Hooked on a Feeling
There’s no one-size-fits-all guidance on how to select the best topic for your college essay. This work is so highly personal that the advice I would give one student isn’t the advice I’d give another.
Some students will take a look at the Common App essay prompts and an idea will spark, and they’ll be off the races. Others will feel a similar spark but will reject it, worried it’s too common or boring, and keep searching. And still others – countless others – will rack their brains and memories and experiences and come up with…nothing.
Years and years ago, I created a devastatingly simple rubric to help guide my students in the selection of their essay topic. Embarrassingly obvious guidance that was not so obvious to seniors applying to college. The first bullet-point on my genius rubric was: Good college essays start with content that makes you feel something. For our purposes, any significant emotion will do! One objective of your college essay is to make the story come alive to the stranger reading your words, to make them feel something when they read. But you need to feel it first. Think in terms of extremity – thrills, cringes, joy, desperation. What events or moments in your life summon significant emotion when you think about them?
Ages ago I worked with a great student from a huge high school in Charlotte, NC. Teddy was totally stumped on the topic for his Common App essay. He had some possibilities – a sport, an instrument – but he felt like nothing was really landing. Instead of searching his memories for subjects, I told Teddy to start with his feelings and think instead about moments that generated real emotion.
As it turned out, Teddy did have an emotional moment to share. He had mostly flown under the radar at his giant high school. He was quiet, more of an observer. And by almost sheer luck, he’d been voted class rep, a post he only agreed to take on because of its low profile. It was mostly meetings and light duty. Later that year, the school was holding a huge pep rally in the gym, which was filled to the brim with the entire student body. Teddy was up front with the rest of the student government crew, waiting for the rally to wrap up, when the student body president began leading the school-wide chant into the mic. But then, he turned around and presented the mic to Teddy. Teddy froze. Teddy did not want the mic. Teddy did not want to lead the chant. But now, the noises from the crowd had shifted, and the screams of the students became something different. “TED-DY! TED-DY! TED-DY!” Teddy felt embarrassed, no, actually he felt nauseous and completely freaked out being the center of attention in an entire gym of his peers. He wanted to run away. But instead he took the mic, and quietly, and then not so quietly, Teddy began to lead the chant. Louder and louder and louder until the entire gym went berserk.
In the days and weeks that followed, Teddy went back to being low-key Teddy, but now, he was known. By everyone. And as he sat across the table from me, this was the moment that bubbled up for him. This was the moment that stood out to him more than any other. Now, he couldn’t think of anything else. “But what do I do with that?” Teddy asked. “I don’t even know why I care about it so much. I don’t even know what it means!”
It’s true, Teddy didn’t know what to make of this memory that he couldn’t ignore. But I did. I knew exactly how to help him interrogate this moment and uncover its meaning. Which is exactly what we did. And it all started with just a feeling.