a-high-school-seniors-band-blog

Cliches to avoid for essays

appblrgirl:

The Prospect

1. The Immigrant Essay

Going back over the essays I received during the college essay extravaganza, 50% of the Common App essays I read were about students and their families moving to the US and learning to adjust. Now, I’m not saying that your familial struggles aren’t intense and worthy of talking about; after all, many students wrote about the loneliness they felt being the only new kid in school or having to adjust to American customs, and those are all absolutely valid conversations.

However, if you put all of these “moving to America” stories in a pile and read them one after another, they start to bleed together. The story lines and characters all sound the same. And for you, that means less of a chance to stand out and more of a chance of being labeled “one of those immigrant kids”. Is it fair? Absolutely not. Is that the way it is? Unfortunately, yes.

2. The “They Taught Me More Than I Taught Them” Essay

Please for the love of all that is admissions don’t write about the time you went on a service trip to a third-world country and learned from the locals. Not only does it typically come across as condescending and privileged (since most high school students are not aware of how to talk about cultures in politically correct terms), but it’s also so overdone and bland.

3. The “Ski Slope” Essay

When many students answer the quintessential “talk about a time you overcame an obstacle” prompt, they tend to write something that I call the “ski slope” essay. In this scenario, the author was given a physical challenge (like a ski slope, mountain, scary water slide ride, etc.) and was eventually convinced overcome it. Again, it’s an essay that I’ve seen over and over (and over) again, and there’s no real way to write these essays well. They usually involve a lot of cliche adjectives and some other person convincing the writer to go down the slope. Inspiring? Not at all.

Look at it this way: Thousands of people learn how to ski every year; it’s boring and totally not unique. If you’re going to write about an obstacle, it needs to be an obstacle that only 0.00005% of the world has overcome. Otherwise, you’re just like everybody else.

4. The “Look at How Super Deep I Am” Essay

Kids, don’t try to go on a philosophical rant in your college essays. Not only do you typically sound like a pretentious, self-important twerp pulling stuff out of your butt (and admissions officers know it), but these tirades also tell the reader absolutely nothing about you as as potential member of a college. Don’t get meta. If you want to talk about all the great deep thoughts inside your head, start a blog.

5. The All-Dialogue Essay

Note: Spending half of your 650 words going through a conversation you had with your sister is a complete snore and a total waste of time and space. Cut our dialogue unless it’s funny or actually moves the story along. Something like this is just really dull fluff:

“Sister,”I said to her.

“Yes?” she said back.

She looked at me with angst. “What?” she asked again.

Three lines in and you’re bored already, right?

6. The Way-Too-Extended Metaphor Essay

What do dumplings, crayons, and hoop earrings have in common? They’re all inanimate objects that have been used as extended metaphors in college essays, and all of those essays were not good.

Pulling off the extended metaphor essay is hard, and as you’ve learned by now, it’s best to go into essay writing with the mentality that you are the rule, not the exception. So stop trying to compare your life to a squashed kumquat you saw on the side of the road and find a different topic.

7. The “Lesson about Failure Where You Didn’t Really Fail” Essay

Remember that an admissions essay is still a story, and the best heroes and heroines have legitimate pitfalls. If your biggest failure is that you had a hangnail but you eventually took care of it, not only do you look shallow, but you also look dull. Failures need to be actual heart-stopping, “OMG, NOOO!” failures. Either commit to going all the way or avoid writing this type of essay altogether.

8. The Bat Mitzvah Essay

When the Common App prompt asks for something that marked your transition into adulthood, stay away from cultural or religious events that actually mark adulthood, like a bar/bat mitzvah or a confirmation ceremony or something. The best essays about transitions into adulthood deal with unforeseen shifts, not obvious ones (for example, my friend wrote about the different types of boxers he bought throughout high school. Shift to adulthood? Yes. Totally freaking clever? Heck yeah).

9. The Straight Up Cliche Essay

There are many topics that are way overdone besides the ones listed above. Some examples of what I mean:

  • The “What I learned at this academic conference/camp/event” essay
  • The “What my mom/dad/family taught me” essay
  • The “How I felt about moving to a whole new place or being in a new environment” essay
  • The “How I learned to fit in” essay
  • The “Death of person x” essay
  • The “How my parents’ divorce changed me” essay
  • The “Here’s a very vague essay about my family’s culture” essay

Again, these are just a few of the many examples of cliche essays.

supersquirrel

larkandkatydid:

My boss slaughters his egg chickens either every fall or every other fall depending on how old they are when he gets them, on the logic that the personal hassle and carbon foot print of getting chickens to lay eggs in the winter is not worth it. As he was explaining this recently, a newer co-worker asked how he hid that from his children.   And she’s new, which means she’s never had the delightfully goth experience of watching my boss’s two charming dimpled daughters who are ALSO deeply unsentimental farm children respond to you with utterly withering scorn if you ask them something like, as I once did, “oh, what’s that chicken’s name?” The oldest daughter, all of four years old at the time,  told me in a firm, Wednesday-Adams-talking-to-a-moron voice, “We’re going to eat them. They’re not pets.”

My boss, who is gentle and does not respond to people with scorn when they ask innocent questions, instead told her, “Oh, we’re pretty open with them about the facts of life. They know where babies come from and where chickens go.”

Anyway, that phrase haunts me and I wanted to share it with you. It sounds like some 19th century grandma saying. 

supersquirrel

adventuresinchronicpain:

lately I’ve been trying to stop referring to tasks as easy or hand and instead refer to them as low or high effort. for a long time I’d beat myself up for not being able to do “easy” tasks like write emails or whatever but ultimately writing emails might be a low effort task for someone else but it’s a high effort task for me. and something like reading a book for school might be high effort for some else but it’s low effort for me. using effort labels for tasks is personal and therefore removes the tendency to measure yourself to others bc “if this is easy why can’t I do it?” is such a bad way to think.