For a while now, I should have been working on college application essays. I've just been so sick of hearing about college, and school, and test scores, and everything else that goes along with the application process, that I've ignored it. Even I can only procrastinate so long, though, and I sat down today to start an essay for my Earlham application.
Seriously! I sat down, intent on cranking out some bullshit essay (to be modified later), just so I could say that I started. Well, it's actually not that easy. I can write a six-page research paper the morning that it's due, but this had me stumped. What am I supposed to say? How can I sort through all of my life experiences and label just one as the most valuable? And honestly, is what I consider valuable what these colleges want to hear about?
I want to write about the car ride home from the hospital after recieving morphine for the first time, watching Christmas lights whiz by, drifting in and out of consciousness, feeling utterly safe and happy and childlike. I want to write about Aly's backyard in September, when everything is yellow and lovely. I want to write about Angie's house in the summertime, or even about slicing parsnips with my shiny new chef's knife. I want to write about bowling with my cousins the day after Christmas in a smoke-filled, flavored-condom-dispenser-in-the-bathroom, small-town recreational league bowling alley.
I do NOT want to write about my experience with chronic illness and what I've learned from it.
But, alas. That's probably what my essay will be about, simply because it's the most suitable topic.
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3 comments:
That's basically exactly where I was two years ago. Mom spent the entire summer nagging me to write drafts, and all I had by october were odd little snippets about cornfields and tree-climbing and LOTR--nothing, iow, that could be submitted with the common app.
I hate that sort of personal writing because the things that *do* mean something to me are so ill-defined and well, *odd*. I still wish I could have written that cornfield essay.
Yes. Exactly. When I have a draft of the crap I'll end up submitting, I'll email it to you for proofreading, K?
K.
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