Amanda is her approach to this process. She treats it like an art form and helps students mine their lives for meaning to find those awesome gems in seemingly ordinary moments and help students connect the dots between their experiences. And I love, love working with her. In our conversation, we get into two of our favorite essays. One is called the MyDesk essay. That wasn't the title of it. That's the title we give it to just refer to it. And the other is an essay about magic. So you'll get a little behind the scenes look of how these came to be and we'll nerd out on some college essay stuff as you'll see. And we hope you enjoy. Hi, Amanda. Welcome to the podcast. Hi. Good to be here. I feel really excited to see you. And I wanted to just give a little context for folks about how 10 years ago, now going on 11, I had just started college essay guy and I was like needing some help because I had more students than I could work with. And so I reached out to you. You were my first call. And I know you know this, but yeah, happy dance. I know you know this, but I just want to say like, thanks for saying yes. And thanks for being my friend and colleague and like, I don't know, midnight texting about an essay person over all these years because it's been such a ride. It has been a ride. It's a wild, but I'm prepped for this. I was just looking back over documents and you know, when you're in the water, you don't see it. And but these all these things came back of the early days when you know, we would talk about every essay and have multiple reviews. And there I only had I think like three kids that first year. So wild to have been pretty good for so long. So wild. Well, thanks for, yes, sitting in appreciating these essays with me for a few minutes. You know, in terms of context, we're going to talk about two. So neither one of these has a title, by the way. We refer to the first one as my desk because well, you'll find out soon and the second one as magic. And we were kind of trying to decide, is there a theme here? And we think that one of the, well, you tell me, what is it that you saw these students is having in common when, you know, when we thought about it here? Both of these students for me are STEM focused. They were going into STEM careers but are really tapped into their creativity in these essays. So when you work with a lot of STEM students, as I do, you often have more of a straightforward essay, just totally fine. These two students in particular, I think, wouldn't consider themselves creative, but I think they really, both students did an amazing job finding their creative voice and showing a unique take. Like, you don't, you don't feel like you're reading a STEM personal essay. You're just going on a ride. Will you say the thing you said about your brand at CEG? Not my brand. My brand is, so background, they're probably heard the bio, but my background is creative writing. It's theater and creative writing. So my brand at CAG where I've been happily pigeonholed is to work with STEM students on fighting their creativity. And yeah, and why do you, why do you think that is? Like, what do you make up about that? I think because I've been here for so long, will some of these archetypes at CAG, Gardener architect, is there a third? Yeah, there's, well, there's Gardener and then we added. So we went explorer for like the sort of wandering and then there's sort of like the architect one and then we sort of settle on Gardener as the middle of the Venn diagram. Yeah, so I've always been a Gardener, which is like, all right, you've got this awesome list of brainstorming. Let's roll up our sleeves and dig in there. What's popping out for me? And I also really pride myself on after the first, in the first session, because I think because of my creative background, I see the metaphor pop out for montage. Most students I work with are montage. So I see what the thing is, the frame that's going to hold the essay together. And without failure, I always see the students go, "Whoa, cool." Yeah. And then we fill in the content. Right. How did this, before we read it, we're going to read in here in a minute, but how did the MyDesk essay come to be, do you remember? Yeah, I was looking back at the earliest drafts and the student started with, "I'm going to leave a gap. Should I leave out gender? Should I just keep saying the student?" Or is. Does he, I think he genders himself in the essay? Yeah, he says 12, you're okay to be him in 12-year-old man. So I think we're fine. Okay, good. Going back. So this student started with TED Talks as the frame. Okay. And it was something like, you know, you wouldn't look at me. You wouldn't think I'm a TED Talk guru. Uh-huh. What I also love about this essay is I could find everything that he wrote about originally. We found a way to work in in this really lovely, organic way. Yeah. Well, he was also really game for, "How do I make this more creative?" And he came, I can't remember if the desk was, I think the desk was on the list of essence objects. But I think he came up with the like, what if I talked about making the desk? Yeah. Cool. Well, let's read it. And let folks know what the heck we're talking about. And for those of you listening, if you want to find this, I say you'll find it in the show notes. If you want to kind of follow along. But I love your voice. I love your reading voice. Would you be down to just read this for us? Sure. Awesome. Six years ago, a scrawny 12-year-old took his first steps into home depot, the epitome of manliness. As he marched through the wood section, his eyes scrolled past the options. Red oak, no, to ubiquitous pine, nah, to banal. Mahogany, perfect. It would nicely complement his walls. As days went on, the final product was almost ready. 91 degree angles had been perfected to 90. Draw slides had been lubricated 10 times over. Finally, the masterpiece was finished, and the little boy couldn't help but smile. A scrawny 12-year-old kid had become a scrawny 12-year-old man. This desk I sit at has not only seen me through the last six years, but it's story and the story of the objects I keep on it provide the foundation for my future pursuits. So I just want to pause real quick and say, "Yeah, what's your reaction?" I mean, I almost laughed reading it, and I've looked at this essay hundreds of times. But another thing I just love so much about students when they have access to it is tapping into humor. And this student was particularly good at self-effacing humor. And so I just love a scrawny 12-year-old kid became a scrawny 12-year-old man. I instantly love him and I instantly want to know him. And it's a quality that I've realized over the years is like, there are essays that do this and essays that don't do this. I don't think everything else I need to do it, but when it happens and it's good, and it's just like my heart just bursts open. And I love the launch line right after that of this desk I sit at has not only seen me through the last six years, but it's story and the story of the objects. And I'm like, "Okay, provide a foundation for my future pursuits." Exactly. I'm like, "Here we go." And it sets us up beautifully. And it's one of the best opening paragraphs I've seen in essay work because it already sticks so much about this person into it. There's so much personality and detail that like if that was the whole essay, you'd be like, "That's awesome." Totally, totally. I didn't know if we were going to analyze it as we go or at the end. If anybody's feeling frustrated, I'm really sorry, but we were just so excited about this opening paragraph. So I love the little ways that he's signaling his intelligence, using words like ubiquitous and banal. And it's subtle, but there's these little, you know, signal moments that's giving me trust. Like I trust that this student is making choices. And I'm like, "Okay, take us wherever." I also love how he says, "Perfect." It would nicely compliment his walls like a young interior decorator. I guess just like he's not afraid from the beginning to be like I'm a nerd. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Okay. Great. Let's keep going. Second, sorry, the objects that keep on it provide a foundation for my future pursuits. My trustworthy five-year-old laptop sits in the center of the desk. From my company, me on my ventures, to track null pointer errors in my apps, to playing classic Billy Joel after a rough day, my laptop is my first choice vehicle as I drive through a life of curiosity. Whether executing my simulations of stress analysis tests, teaching me how to make an origami lily or showing me a TED talk on why different, on why people find it difficult to poop away from home. My laptop has allowed me to find different versions of myself. Though I will probably call myself an engineer someday, my heart isn't so many different places. I'm a philosopher, a historian, an economist, a black belt in Taekwondo, a techie, a farmer, a teacher, an inventor, an entrepreneur, a TED talk lover, and a sports enthusiast, with each Google search a new world opens. I'm going to say let's read to the end and then we'll come back and talk about it. Great. To my left is a stack of books. To earn a coveted top spot in the stack, the winning book has to have taught me a life lesson or made me cry. Currently, the book on top is The Way of the Seal by Mark Devine. Devine's memoir details the training required to become an elite warrior and how that mentality can be applied to success in all aspects of life, social, mental, physical, and spiritual. Like Devine, I try to avoid a tunnel vision attitude and consider the implications of my actions on society at large as a leader and a role model. While running my company, a non-profit that Kindle's interest and stem around the world, I've been particularly guided by the principle of leading from the battlefield. This mantra of collaborative leadership helps me facilitate many processes from managing social media to collaborating with potential investors. I'm also reminded to sometimes take a step back in the midst of a crisis and let the universe give me answers. To the right of the books is a bead bracelet. I denigle to the ones my parents and brother wear. When I look at it, I remember my parents' secret sign language as I stood on the stage of FBLA Nationals. One thumbs up means remember to breathe. Two thumbs up means remember to smile for photos. Regardless, I forgot to smile for the photo. When I look at the bracelet, I also see my little brother tugging on me asking me countless questions as I repair my cube-stecking robot. What's that weird looking spinny thing? It's obviously a.81 pound 5 mm shaft diameter 5700 rpm 35 ounce install torque 22 amp stall current brushes DC motor. Da! One day you'll find me at a corner office somewhere running a couple of different tech startups, but the desk I'll be sitting at as the same one. I never want to forget that at heart. I'm a confident skinny little nerd unafraid and eager to take my next home depot trip. Just delightful. OMG OMG so juicy. There's so much here. I'm glad we read the whole thing because I would have stopped every sentence. I know. Okay, so let's zoom back big picture. We've got an essay that starts off. The desk is introduced and then he says the story and the story of the objects. We'll get into the paragraphs in a second. A paragraph two is about the laptop. A paragraph three is about the stack of books. A paragraph four is the beat bracelet and then we've got this short conclusion. That's just to sort of give everybody the 35 thousandth of you. Let's zoom in to paragraph two. What do you notice in this laptop? A paragraph. What I love about this is it's tricky for students to write about laptops. You usually have cell phones or laptops on his assets objects list and it's tricky. I do remember early on being like, all right, tell me more about this. Yes, it's part of your life, but it's also part of every other student's life who's doing it. So I challenged him like, why should we use the laptop? And what I love about that second paragraph is that curiosity value. Like he shows you in the syntax in the way he's put the sentences together, the curiosity. It's just like curiosity just like leaps out at you. I also love another thing not all students can do, but if you can do it while you should is lists. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And this came from like he had so much good stuff. I remember challenging him to get lists in here and not being afraid of. So this I'm a philosopher's story and I remember that coming from me. I'm like, can you just list all the stuff that you are that you identify as and he's like really? I was like, yeah, go for it. And there's something so delicious about that list. And all I also think this is this essay is such a good example of like you do these essence objects. And like, I think he jammed like every essence object in, you know, like he did it's all in there because he had the skill to really be able to not make it just sound like a list. Right. I mean, because he's playing with sentence varieties playing with rhythm. He's playing with word choice. So I just think it's such a delightful like manifestation of curiosity. Totally. And I think that that quality is a really important anchor for the whole paragraph. Because I think otherwise it could feel like, wow, this is a lot. And it's a lot of different directions. But that that word curiosity, which anchors us at the end of the second sentence, which I'm going to reread from accompanying me on my ventures to track null pointer errors in my apps, which is signaling in one direction intellectual curiosity to playing classic Billy Joel after a rough day, which is totally not something that you would put on your activities list. And I just want to say to students who are lots of activities and you're like, how do I stand out? Include random stuff that would never be in your activities list. Like the fact that you listen to Billy Joel also is going to score bonus points, I think. If you're 18 and you mentioned Billy Joel. Totally. And I'm not saying that these should all be techniques that every student should do. But I think it's part of like if I'm tracking for like what's endearing me to this author, it's little details, little moments like this. And then he says my laptop is my first choice vehicle as I drive through a life of curiosity. There's a beautiful like the Shakespearean sense, like a driving rhythm to the sentence that sort of carries us through. And if you notice that sentence, nobody else is going to write that sentence. No, right? And for students who are listening, I want to just encourage you to like write sentences that no one else would write. And you know, in fact, when you hear this when we are reading these, you'll see that's true from many of the sentences. And I think it's especially true if you're writing about something like your dang laptop. And it's not about the laptop. That's the other thing I always talk to students in montage. Like it's your topic is not your laptop. Your laptop is way into what you're really trying to say to your values. So I think that's what this student was able to really get underneath like ask the why? Totally, totally. The other thing, I love the list too. There's one of the things that will sometimes do and also does encourage is like just brainstorm broadly like whatever 10 things that could go in. And this is useful in like the short answers and stuff. And then choose a few of them to show just a variety of things. So it's sort of like you're bringing the little sampler platter of this side of you. But I love to include the word poop. We have to mention that. I mean, that's a calculated risk that students would be like, can I can I do that? And I think it's great. I mean, I think it's great. And it's there's, you know, did he ask about it? I don't know if you remember any. I think he was like, can I put this in? Yeah. And it is a TED talk. If you students if you're listening, I hope you've already googled. But if you haven't, just Google TED talk pooping away from home. It's a real TED talk. He's suddenly then weaves in his future major. Which I think is, I think students sometimes were like, how do I do that? He says, they'll probably call myself an engineer someday. And it's fine to say probably. Yeah. My heart isn't so many different places. And then he's got this long list of roles and identities. And even before I was on the roles and identities tip. And if you follow the podcast or our YouTube videos, you've seen me talk about this. I looked back at this essay and I was like, yo, roles and identities were, it was there all along. So there's so many different sides of himself that he brings forward, all of which are manifestation of his curiosity. So if you're, so here's a quick like what you can learn from this. If you're going to go all over the place in a paragraph, what can you anchor it with? You know, what's going to ground us so that we kind of go, okay, that's the mini lens within the larger lens of this essay, you know? And then he's got these long sentence. And then like you said, it goes to a short one with each Google search, a new world opens. And it makes me excited about what other worlds he might explore. Yeah, absolutely. And another another thing just along that is, is, is it's important for students to remember how readers are reading these essays, right? They're reading so many. And so, you know, if you're varying your sentence structure, that you're going to rhythmically shake up their day and they're going to read more closely. So playing with how you are playing with rhythm is really important. Yeah. And what's nice about this little tiny sentence here is it's a little moment that gives us some context for reading that long list of identities. Teacher and vendor entrepreneur Ted Talklover and sports enthusiast pause. He could have ended the paragraph and just gone to the next. object to stack a book. But he gives a tiny little so what? That's like eight words long with each Google search of new worlds that world opens. And I want to just say to students, like, that's such a nice, I think key moment at the end of a paragraph. You've shared a lot of stuff. We want to know what the impact on you. Like, give us a way to read that. Give us a way to look at it. Absolutely. Yeah. So to his left is a stack of books. And he focuses in on this book, the way of the seal by Mark Devine, a lot to talk about in this paragraph. What do you, what do you notice? What do you zero in on here? So this came from his nonprofit was really important to him. I think this is a great example of writing about an activity from your activities list that you're going to write an extracurricular essay about. Yeah. What you really want to mention it in your main statement. Because it felt an authentic to him. He's like, well, I have to talk about this as part of my identity. So then the challenge was it cannot overlap with what you're going to say in an extracurricular essay. And he did a beautiful job with that. I think the other thing you did a beautiful job with was like, the way of the seal might be considered sort of a typical book. Like, it's a self improvement. Like, a lot of students are going to read like self improvement books, but he was able to really concretely connect it to what he's doing. I love that the two criteria taught me a life lesson or made me cry. So there he's getting into vulnerability. A little bit. Yeah. Which we're not expecting. We think it's, you know, going to be more about life lessons. I like that. I think he does a really good job. Also not. I looked at an early draft and he was talking a lot about Mark divine. So I think that's it. Students will fall into also. So he said, "Divine's memoir details that trainer required to become an elite warrior and how the mentality can be applied to success in all aspects of life, social, mental, physical, and spiritual." That's not really a book report sentence. That's a like, these are the values that are important to me and divine talks about that. Then like divine, I try to avoid a tunnel vision attitude and consider the implications of my actions as a society at large as a leader and a role model. Again, just really like really good insights there. Like what's the a deep personal connection to what he's reading? The thing that he's doing there, two things. One is that he's trimmed the book report, as you call that. So rightly, to one sentence basically. Yeah. And that's again, side note to students. If you're going to talk about someone else that's important to you in your life, your coach, your grandma, this book, this place, give us one sentence. Just give us the bare bones context and let it do double duty for you by weaving in values. So here's what success means to me in all these different areas. And then he zooms in on this notion of like, trying to avoid this tunnel vision attitude and considering the implications of his actions on society at large. What he's doing there too is he setting up for the mention of the nonprofit. So for students wondering, how do I even my ex-curricular activities? Give us a value, something to focus on, like a magic trick, which we're going to do a little bit. Give us something to focus on here. So we're looking at that. Oh, considering your applications of society at large, because what he does is it, I think raises an implicit question for us. He's like, oh, how do you do that elsewhere? And then you come in with, while running my company, a nonprofit that can do this interest and stem around the world. And then it's like, okay, here's an example of where you do that in your world, in your life. And he really just mentions that there, and he doesn't really get into details about the nonprofit, because like you said, he's going to go into it elsewhere in his application. And the mantra of collaborative leadership. So he does talk about his leadership style. He also applied, I think, to UCs, but for students doing both UCs, don't see your personal statement. So he could poach from this paragraph in his leadership essay for UCs, where they ask you to talk about leadership style. So just as a side, note, students who have listened to the podcast, or you know, or I'll just say counselors, we, you know, we have this thing that we talk about called admission nutrients admission nutrients are qualities that after doing lots and lots of research and talking to admission folks, we find that college is really interesting seeing two of those qualities are collaboration and leadership. This was written before, you know, we sort of like found those subtle on those those qualities, but this combining them is really beautiful here. Collaborative leadership. And then again, we wonder, okay, what are some examples of that? And he says this mantra of collaborative leadership helps me facilitate many processes like managing social media to collaborating with potential investors. So you can notice this back and forth. Sometimes the value or the thing that you want to show is mentioned first and then the examples and sometimes you've got the examples and then the value. So either of those can work and then again, so what at the end of the paragraph? So what do you want us to take away? What do you want us to know? You know, stick the landing here. He says, I'm also reminded to sometimes take a step back and then it's the crisis and let the universe give me the answers. What do you, yeah, what do you notice about that line? That is the surprising but inevitable. Yeah. You have always talked about and sticking the landing. So I think students will often come in and try to wrap the paragraph up with a repeat, just a re-stealing of what they've already said. Such a great like, here's what I've been talking about. And here's just that bump at the end. Let the universe give me the answers. Not expecting that. Yeah, totally. And it seems to me that this as an instance where it's kind of the opposite of what we expect because we think of leadership oftentimes is like having the answers and knowing and making the decision. And one of the things that I'll sometimes and will sometimes encourage is like, okay, think of the opposite. Like, what are the instances where you don't know or you can't make the decision or you're uncertain? What's the value in the opposite of that? Because that can really show that, you know, diversion thinking. Absolutely. And let the universe give me the answers. Also is a nice transition. We don't know it's a transition yet, but transitions us to a more the last paragraph is a more contemplative personal space, not about self-improvement or intellectual pursuits. Yeah. What do you notice in this paragraph? And the bead bracelet with brother with family. So a big thing in working on montages is the three, it's usually three, sometimes it's four. The sections are three different sides of you mirror ball, three different mirrors on the ball. Yeah, cool. And so the challenge here was like, all right, what is another side of you? We have not talked about it all that we want to show. And bead bracelet was on his object list and he was like, my family's really important to me. I think this paragraph is great for students to look at because a lot of students will write about family. And if that's really important to you, you should write about family. How do you write about your family? And I think he does a beautiful job here about the value of support. Totally. That he shows it. So show don't tell. Yeah. Also a beautiful example of showing, not telling. We're all going to write about support from our family when we're teenagers. That's what we know. So do that. Awesome. How are you showing it? What does it look like specifically in your family? And there's something here that's a screenwriting technique and it's called the private moment. And you'll see some of these in movies where a character like has a thing where they experience it publicly and then they shut the door behind them and you see them like in the bathroom or whatever and they just break down or they open the note and they read it and they react. And what it does for us as viewers, or in this case as readers, is we're in the secret world with them. And so what he's doing is he's bringing in us to his him and his parents secret sign language. And we're getting to see that one that he's translating one thumb up. Remember to breathe, which is just really endearing. And two means remember to smile for the photos. And then he does that self-facing humor again, regardless. I forgot to smile for the photo. So if this is a technique that I don't talk about a lot, but it's like if there is, I mean, kind of an essay is like a private moment, like that's the whole deal with the personal statement. But it's sort of a personal, you know, it's a private moment within the private moment of the personal essay of like here's something that not many people know about. And it's the secret language and you can feel their love for each other the way they care for one another. Yeah. And I remember this being a tricky one to try to get underneath cliche as a family. This, I think this paragraph took the most work. Three of them. Like what specifically happens with you and your family? Yeah, that's good to know because I think sometimes people think these just kind of show up. And it's just like, oh yeah, he just like wrote this. Yeah, this was a lot of drafts. Yeah, it's like a lot of the process of the garden or processes. How are we getting underneath what's there? This is awesome. Great. Now let's make your story of your family stand out from the other person's story of their family. Right. Same value, right? You're going to mean a million essays. Read a million essays about family support as a value. Right. And how you show it. It's stand out. And I like that there's both his parents supporting him and then he flips it in the second half of the paragraph. Yeah. his brother asking him countless questions, as he repairs his cube stacking robot. And there's, he's doing two things. He's doing intellectual curiosity and then he's undercutting it with humor again. So the intellectual curiosity is when he's explaining it in this sort of effortlessly, you know, jargon-filled brilliant way. That's another thing. It's like, can you show effortless brilliance somewhere? (laughs) And he shows effortless brilliance and then ends it with that word duh, which is just a single sentence. What's that weird-looking spinny thing? And that, even that opposite of like, here's the way that my little brother sees this. And here's the smarter, you know, more adult version of what this thing actually is. And then he undercuts it again. So there's, there becomes a theme of humor throughout. - And I think he started that. I think it originally was like, it's a blank motor. And because he had already set up the theme of nerd, I was like, can you really nerd out on that? (laughs) And he had no problem doing that. - Great. I don't think students should be afraid of jargon either. Again, you wanna make sure your reader's on the journey with you, but if you know a lot of really specific stuff about a specific thing, get it in there. - Yeah. And he shows self-awareness about it. So this is something that I've just been watching Avatar with Zola. And one of the things that I noticed in that film is all the moments where somebody gets a little too woo and a little too into sort of the spirituality, you've got somebody undercutting it and being like, yeah, right, or making some kind of joke about it. And what that does is that it provides for the polarity of experience and of reactions. And as viewers in Avatar, we're like, okay, I don't totally have to buy into this thing. So if anybody's feeling uncomfortable, their view is represented, but maybe in a more extreme way. 'Cause we're all gonna fall somewhere in the middle. So we're all gonna either, you know, kind of understand the geeky part or, you know, be in the, I have no idea what he's talking about. Or else somewhere in the middle and by showing, by doing something that sort of gives us a meta perspective on the thing, it's an interesting simple little technique to do, but it gives a little breathing room so that the reader doesn't feel like they're having to buy into or that they're feeling distanced from. 'Cause they're saying that you have some perspective on your own nerdiness. - You're acknowledging it. I've never looked up what any of that stuff means. I won't look it up in the moment, 'cause it didn't matter. - It doesn't matter. - That's the reader. I was like, I don't care what this means. The point is not for me to understand what it means. The point is for me to know that you really-- - You know what it means, right? - You know what it means and you're laughing at yourself. - Totally. So here he ends with, one day you'll find me in a corner office somewhere running a couple different tech startups. Again, casual brilliance. - Drop it in. - Yeah, just casual, but the desk I'll be sitting at is the same one. I never wanna forget that at heart, I'm a confident, skinny little nerd, unafraid, and eager to take my next home deep-oat trip. - I'll bring it back to the beginning. I'll bring it back. - And it's so satisfying to come back. - Yeah. - We reach out to the student to ask, hey, could we use this? Do you remember what he said about the desk and the email? - Yeah, I did. I said, 'cause he's graduated already. So I was like, I wonder if he has his desk at his real grown-up house. No, it's up my parents' house. I was a little sad I have to say. (laughs) But you know what, when he's our age, he's gonna have that desk with him. - I hope so. I hope because of this podcast, he will have that desk with him. - I don't know, get it. When you start to get really nostalgic for your childhood. - Yeah, in fact, if he ever listened to this, I wonder if he would send me a photo of that desk. 'Cause if so, we'll just include it. - Oh yeah, I'd love to see a photo of the desk. I never would've thought. I mean, I saw it in a Zoom screen. He would like show me stacks of books 'cause he really does, the other thing is he really does have these things on his desk. - Yeah. - The stack of books really lived there in the bead bracelet. So it was delightful. Like this essay has never left me. The process was so wonderful. Working with this student was so wonderful. He was truly one of my favorites. And it just like swims in me. I show it all the time. 'Cause I think it's so deeply creative, but it's also accessible. - Totally. - For, 'cause again, this student would not consider himself a creative writer. And I think, especially if you're a STEM student, trying to access an essay that's clearly written by somebody who's talent is creative writing. You don't know your way in. I want students to know here is like, the way in was like, this stuff that he's already good at. - Totally. - And then, it was just a process of guiding him to trust putting all of that in there. - Yeah, Helena on our team talks about how this feels, like, she loves showing this to students because it's like, you can do this. Like you can talk about just the objects in your room. And I think what it takes is, besides the things you mentioned already, I think it takes the willingness to be able to write a couple drafts, to like, keep going, to keep going. Because if you stop at draft one or two, it'll be fine, probably some sentences that are gonna be in somebody else's essay, but it just goes to show what, sticking to it, continuing to refine. And okay, what's the next detail? What's something more specific? - Yeah. - What they can yield. - And every paragraph of this for students to know, started off as more general. That's always what happened. And then we were digging inside to see what we could access. - All right, let's pivot to the second essay. - Yeah. - This one again has no title, and you don't need titles in your essays. We refer to it as magic, because that's the theme in it. And yeah, I think let's just jump into it. I'd love to just read it, and then we'll talk about it. - Jump over to read. - I think so. Yeah, I love hearing you read the other one. I've read this one a lot before, so I'd love to hear you read it. - I've been dabbling in the dark arts for five years. My weapon of choice is set of bicycle cards. Blue, if I want to draw attention to the faces, rat if I want my audience to focus on the backs. Though my tricks start the same way, square up the deck with my left hand, ask my spectator to shuffle, each then takes on a life of its own, sleight of hand, mathematical and self-working, or a combination. After watching Matt Franco perform on America's Got Talent five years ago, I was hooked on the thrill of the unexplainable in card magic. I wondered why people liked magic so much, and rather than sit and ponder, I decided to follow my curiosity into the world of magic itself. When first learning the double lift, I watched tutorials for endless hours on end, constantly rewinding to determine exact thumb positions and wrist motions, fascinated by the nuance distinctions between success and failure. Eventually I grew dissatisfied with the full magic routines I saw. They weren't my style, not enough audience interaction, not enough intense sleight of hand distractions. I decided to develop my own tricks. My first original was a big one. Transport a randomly chosen card from the deck into a sealed basketball. I stayed up late every night for three weeks, planning out every wrist turn and card palm, the thrill of sacrificing my sleep and health for something that was my own, and finally seeing the finished product made me fall in love with inventing. And my love for inventing and exploring didn't stop there. I once spent three days studying the science behind rock paper scissors. For example, searching for logic behind why humans play as they do and discovered why two thirds of males choose rock on their first turn and why people on a losing cycle almost always choose rock, then paper, then scissors. In my junior year internship, I saw that my mentor was always late to meetings because of his chronic knee pain. After hearing his story and struggles with the healthcare system, I was inspired to come up with a solution to my mentor's knee problems. I worked with a team to create a smart sleeve, a wearable device that aids post-surgery healing by monitoring a knee's activity and sending doctors weekly reports. As a kid who's always loved science, I use my scientific inventions to satisfy my urge to explore the unknown. Not content to pursue inventions simply for the sake of it, I also invent to make people happy. Cooking three course meals is my way of spending uninterrupted time with my parents. When we have cause for celebration, I grill veggie burgers topped with my signature sriracha sour cream sauce. When we want to relax, I whip up fluffy scrambled eggs on sourdough bread with veggie turkey. Food like magic is my offering to my community. Even when I started, magic has never been just a hobby. Each new trick, each discovery has been an essential way I bring vivacity into my life. But of all my tricks, my favorite is this essay. I said before I used blue cards to focus the audience on faces, red to focus them on backs. The words in this essay have been my red card and performing magic is the part I've made you focus on. You've just been fooled by a classic misdirect for although magic has been my life for so long, what I dream of doing professionally is becoming a neurosurgeon. And magic has actually played a big role in this. It has led me to explain to questioning why people make the choices they do, taught me to approach life with attention to detail, dexterity and care, and has inspired me to invent with passion. I'm addicted to the adventure and journey of making my own creations, something I will continue to do vigorously in the ever evolving field of neuroscience. What? The life. Oh, so good. This has a cool lineage, because I don't know if you're going to put it on the podcast. Go. Put in the show notes, the lineage of this is the endodontic essay. I thought so. Yeah. Because you loved that. And if you look at them side by side, you can see how he was inspired. So not talk about the thing he wanted to do until the end lead you down this path and then bring it in. So I love that lineage also. Yeah. And to give context for folks who are listening, there's an essay that was in college essay essentials, this book I wrote, where the student sort of surprised his career at the end, spoiler alert, it's endodontics. In the second edition, it's called the perhaps an engineer essay 'cause I didn't wanna give away the ending. But yeah, but there's this sense and just to zoom up, like the student is essentially revealing different qualities along the way, and then he surprises us with, and it's all added up to something different. What's different about the endodontics essay is that there's no sort of main thing to focus on that's doing the mistracked. The endodontics essay is sort of just taking us wondering through his life. But this one gives us a full theme, a satisfying theme that we're enjoying and like relishing, and then suddenly, you know, he pulls back the curtain and it's like, what? You've been doing this whole other thing all along? Yeah. And it's so satisfying. So satisfying. I just used to talk with Essay first, but my brain also jumped to like, the comparisons between the two essays and how they're telling similar stories. Yeah, yeah, go. What do you know? The thing that popped out for me was, I haven't read these aloud side by side in a long time. But he's also talking about his family, right? Which we were just saying with the other essay, family and support. Stay in point. So the other student is using the sign language, and he's using food. They're saying the same thing. This is how we connect with each other. This is how we take care of each other. Yeah. Totally different metaphor. That's what I want all students to know. It's like you all have the same values. Right. Similar values. You all have this very similar life experiences. But what is your way in and how are you writing about it? Yeah. How does it find expression in the world? Yeah. Yeah. There's so much. This first line, even. I've been dabbling in the dark arts for five years. I think he just dropped that in. I was trying to remember back. I think. And I was like, here we go. Like one of the best folks of all time. Yeah, I love it. Will you give us? Is there any more context that you can remember from working through this process about? You know, he liked this essay. Obviously doesn't want to copy it. Make it sound too similar. But you know, tell us just any other context you can give about the process of him writing this piece. Did not start this way at all. It started with a list of activities. Magic was one of them. Obviously, you see the values of curiosity and invention and exploring. I was looking back at my old notes. I have a note saying thread magic through each paragraph. I think he had been talking about tricks. And so that came up for me as like that. Each trick takes a different approach. Can we use each trick as a way to examine something else in your life? So I'm trying to go back and looking at like this old draft from like this. As you do that, can I just shout out some things that I love about the start? So he says, I've been dabbling in the dark arts for five years. And the ending, the reveal is in the second paragraph. He buries it. My weapon of choice is set up bicycle cards. Blue, if I want to draw attention to the faces, red, if I'm audience to focus on the backs. So he's telling you the trick. He's telling you what he's going to do before he does it. Of course, it's subtle. You won't know it until later. Though my tricks start the same way, each then takes on a life of its own. Slight of hand, mathematical and self-working or a combination. What I love that the student is doing is he's, again, like the other student, he's showing values from the start. And he's weaving in a little bit of like, in this case, jargon connected to the thing that he loves. Yeah. Squaring up the deck. And he's also weaving in things that he loves. Mathematical and self-working. So he's already giving jargon so that we sense that he knows some stuff about some stuff. And what it does for me is that it builds trust like right away. I'm like, oh, he knows what he's talking about when it comes to this. And I think this is, I'm big on screenwriting today. This is another thing with when you first meet the character. In this case, when you first meet the speaker or the author, that's when you're really, you know, you're creating that first impression. It's going to live with us. And in this case, it's building trust that he knows some stuff about magic. He doesn't need to wait till paragraph three to reveal that. Boom. In the first, you know, 50, 60 words we get that he knows what he's talking about. And then he gives us in a little mini origin story with Matt Franco. Decided to follow my curiosity. Explicit mention of value. I watch tutorials for endless hours on end. Another value of meticulousness sticking with it. Constantly rewinding, you know, to determine the exact thumb positions fascinated by the nuanced distinctions between success and failure. And also doing a similar thing to what the other writer is doing, like showing you attention to detail. Yeah. Which he's doing as he talks about finding the wood for his desk. Here it's like, do I go with thumb this way or this way? What are the new monsters? So again, same, the same things are going on. It's how we're writing about it. He's doing that private moment thing again too. And so this is something else is like, I want to get inside your brain. I want to kind of like read the journal of your brain and know what it's like to see the world through your eyes, through your perspective and the specifics of it. And we sometimes call this, you know, I want to see your movie. I want to see like, what is it when you look at magic tricks? What do you see that I don't see? When you're at Home Depot and you're looking at the woods, I don't know the difference between Oak and Mahogany. But you do. And I love knowing that you do. Or even did as a nine year old, you know, like those sort of little details help me see, oh, here's somebody that I'm going to be able to like learn from and that the people in my community on a college campus are going to be able to learn from. Yeah. He started, looking back at the drafts, he started like much more straightforward. Like, here's a value. And that's what I'm going to use this so he's he had like the value of coordination, the value of social perceptiveness, the value of complex problem solving. So that's how he eventually found those montage paragraphs. But they were much more again, just back to what we're saying before, like there's a long process to get here. Yeah. But it starts with these raw materials, right? The raw materials. Yeah. Of the values. And then we go, okay, how does this manifest itself with specifics? I love when he jumps to in the next paragraph. So we're on the third paragraph now. Eventually, I grew dissatisfied with the full magic routines. I saw they were my style. He says, why? Now that leap shows another one of those admission nutrients of initiative. Initiative. Yeah. Of him taking a step to create something for himself. And he's setting up a quality that he doesn't name explicitly until the end of the paragraph. Yeah. He gives a specific example of it. But then he says it. It made me fall in love with inventing, which is going to become a big theme. The next, basically, the next half of the essay. And it's going to ultimately lead us to, you know, stem stuff. Yeah. But he says my love for inventing. So he repeats the word in case we missed it, didn't stop there. He tried to study rock paper scissors. And he teaches us some really cool things. I know that I literally didn't know. But that means what that we want. I want you to know, I think of this every time I play, I play rock paper scissors now. I'm like, if I'm playing against a dude, I'm like, this person's probably going to be a rock first and invariably. It will all say about two-thirds of the time it happens. Or if we kind of get off course, I think, okay, did this person just go rock paper or scissors? Because sometimes it just because that's the way the title goes, someone will go to the next one. So it's my point is here is that like, he's taught me something and only he's taught me something. But it's like stayed with me over the years. Absolutely. I remember working on this essay too. I was like, don't tell me I did the trick. Don't tell me I did the trick. I love magic and I didn't want to know. And I think he does a really good job of like bringing us in and like taking us to the edge of like getting his thing, but he's not going to tell you all the way. Like this is such a good example of like a really niche thing that everybody's interested in. But you're not giving us too much information about it. Yeah, I love that too. Yeah. There's this moment. So again, notice that how he's varying up his quote-unquote activities. Some are activities that would definitely appear on the activities list and some are rock paper scissors. So he's given us this fun one, rock paper scissors. And then he transitions and he's given us the value of inventing. Yeah. And he transitions my junior year internship. I saw my mentor was late to meetings because the chronic knee pain. So I created this cool thing. And it's a couple sentences, but it shows that quality at work. And I think what he buys us with the rock paper scissors one is a little bit of like, if he had just been like, I love inventing and he just listed three incredible inventions, I would have been like, this could have been your activities list. But he's putting in a little bit of, I don't know what food metaphor you want to use, but like something to like, you know, the way that I think of this, is like throwing us to forget the food thing, throwing us off the scent of like making it so obvious that he's weaving in his extracurricular activities. He's giving us something that's just like fun and playful and just like, you know, yeah. And so connects to the value of exploring the unknown and then supporting community that's coming. Yeah. So it's not an activity for the sake of activity. It's an activity that was really important to him. Yeah. That he wanted to make sure he talked about, but again, like the first writer, it's folded into the bigger story. And I'm sure he wrote an essay about the smart sleeve, But just this little hint at it. Then I also feel like it's like you're dropping a seed for your reader? Where the reader also was like, Oh, cool, I'm probably going to get to read Nessie about this after a personal statement. How did you get through two essays without, well, on STEM without a mention of Legos? Right. Certainly Legos. By the way, to the makers of Lego, I know that it's supposed to be Lego and not Legos. So I just want to name that I know that. But for those of you who are watching and listening here like, I'm a STEM student, notice no mention of Lego in here. It's the joke, the in the sort of inside joke here is that it's just such a common thing. And such a, I mean, I've played with Lego, you know, probably many of the people listening did that. But when you're thinking about like what inspired you early on in life and what are some of the unconventional things, a simple thing that you can do is make a big list of what are the 15 to 20 STEM related activities or things that you've done and put robotics on there, you know, put Lego, put all the things and then go, Okay, which of these maybe isn't going to appear on someone else's list. And maybe it's rock paper scissors or maybe it's a student a couple years ago had a Cheetos making like a Cheetos delivery machine during the pandemic that they created so that they would send when people would come up to their house, they would just deliver Cheetos out. And I was like, that's, that's a pretty good one. That's an uncommon invention. I was also naming like spend time with like the things that I work with so many students who they don't even put in their drain storming or it doesn't occur to them early on. It's like really quirky, interesting thing that they do. But it's not going to be the first thing that comes up for you. Like, you know, what's a weird thing you do with your friends? And we accomplish the same value that Lego's accomplishes probably. Right. The anatomy speaks to like the value of spending a lot of time brainstorming and by a lot, I mean more than 20 minutes. Yeah. I mean, spend that hour and a half, spend that that three hours, whatever it is and have fun with it. Like, and for many students who like that doesn't sound like a lot of fun. Like spending three hours writing, but I mean, you're basically, if you have the right prompts and you've got a little bit of, I don't know, a little bit of time set aside, it can actually be kind of fun to be like, okay, what are all these different, you know, sides of me? We'll link in the show notes to some fun brainstorming exercises, but it's in that, this Caitlin on our team all says, like, I love this phrase, like give yourself the luxury of a writing process. Yeah. Yeah. And because it's in that sort of time that you spend where you find stuff like the Cheetos delivery thing or the rock paper scissors. And if you just rush to pick the first topic and get this thing done, you might get lucky, but you might not come up with some of these things like my signature Siracha Sour cream sauce. And I don't, you know, I think there's a lot of students write about cooking also. And I think this is a good example of getting really specific about, it's not just cooking, but again, it's invention that serves community. Totally. Yeah, it's family, it's community, it's, it's connection, it's invention, it's experimentation. You know, he says, I love this. Yeah. We have costs for celebration. Yeah. And even just like sourdough bread with veggie turkey, like that's just another little, dropping in a little thing about who he is that he's a vegetarian, you know, like, it doesn't matter. But it's, it's interesting to the reader. He tells her interesting. And again, it's like, if we wonder why, like, where is all this leading? Here's an option for your insight at the end of the paragraph is like, bring it home with the value. He says food like magic in case you were wondering what the connection was. I wonder what you have. Yeah. If you case you were wondering, I'd wondered too far off topic is my offering to my community. It's like, yeah, the beautiful. Got it. Glue. And then here at the end, you know, he's got that beautiful turn. I saw you smile when you were reading it. Each new trick, each discovery has been in a central way. I bring vivacity to my life. But all my tricks, I remember it as this essay and I'm like, okay, here we go. Love itself reference in an essay. Yeah. The words in the essay of my red cards for for me magic is the part I've made you focus on. You've just been fooled by a classic misdirect for all of magic has been a matter of so long. What I've been doing professionally is becoming a neurosurgeon. And this is the sixth sense moment, right? Where we're like, wait, what? Yeah. You see dead people like and our brain goes hurtling back to the essay to be like, was this there all along? Yeah. And you're like, oh yeah, of course, this same skill set. And if it wasn't there along, you know, connected details because the reader's probably not going to go back combing through. So he's like questioning how people make the choices they do. There's connections, psychology taught me to approach life with attention to detailed dexterity and care, value, value, value and inspire me to invent with passion, value, value. And it's like in that one sentence, here are six values or six skills that are going to serve me in my future career. And it just like goes, we get it surprising and inevitable. Oh, good. It was there all along. And then he mentions his career at the end. Now what I love about this at the very end, I'm addicted to the adventure and journey of making my own creations. And I'll continue to do vigorously in the ever-evolving field of neuroscience. He ends with this particular word neuroscience, which was his major, that last word that he lands on. You know, there's this, I don't know if it's called recency bias or something. It's like the last thing we hear is the thing that sort of echoes in our mind. And it's this notion of neuroscience, which reminds us, okay, cool. This is a, you know, yes, this has been an essay about magic, but really it's about his curiosity and how it's going to manifest in the world, including neuroscience. And then it's like, okay, you'll find out more about that in, you know, separate essay. Yeah, absolutely. So delightful. So delightful. Yeah. Yeah. And he was so warm too when I reached out to him to be like, hey, can I use your essay? He's like, yeah, of course. It's great to hear from you. Yeah. Yeah. The reflection's final thoughts on this one. I just, just be you. You know, just like do your thing. And I think, you know, he didn't start doing magic because he wanted to get into college. Starting magic because he loved it. So I don't know who's listening to this, but if you're at the, you know, if you're younger at the beginning of your journey or even if you're coming up to be in your senior year, like, what can you do this summer that you're just going to love doing? Yeah. Because that's what makes you write about something passionately. I always think about how like, you know, like Ian McKellen and Judy Densch, they were never like, we're going to be famous actors. We're like, we're just going to make do theater together in a basement somewhere in England. Right. You know, you just, you just do what you love and it ends up becoming your story. Yeah. I think the most exciting essays are the ones where you really feel the love. Totally. And it can come from something that's right in front of you too. Right in front of you. Yeah. Well, I've spent a lot of time doing this. Yeah. But can I really write about it? And I hope this is like a permission giving. It's like, yes, you can even write about something that you just love doing a lot. I just want to say once about skateboarding, but I don't even know that it occurred to her before. I think it's just like, you know, like, get around. Maybe we'll do that one. Maybe we'll do another one where we talk about that because I know the one you're talking about. Great. Yeah. We'll do the part two of this. We'll do the skateboarding. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thanks for sitting with me. And this is so, so fun. Yeah. You get bogged down. Like we just closed out Stanford, you know, just the end of the season and you get bogged down into like the stuff of it. So it's really nice to just revisit these and just revisit the joy. Yeah. And the process was there. These were not easy. Yeah. But they, they, they stuck with it and they really found the joy and the delight. You know something I haven't asked you is this is year, I don't know, 10 or 12. Like what keeps you coming back to this, this work? Well, it's, it's actually from the time I started it, it's like year 18. Wow. Right? Because it would have been or 16. So case may coming back is I, I like to be a little guide. I like to hold the light for students in a super crazy stressful time of their life and be just like a weird, happy lady with purple hair. Like you're cool. Your story is amazing. You know, and just like help them really. Like I love, I, I love we just keep talking about until I see it click. How does that feel for you? Oh, yeah, that's really cool. I never thought about that. Like that still, I still get off on that. I still get off on that moment of me being able to see something the student would never see and then they get excited to write about it. So it's a brutal process. And I think brutal processes need to have heart at the center. They need to have a like reminder of why you're doing this like because on some level, you're telling a story about who you are that's going to feed you. It's not a problem. about getting into college, it's about going through a process to be able to speak, speak yourself, speak your truth, speak your joy. Yeah, I really see that in you. You do that for me. You've done that for me ever since we met years ago and I really appreciate that quality in you. And I really resonate with it too. It's like I think of it as spill-unking sometimes. We're like diving into these caves and we've got these, I think it too, is a little flashlight. We've each got a little flashlight. We're like poking around in the corner like what's there? What's there? What do you see? We pick up a rock. Is that a gem? No, it's just a rock. You know, sometimes though it's a gem and it's so like it's as complex and surprising as life itself. Sometimes even it's a little better. Yeah. And dance is like life distilled. Yeah, and it's the meaning making too of the whole thing where we get to like create the stories that we choose. That's it, the meaning making, the helping someone to see meaning in what they've experienced that they don't see. Because they're just living. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for doing this work with me. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. This is great. Thanks friends. As ever for listening, you'll find the show notes at collegesaguide.com/podcast, including the text of these essays if you want to read them. If you're interested more from CEG, you can sign up for anything at collegesaguide.com and we'll share with you our latest free resources, info on upcoming webinars and lots, lots more. Thanks friends, and stay curious.