Thursday, March 19, 2020
College Essay Topic #1 7 Essay Tips for Writing a College Application Essay About Your Grandmother
College Essay Topic #1 7 Essay Tips for Writing a College Application Essay About Your Grandmother One of the most popular topics for the college application essay is â€Å"My grandmother.† If you are planning to write an essay about your grandmother, you have a challenge ahead of you. How will you make your essay stand out amongst all the other grandmother essays? How will you make the admissions committee remember your essay and not just yawn over it? Here are some essential tips to write a college application essay about grandma: 1.      Focus on you, not on your grandmother.  When you wrote your first grade school essay about grandma, it was all about grandma. Now its gotta be all about you. Write about your experience, your thoughts, and your opinions as they relate to your grandmother. 2.      If you find you have written more than one sentence in a row that is all about your grandmother instead of about you, add the word â€Å"I†or â€Å"me†to at least one of the sentences! 3.      Use very specific examples of conversations you had with your grandmother. That way you can’t possibly write the same essay someone else has written. 4.      Know your starting point and ending point, and show growth. Perhaps your grandma used to give you help and advice, and now that you are older you have become her advisor. Perhaps you used to judge certain things as negative that you now see as positive. Or maybe you didn’t understand something as a young child that you now understand. Any growth or changes of perspective are great to write about. 5.      Keep it real. Although a certain amount of description is necessary, if you get overly flowery with your language you’ll lose the reader’s attention. 6.      Consider writing about an object or activity that is related to your grandmother, but isn’t directly your grandmother. For instance, let’s say your grandma was a gardener. You could write about an aspect of gardening as your theme, so your grandmother would be part of the essay but not the sole focus. Grandma may have taught you about gardening and you may have used some of those lessons in other parts of your life.  Your essay would then be about gardening as a metaphor. 7.      Want to write about grandpa instead? He’s less popular but the same principles apply. For examples of successful college essays, The Essay Expert recommends Accepted! 50 Successful College Admissions Essays by Gen and Kelly Tanabe. Still not sure how to write a great college application essay about your grandma (or grandpa)? Contact The Essay Expert for a FREE 15 minute consultation.
Tuesday, March 3, 2020
Hush and Just Do It
Hush and Just Do It You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. ~Henry Ford Recently, I had a young family member tell me that his grades were down because he hadnt adapted this special way of studying, and that next semester, hed have better grades because of this new-found method of learning. In a nice but firm way, I told him that I didnt want to hear what he was going to do. I only wanted to see what hed done once he accomplished it. Social media abounds with promises and plans on how someone is going to create, be better, make great strides. In my experience, we lose the energy surrounding those goals Derek Sivers, in a 2010 TED Talk, suggests we keep our goals to ourselves. https://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_keep_your_goals_to_yourself Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. Announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed. Theres somewhat of a myth, a common suggestion, that if you tell people what you are going to do that it makes you more accountable. Ive never seen that proven. Sure, we have our writers groups and critique groups, but do they make you follow through? Not really. You are the only person who can make yourself follow through. And its nobody elses fault that you dont. A journalist with Forbes, Jamie Farrell, curiously wondered what would happen if she quit talking about herself and what she planned to do. For one day, I decided to stop talking and start doing.  And here’s what I found: First, I found that I was lonely.  I was so accustomed to my ego being stroked And Im not giving you permission to blame social media, either. What Id love for you to do is talk less about the doing and just do more. On this, our last newsletter in 2017, in a year I did so much less than I have in over a decade, I am making 2018 about DOING. Not talking about doing, but following through. And I look forward to hearing from you when you have all those new announcements to make about what you DID. Happy New Year!
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