Write All Your College Essays in One Day!

Forty pounds overweight, mildly depressed and majorly dissatisfied, I decided to make some significant changes. I joined a gym and worked out for an hour. But when I got back on the scale, I hadn’t lost any weight. Still depressed, I made an appointment with a therapist. But she spent so much time getting background information that when I left I was still low. I decided to do something about my problems rather than just talking about them: I determined to quit cigarettes and stop drinking. I bought a nicotine patch, a stop smoking video and an alcoholics anonymous CD. But an hour later I still wanted a cigarette. Thinking “healthy body, healthy mind,” I set out to run a marathon. Surely the sense of accomplishment from running 26.2 miles would lift me out of my malaise. I bought a pair of expensive running shoes but after a mile my side hurt and I stopped running.

Figuring that the only way out of my doldrums was medication, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist. She prescribed an SSRI, but after taking one, my mouth felt dry and I was still low. I threw away the other 29 pills. Hoping to find contentment in a meaningful relationship, I joined an on-line dating service. I found a profile of a woman I liked and wrote to her, but she didn’t seem to want to enter into a long term, committed relationship.

So here I am 24-hours later, alone, smoking a cigarette, drinking a beer and having potato chips for dinner–no better off than I was before. Clearly all the professionals I consulted are charlatans and fools. Nothing they did or said helped at all. Therapy, exercise, self help, running, relationships–all are a waste of time.

Perhaps I can be forgiven rather than derided for believing that I can change my life in a day. I see ads suggesting that by rubbing cream in my thighs I can lose weight while I sleep; the purchase of a lotto ticket will change my life; an on-line dating service will guarantee intimacy and fulfillment.

The reality of transformative, positive change is, of course, very different from the facetious example above. Life changing decisions require a series of sessions, commitment, setbacks, reaffirmations. One visit to the gym or one meeting with a therapist won’t make a difference. Progress is only made incrementally and frequently after time on a plateau. To give just one example: to finish a marathon, a year of arduous training is the minimum. A prospective marathoner must run hundreds of workouts, not just one.

Then why do college applicants believe that they can invent, write, revise and perfect an essay or a series of essays in one day? In addition to the 500 word personal statement on the Common Application, many selective colleges require additional essays. (They’re called “supplements.” Northwestern requires one more essay, Princeton two and NYU three.) Like a good spaghetti sauce, essays need to “simmer,” allowing the superfluous sentences and ideas to evaporate by successive edits, leaving the tastiest, tangiest sentences for the final draft.

It is as easy for a student to do a good job writing all her college essays in a day as it is for an adult to lose 40 pounds in a day. And about as healthy.

Next Week:

Why seven day in patient hospitalization for kids with severe behavioral or addiction issues is the cruelest joke of all.

Note:
For the chronically irony impaired, it will be gently pointed out that the “I” in the narrative above is not the “I” of the actual author–a confirmed tee totaler, proponent of long term talk therapy, and perennial marathoner.