Essay Shmessay, Let's Talk About Something Else...

This weekend, after massive amounts of coffee, we got to helping our high school students with their college essays. It didn't really go how I had expected- I could tell that she was tired of free writing after having done it all morning...my student definitely didn't want to write during our session. So, instead of writing, we talked... we talked about how hard it is to sit down and start a college essay and the pressure that comes along with the feeling that this one essay is going to determine the course of your life... it's a feeling that I remember quite distinctly from my own college essay writing experience. Once we talked about how it was hard to start writing, I tried to get her to pin down some ideas that she might be interested in exploring for essays, but again, she didn't seem to keen on this either... I could tell she hadn't put that much though into it, and really didn't want to go into details... she felt awkward talking to me, a perfect stranger, about herself and I could tell that she would rather talk about something else. We were told that our job was to get them excited about their idea's, but since my student didn't really want to talk about ideas, I figured that maybe I could try getting her excited about herself and college. I took the pressure off by saying something along the lines of " well, I just met you and I can already tell that you are such a great girl, so I'm sure that your college essay will do a great job of reflecting the person that you are." This is a statement that I was able to honestly make after having met her for just a few minutes. I could tell that she was such a bright girl with so much to offer, but she just didn't know how to go about doing it in front of a perfect stranger. Then I dropped the essay talk and we talked about college and high school and life in general... then, how I had hoped, our conversation started generating some good ideas for essays... she just needed to feel like we weren't talking about pressure filled essays to start talking honestly and openly... once she did that, she was able to see the bigger picture... she was focusing in too much on the essay and forgetting about how great she was and how any school would be lucky to have her! Once she started telling me about herself without the essay cloud over her head, potential essay idea's came out naturally. I find it hard sometimes to strike a balance between paper and personal talk, but I found from my first session, that sometimes personal talk can lead to paper talk while making the client feel confident and comfortable. Maybe sometimes part of being a writing consultant is making an awkward and shy person feel comfortable enough to realize that he or she has plenty to say!