Sometimes, the harder you try to tell a story, the less you find in your head.
My neighbor and I stood near the pool table, in a room filled with balloons and twinkle lights. She held a strip of paper up to the light to read the directions. We were at a school fundraiser with a few too many activities.
“What’s your favorite musician?” she asked, looking up at me.
A line formed outside the entrance to a party not yet fully underway. We were here together, making small talk and finding a “match” for our answers.
My favorite musician? I could only think of one. I had answers for specific moods, maybe, or for specific times of my life, but none of that seemed right.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “You?”
Luckily, someone else swooped in with an answer, I stepped away for a snack, and we all moved on.
Well, most of us.
Who among us hasn’t felt that sinking pit in our stomach when we’re asked for a good—no, the best—idea, and nothing that comes to mind is good enough?
My love for rock was shaped by whatever was on the car stereo when I was growing up in Toledo in the 80s and early 90s. After almost 20 years in New York, I now live back this way, in Southeast Michigan. Some of the call numbers are the same, especially for the Detroit stations. But that’s about it.
Now it’s a play button on the steering wheel, instead of a dial, and I still press it, searching for the 89X of my high school days. Windsor/Detroit. 89X is still there, as is US 23, stretching from my hometown to my Ann Arbor home. I mostly cede car stereo control to my 12-year-old’s Spotify account, though I’m showing her the value of spontaneity in the radio search.
My favorite musician? I think back to when I was my daughter’s age.
The Bangles. Their whole first album was a silver thread through the speakers directly to my 10-year-old brain, with swelling violins and Susanna Hoffs crystal clear soprano. Especially “Eternal Flame,” the open, perfect promise of forever. At least that’s how it sounded from a rental car on a Florida spring break trip in 1989.
”Candy’s Room” by Bruce Springsteen, yes, but Bruce Springsteen? Maybe. I remember the conversation at the fundraiser and the fellow moms I’d known for just a few years. Could they picture who I was the first time I heard it, when my weary wariness of “Born in the USA” had finally worn off and another stage of my life had begun. I didn’t even know who I was then, sitting on the floor of the Rolling Stone magazine library, Discman on my lap, during my first real internship in 1999.
Of course, standing there at the party, I’d remembered none of this.
The only person I thought of was Leonard Cohen, who died a few months before my son was born, when I was haunted by relentless insomnia and the melancholy that comes along with it. Cohen had looked like a relative, a forgotten uncle, maybe, and the tones running through many of his songs felt like home. We named my son Lev, a family name, and for the first few years of his life, we called him Leo.
What was the right story? I had wondered. Something real, something to be explained in three sentences, and definitely not something that was too dark. With no perfect options, my mind went blank. My confidence dropped… until I wrote the above.
We’re now closing out a time in the world of college admissions that I consider to be the end of the end. And also the beginning.
Most college-bound seniors have their decisions, and scholarship applications are almost complete. Juniors are heads-down in one of the most important semesters of their lives, both in terms of their grades and activities. They’re immersed in leadership roles and planning for next year.
The thaw came on fast in Ann Arbor, and for parents, that’s prime time for thinking ahead. One of the students in my Zoom class last weekend was an eighth-grader. Truly, it’s never too early.
Essay Coaching is also emerging, coming back from a rest after a demanding winter season. I’m starting to speak with parents, lay out my course and college fair schedule, and come back to what can often be the toughest part of storytelling—starting out.
So, then, when?
At Essay Coaching, we take an entire session or two for starting out. A story this important deserves a brainstorm session, a face-to-face conversation, with only the perfectly limited information of your memory. We get the first few notes down, often by writing lists. Then we walk away, reflect for a while, and see what else pops up.
We do it this way because I know the best essay topic won’t arise from search or Someone Important’s well-intentioned advice or any sort of notion that includes the word “supposed to.”
And that may take some time.
You’ll want to keep in mind that your essay topic is from the very recent past, like my awkward party story. (Though much more impressive!) That’s because we want college admissions officers to see you as the dynamic student you are and will be on Day 1 of your freshman year.
So go ahead and take a look at the Common App questions and their extremely helpful, if less well-advertised, list of college-specific writing prompts.
Read, consider, and write down what comes to mind. And remember, it’s also just fine to have no answer to what feels like an “easy” question.
This morning, a full 12 days after the fundraiser, “The Big Three Killed My Baby,” popped into my head, from the first White Stripes album, Red Blood Cells.
The first time I saw Jack White, maybe my favorite musician, was in 2001, one of the most consequential years of my life. I was less than a year into living in New York City and stood six rows back from the stage at a club called Maxwell’s in New Jersey. I heard this song, made in Detroit, about a post World War II engineer whose creative car design was crushed by the world’s biggest auto manufacturers. And I felt what was perhaps my first tug back home.
While there’s no perfect moment to start a personal essay, today’s a great day to take a look at the questions.
Give yourself time, and you never know what will emerge.