Applying to college is by far the most novel life experience I had this year, and the one I learnt the most from. It’s an introspective kind of learning. Just as maths exercises your problem-solving skills, so does writing all sorts of college essays, probing who you are in all sorts of ways, prompt you to define your identity like you never had to do before. It’s akin to holding up a mirror to yourself, then untangling all the threads of lived experiences and beliefs that distinguish who you are.
The process is uncomfortable. It’s difficult to really commit to unpacking the stuff that we’re made of. Examining ourselves too closely feels dangerously close to debilitation, self-doubt, and the worst fear of all, becoming unimpressed with what we find. So, instead, we rack our brains and wish we could have overcome more trauma immediately sympathetic or breathtaking to the reader. The pressure to “sell your pain” as currency in the college rat race is a very real thing; but capitalising on traumatic experiences can feel like a sort of cheapening, and eclipses the far more important “who you choose to be” with the “what you had to go through”. But overcoming suffering and hardship does make an applicant stand out; we can say that this uncomfortable phenomenon is a byproduct of an infinitely flawed system. Mark this: you are a beautiful, worthy individual, working with an application incapable of capturing but a small fraction of your identity.
Regardless, I still believe we each have the ability to make something extremely personally meaningful out of the experience. The key is simple, really: be honest. This advice is so old its teeth are falling out, but you really do have to interrogate everything you write down to each specific word choice, constantly asking yourself: is this true to who I am? Or are there external factors that influenced my choice, because I think they might present me in a more intriguing light? This urge is difficult to resist, and I have to admit I’ve fallen trap to it at times, despite going into the process determined to be vigilant. You see, the line is very fine between trauma dumping and healthy vulnerability. I wrote my entire Common App essay on my journey with food and body, read: eating disorder and body dysmorphia. But do you know what makes an applicant stand out even more than suffering and hardship? Authenticity. I can’t explain how readers tell it’s there, but take this from a Writer with a capital W: authenticity is an unmistakable glow in between the lines. It isn’t about how good of a writer you are. I’ve read flourishing masterpieces that just come down to, meh. I can’t feel the humanity there if there’s none, and so wouldn’t you, and particularly not admissions officers weathered tough like leather with thousands of essays every year. So then, the way to truly touch an admissions officer (unless your family has mega bucks and/or your grades are watertight and you are senior president of the independent student council union for the DEIJ and sustainability initiative) is in the writing process, where you have to be honest to yourself.
And I tried my best to be honest. I read all my essays over and over again until I could be sure it was all me, myself and I speaking from the page, not some better, more-perfect, alter-ego-Boyi I subconsciously concocted. I re-read my words and sought harmony and consonance, rings of recognition that told me, yep, this PDF bleeds me through and through, to the best of its ability. Think of it this way: if a friend or family member found your nameless essay in the back of a dingy toilet stall, would they scan it while peeing and think, that’s like that person I know. Sure, I could easily write about my heartache over my dead hamster when I was five, and what it taught me about my rights and responsibilities. I really could. But what makes it easy is the fact that I don’t care about the hamster anymore.
This honesty, this pulling out what you still care about and laying it bare and beating and maybe even bleeding for nameless eyes to read, is why applying to college can be a painful process, even aside from all the already given stress and speculation. But it is only painful like all catharsis is: a good kind of pain, and one you’d ultimately be better off having than forever avoiding. Growing pains, you might call it. Maybe it’s rude and crude for the college application process to be the first full-scale exposure many young people would have had that prompted them towards this kind of introspection and self-reflection, but I really think it reflects more of a systemic failing in our education programmes at large than anything else.
At school we excel in academic knowledge; the system teaches us to be sophisticated, exact, and nuanced in the academic arena. But there is a glaring, gaping hole in this system which seems solid and enduring. We are never taught to learn about ourselves. I don’t mean an age group or gender, or anything similarly specific. I mean about each of our own, about yourself, Dear Reader. About who you, the individual, think you are and who you want to be beyond immediately obvious labels. I got lucky: I had the opportunity to take an online philosophy and psychology course in the summer before IB that directed my attention to, literary criticism and historiography is great, but what about looking inside for a while? The course was called “The Imperfect Art of Living” –if you do a quick Google search you’d easily find it–and I am infinitely grateful to it for alerting me to the importance of vulnerability, authenticity, and introspection at such a critical juncture of my life.
I used to always look forward to college as a new chapter in my life, big clean letters printed on smooth white paper, where I’d enter with a perfect body, a perfect personality, a blank slate, dragging none of my old problems behind me, taking all the new opportunities that would be afforded to me. College is the first best chance I ever had to redefine myself, and I wanted this fresh start so badly. But honestly, I first had to get to know myself as I am before figuring out where I would like to go. Like I said, I got lucky, but aside from the generous guidance from my teachers and peers in the course, no one told me this. So now I want to tell you, Dear Reader, for whom I write each word. Start being honest with yourself, start getting to know yourself. You might think you already do know yourself. I also used to believe I knew myself through and through. But when I really dug in, when I really started to talk to others, to have deep conversations around identity and being – well, I uncovered things about myself, both unconscious goodness and dysfunctional beliefs, true and solid and always present, whose shape I nevertheless could not have imagined. The effort is worth it. And not just for college apps, of course; it is your necessary reckoning for all through life.
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