702: On Becoming: The Art and Craft of Personal Storytelling (Ep 2: Much Ado About Nothing) with Greg Ungar

Greg Ungar (00:00)
you

Ethan Sawyer (00:02)
you

Hey y'all and welcome back to the podcast. This is on becoming the art and craft of personal storytelling. This is a limited series we're doing where we're taking a close look at personal essays written by real students, not AI. And we get into why we love these stories, what makes them work and how they came to be. In this episode, we slow things down a little and we focus on one single essay, which the author calls much ado about nothing. Now this is a rare instance where a student actually used the title and

It really worked. So I'm joined by one of my closest friends, Dr. Greg Unger, who's a professor at the University of Denver. Quick background on Greg. He grew up in California and then spent six years working on the assembly line at General Motors before finding his way to college where reading and thinking changed the direction of his life. Greg went on to study philosophy and theater arts at UC Berkeley and later earned advanced degrees across a wide range of disciplines, including sociology,

criminal justice, acting, and theater and drama. He's someone who spent a lifetime thinking deeply about identity, about work and class and performance, and really what it means to make meaning out of our lived experiences. In our conversation, we take this essay apart, look at some of the storytelling choices that the author made. And if you're a student listening to this and you're writing a college essay, maybe you'll have something to take away from it.

but I'm hoping that y'all will just enjoy this as a beautiful piece of writing. All right, that's it. Let's get into it.

Hi Greg, welcome to the podcast.

Greg Ungar (01:48)
Hi, Ethan. Thank you. Happy to be here.

Ethan Sawyer (01:51)
Yeah.

I thought it might be fun to give to tell folks our story. Do you want to tell it or do you want me to tell it or should we use, do you want to start and then I'll chime in or do you want me to start?

Greg Ungar (02:03)
You start. You start. I will either chime in or not.

Ethan Sawyer (02:08)
Okay. I think it was like eight or 10 years ago. One of us was like, it would be fun to record the thing that we do for an audience. And the thing that we do is we get together and we read poetry and we talk about it and we talk about what we love about it. And Greg and I started to record these and we called it Tuesdays at two was the name we gave to it.

Do you remember that? Yeah. Because we would record them. But Tuesdays at two, we recorded a limited series podcast, which got deleted somehow. And then we stopped for a few years. And then for the past two to three years, especially when you got sick, we started recording again and we have some number of unreleased podcast episodes where we get together and we talk about writing we love. Yeah. What am I missing?

Greg Ungar (03:03)
I don't think you're missing anything. That's how I remember it. When you said that stuff got deleted, had forgotten that and I was trying to trace that out. But yeah, that's right. That's how it went.

Ethan Sawyer (03:18)
Why do we do this? What's in this for you?

Greg Ungar (03:22)
I love the feel of poetry and reading it aloud in my body and hearing it and all the journeys it takes me on. And I love you and connecting with you. And I get to do like my, you know, some of my favorite things by doing both. You?

Ethan Sawyer (03:46)
Yeah.

I could do this all day. Like I could do a hundred of these. I could do a thousand of these. The opportunity to sit and really like commune with you over language feels so rich and I get so much out of it that yeah, it feels like just a real privilege. And I think when I look back on my life,

I won't have regretted any of this time that we spent together because there's yeah, it's just so, I learn about myself. I learned about how you think. learned about how I learned about language. I learned about art. So that's some of it.

Greg Ungar (04:30)
Yeah. Yeah. And I would just say another thing is that I think you and I share this. I don't think I know you and I share this, that we love to have fun and do things together. And we also want it to feel useful and somehow structured or productive. We get to do all of that here.

Ethan Sawyer (04:55)
Right?

Greg Ungar (05:00)
Yeah.

Ethan Sawyer (05:03)
So I thought it'd be fun if we applied that quality of attention to some of these pieces that I've been really close to over the years. And when I was thinking about who would be fun to do this with, I was like, well, Greg, number one. So what if we jump into this essay, this piece here, and then if we want to talk about us at the end, we can or not? How does that sound? Great. Great.

Greg Ungar (05:29)
sense.

Ethan Sawyer (05:33)
The interesting thing about this essay that we're going to talk about today is that it actually has a title, which is rare in college essay land. Most college essays do not have a title and don't need a title. But the title for this one is much ado about nothing. Would you be down to read it? And then we'll talk about it.

Greg Ungar (05:50)
I would be down to read it. Thank you for giving me the chance. I just have a question because I don't know your world. Does a student think that a title makes it better? Like you should have one? that the way they are? Or it's just normative? No title.

Ethan Sawyer (06:10)
It's just sort of the normal thing. Students are generally responding to a prompt. And I think it depends on how much the student is thinking of it as a work of art, like a piece of writing. And some students who are writerly, I'll say, will maybe prefer one. Others are like, I'm responding to a prompt. And that's not to say if you're writerly, you should have a title. It's just that I think in most cases, students are like, I don't need one. And that's true. You don't need one. Yeah.

Greg Ungar (06:40)
Okay. Much ado about nothing. Up on a stage under the glowing spotlight and in front of the glowering judge, I felt as if nothing could get in my way. As would soon be evident, I was absolutely right.

The last kid got out on casserole. I eat casseroles for breakfast. But the first round of the Manhattan-wide spelling bee was definitely not the right time to learn a new word. Stammering into the microphone, I asked for a definition. The judge recited from the dictionary, the belief that the actions that one takes in life have no meaning or will amount to nothing. The auditorium clock was ticking.

carefully eyeing the disqualification bell I began to spell because I had no other options. N-I-A, ding. The judge had brought her hand down with the unabridged force of the entire English language. It was over. I was out, already beside my parents and the audience. Words, which had always been my infallible asset, had failed me.

In desperation for appeal, I looked up the word how I intended to spell it. Nihilism, N-I-A-L-I-S-M, a term frequently used by adolescents as a misspelling of the word nihilism. Source Urban Dictionary. I was stung by the bee. That day, I met a word that defined who I wasn't. To me,

Words are the very embodiment of spinning meaning out of thin air, squiggles into letters, into words, into stories. Therefore, nihilism betrayed the convention, doubting its own importance by claiming that nothing has meaning. How could I possibly have never come across nihilism in my life at all? I found the answer in my family.

Name any creative skill and I can point to a relative who is a whiz at it. Paint on a black canvas, musical notes, dividing silence and monologues on an otherwise empty stage are all my ways of disrupting the same blank void, turning nothing into something. In that respect, my creativity has been my inheritance. Nihilism just wasn't part of my world.

Encountering the word only gave me a name to what I had unwittingly striven towards from the start, creativity against nothing. Growing up, my New York City was filled with wonder. I would race up and down the pavement pointing out my own wondrous alphabet. Police barricades were bookended by stoic A's. Trees were tall, fractal, wise.

and lamp posts were arching lowercase R's. I saw kaleidoscopic, lexicographic beauty where others saw nothing out of the ordinary. I recognized the unseen potential of everything around me. Likewise, I always make the most out of any situation. Knowing that there is always a way to solve a problem walks hand in hand with my optimism, manifested in Model UN.

Whether using history as a powerful crisis management tool or making even the smallest of logistical alterations to keep teen morale afloat. Or in theater, where I wear the hats of playwright, lyricist, and actor simultaneously to help make the production worthwhile for both us and the audience. I have learned to improvise when needed and think ahead well in advance. Across the board, my peers and I put together new ideas

from a finite alphabet to make a finished product greater than the sum of its parts. Walking through my city with the Manhattan Borough president during my summer internship, I listened to profound stories from inspiring citizens and engaged in parts of my city often overlooked. I worked with my research partner to build voids with positive necessities, surveying empty school lots to locate possible future playground sites.

I'm excited for the new opportunities future children will have. In the ordinary locations where I had once seen my personal alphabet, I now see room for meaningful humanitarian change. Though opposed to nihilism, I am grateful for our encounter. For without the world's nothings, there would be no room for new somethings. I will never let nothing get in my way again.

What's busy in your head?

Ethan Sawyer (11:45)
Oh, so much. I mean, this is like this, this essay has become like an old friend, but actually like you, no, no, I don't mean old. I feel like every time I encounter it, there's something new that I see. It's something a little bit different, but I love, there's something that I could say about almost every short paragraph in this. So like every sentence, there's something new, something different, much ado about nothing.

It's such a satisfying title. I mean, it almost feels like the essay was written around it, you know? Yeah.

Greg Ungar (12:24)
It's perfect. It's a perfect type.

Ethan Sawyer (12:26)
It really is. mean, it's, and it's even better when you read the essay and you come back to it. It's like, it's surprising, but inevitable.

And the first sentence does, it sort of repeats it, but it, it actually helps me up on stage under the glowing spotlight and in front of the glowering judge. love how the glowing and glowering, you know, I felt as if nothing could get in my way. So there's already a pun that we don't know about, but then he says, as would soon be evident, I was absolutely right. Like, look, what is this person talking about?

Greg Ungar (13:04)
Yeah, totally.

Ethan Sawyer (13:07)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you notice in these first sentences?

Greg Ungar (13:11)
I read it before I read it aloud and I can see why more and more keeps showing up for you. Because I didn't catch how beautiful that intro was until this time in particular. And then the mysteries that are unraveled. The last kid got out on casserole, I eat casseroles for breakfast. I'm like, what is...

I don't know what's happening, but I'm in.

Ethan Sawyer (13:49)
Yeah. I'm realizing as we're reading this, that, that for a hook to, to really work, especially an extended hook, cause I would say this is like one, two, three sentences. The fourth sentence kind of delivers the context. need the, not an equal measure, but we need the right combination of hiding and revealing.

Right. We need, and we need to care about what's being hidden. The other thing that I noticed is that it's building trust for me quickly. Like all three of these sentences help me. They're, they're, they're so well crafted that I'm like, I, I can take my seatbelt off. like, let's just go. Like I'm, I'm down to go wherever you want to take me is how I feel when I read this. And that's so important at the start is like, and it's subtle cues that, that bring me into trust with this.

voice.

Greg Ungar (14:43)
Yeah, and I just, I love you bringing in the word trust, because that is so much a part of reading.

Ethan Sawyer (14:53)
I think we don't... Yeah, go, go, go, sorry.

Greg Ungar (14:55)
That's all really, don't pay attention to it, I guess. And when I'm feeling like things aren't going well in something I'm that can be one of the elements, for sure. Am I in good hands?

Ethan Sawyer (15:17)
Yeah, stammering into the microphone, I asked for a definition. The judge recited it gives us the dictionary definition, which by the way, in every other college essay, have hated when someone gives the dictionary definition of a thing like good goodness, you know, and then they'll give it, but the meta context of this, there's just, there's a something else that's going on. There's a question for the narrator. What? And there's a question for us. Like what is even the

what is even the word that they're defining. And the definition is given before the word, which I find really satisfying as well.

Greg Ungar (15:54)
Yes,

yes. And I, I love, I get such a world with these two words. The judge recited, three words with the thought, judge recited. mean, cause I've been exposed to documentaries or maybe I've gone to a spelling, I was in a spelling bee once and that, ⁓ just such a world of that judge.

Ethan Sawyer (16:21)
The clock ticking and I can I can almost hear the the belief that the actions that well, know the sort of monotone So it places me there. Yes Expertly like it's and I always can feel the camera work happening here stammering into the microphone I asked for a definition, you know the close-up on you know, and then cut to the judge reciting from the dictionary Yeah, you know nice use of dialogue here in quotes

Greg Ungar (16:27)
Totally.

Ethan Sawyer (16:47)
And I love the way you read it. You know, I began to spell, I had no other options. I love that line too. I began to spell because I had no other options.

Greg Ungar (16:54)
And know, just jumping ahead, hadn't caught it until now. N-I-A and the writer

Ethan Sawyer (17:01)
then

Greg Ungar (17:08)
is spelling it incorrectly.

Ethan Sawyer (17:11)
Just

Greg Ungar (17:12)
And they get the ding not because they were spelling it incorrectly, but they ran out of time.

Ethan Sawyer (17:19)
Yeah. Maybe. I like that. Well, I it's funny because I made up that it was, they spelled it incorrectly and that's why they got the ding.

Greg Ungar (17:27)
Well, I, do you only get one shot at a spelling bee?

Ethan Sawyer (17:32)
I think so. think it runs out.

Greg Ungar (17:34)
I would think they would let you finish the whole thing before they say you were.

Ethan Sawyer (17:38)
Oh,

maybe not. not. Maybe they let you go back. Yeah. don't know. Yeah. And the thing, the judge brought her hand down with the unabridged force of the entire English language. It was over.

Greg Ungar (17:42)
We'll have to A-Y-O-N

And

I loved that unabridged because that's a word you come across with books a lot. The Webster's unabridged dictionary, that's just a beautiful, beautiful move there.

Ethan Sawyer (17:59)
Yeah.

The variety in sentence length, don't often talk about this because I don't want, like when I'm talking to students, I don't want them to obsess about it, but ding, the judge had brought her hand down with the unabridged force, the entire English language. It was over. Just that, the way that that's pulling me, I was out already beside my parents in the audience. I mean, that's like, that's so poetic. Words, which had always been my infallible asset had failed me. In desperation for appeal, I looked up the word how it intended to spell it.

Nihilism. I love quoting of the Urban Dictionary there. then just...

Greg Ungar (18:43)
⁓ And I misread. Did I spell it? Yeah, that's not what's in the essay. In the essay, it's just NIA. It's not that, it's nihilism.

Ethan Sawyer (18:49)
You did.

I liked that you read it because it gave the reader. He was not looking at the words, essentially. I was stunned by the bee.

Greg Ungar (19:04)
Mmm.

Ethan Sawyer (19:06)
And then, so what's happened structurally is like the, the, the author has answered our initial question of like, what's going on here, what's happening, but they're like new questions are emerging for us, right? All kinds of versions of so what, so why are you telling me this story about missing this? Like it's, it's, it's time, right. And the essay to know where is this going? did you mean? It's probably not, how did you deal with this loss?

But I think subconsciously, like we're ready for something that gives us, you know, insight and gives us some sense of where we're headed because it's sort of answered the question of the essay so far. That day, the author says, I met a word that defined who I wasn't. And the author intentionally italicizes wasn't to me, words are the very embodiment of spinning meeting out of thin air squiggles into letters, into words, into stories. And there are these moments where this author is doing this, doing these like,

flourishes and I tell students like if you If you know some stuff about some stuff like Flex on it like give me if you do parkour like give me a clip of your parkour video if you Understand certain particularities of physics or whatever it is like give us a push and if language is your thing Like I want to see you. I want to see your language

Greg Ungar (20:32)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, in some mysterious way, in some of it's a mystery, the passion for the thing will come out in the writing. It will feel it.

Ethan Sawyer (20:47)
Yeah. Therefore, nihilism betrayed convention, doubting its own importance by claiming that nothing has meaning. I have to slow down on this one. You got something?

Greg Ungar (20:58)
I don't have something, I definitely had to think about that.

Ethan Sawyer (21:05)
Yeah, so the author says, that day I met a word that defined who I wasn't. Therefore, nihilism betrayed convention, doubting its own importance by claiming that nothing has meaning.

Greg Ungar (21:17)
Clever.

Ethan Sawyer (21:19)
by claiming that nothing has meaning. ⁓ huh. I see it now. So it's not that nothing has meaning. It's that nothing put in brackets as a concept has meaning. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the much ado about nothing. Right. Nice.

Greg Ungar (21:38)
doubting its own importance is so great.

Ethan Sawyer (21:42)
Yeah. Right.

Greg Ungar (21:44)
And yet, right in my experience, the concept is huge. It's important. But that's there in the word. Especially if you're preaching nihilism as a way of being.

Ethan Sawyer (21:52)
Yeah.

Right?

could I possibly have never come across nihilism in my life at all? So what begins as an innocent question and also a philosophical question of like sort of like inward turning reflective becomes the question that's going to carry us through the rest of the essay. And structurally, I just want to name that like, you know, when we've answered the one question of what's going on in this essay, what's happening here, we need something else that's going to carry us and have us leaning in curious, right?

through the rest of the story. And it starts with this, how could I have never come across Nihilism, my family at all? And then boom, we're launched on this journey. And we're gonna essentially, this is like what I call a hybrid essay where it like starts as a narrative challenge. I mean, it's the challenge, it's not a serious challenge, but it's like the challenge of getting knocked out of a spelling bee that then just on ramps to a montage of like, we're gonna talk about family.

We're going to talk about wonder. I live. We're going to talk about model United nations. We're going to talk about this internship all on this quest. So it's like, this is the launching of the quest.

Greg Ungar (23:14)
Yeah, and on that journey, I'm engaged at a pretty high intellectual level too. Nihilism, is sitting with me throughout. The idea of nothing is sort of running in the background while they give us so much.

Ethan Sawyer (23:39)
That's a great point. When I look at like a college essay, for instance, there's like, the lens sometimes is like relatively superficial. So the lens could sometimes be something like a pop culture figure or something else that could be lighter. This actually, the lens here, you're right. There's a second layer that's elevating it.

Greg Ungar (24:04)
Absolutely, for me that is.

Ethan Sawyer (24:09)
You know, I just in my head created a big spectrum of like lenses. And I was like, when it comes to sort of like, again, college essays in particular, I think you could kind of spectrum the lenses. It's like, and on one end is like, I don't know what's on, I don't know what's on the ends of the spectrum, but it's like, it's like nihilism is on one end and like, and Harry Styles is on the other end. Yeah. I don't want to get too specific with that. Cause I feel like that's going to, we're going to get into stereotypes or like generalities.

Yeah. But I think it is something to consider. Yeah. ⁓

Greg Ungar (24:42)
Well, I want to ask you something because I don't know your world. people often ever take the risk of trying to be funny?

Ethan Sawyer (24:53)
yes. Great. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And when it works and it's, what I think is like when it works best is when it's like when there's irony.

And I think what I mean by irony is like there's clear, it's like comedy mixed with intelligence mixed with self awareness. Yeah.

Greg Ungar (25:19)
Yeah, I would imagine that in this world, what we're trying to do is, here I am. The humor, that makes perfect sense.

Ethan Sawyer (25:26)
Right. So.

Yeah.

What has you asked?

Greg Ungar (25:34)
I read a couple of these and I was just thinking and I, and nothing, there was no humor, at least in any traditional or whatever sense I'm used to. And that didn't bother me at all. Totally compelling essays, but I just felt curious. Yeah. The role of humor in this I can imagine is a little tricky.

Ethan Sawyer (25:58)
Yeah. One thing I really appreciate is when an author is willing to go back and forth between, you know, to come in and out of humor. So I'll notice it, for instance, when things get serious in an essay, and then the author brings in some bit of like self-effacing humor or something funny and then flipping it, you know, that the author isn't trying to be funny throughout, but they're willing to go deep and be vulnerable.

I think neither are required, it just gives it such great variety.

Greg Ungar (26:31)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ethan Sawyer (26:33)
I noticed speaking of variety, lot of like create like values in the, in the next paragraphs, like name any creative skill. And I can point to a relative who's a whiz at it. So already we've got creativity and family and then paint on a blank canvas, musical notes, monologues, turning nothing into something. My creativity has been my inheritance. Just a beautiful line. Great nihilism just wasn't part of my world. Wasn't just wasn't part of my world.

encountering the word only gave a name to what I'd unwittingly striven towards from the start. Creativity against nothing. Yeah. Like there's a real putting a stake in the ground. Like it's a sort of, know, yeah. An ode to creativity and in my life. And then the new, the new paragraph has a new value growing up. My New York city was filled with wonder. Race up and down the pavement, seeing the pointing out my own wondrous alphabet.

police barricades book ended by stoic A's trees were tall fractal wise even little words like fractal. Yeah. ⁓ I saw kaleidoscopic lexicographic beauty where others saw nothing out of the ordinary. I recognize the unseen potential of everything around me.

Greg Ungar (27:39)
So good.

And there we are, right? Unseen potential, nothing. And that's an interesting paragraph, right? Because there's this race up and down. There's this movement forward. I can imagine this person, this kid, seeing all this and it's of starts marching, right? Forward and in that moment, I was definitely.

Where are we going together in the nothing? And then they land the plane.

Ethan Sawyer (28:25)
You know, it reminds me of the Phantom Tollbooth. Do you remember that book?

Greg Ungar (28:31)
I remember the title.

Ethan Sawyer (28:32)
It's it's a kid's book that I reread to Zola recently. And it's just got these fantastical. Visions and images. I, I, I think that students oftentimes will be like nervous to take risks like this, but this feels like a risk that pays off. And again, it's showing a skill or quality that's like, and here's what I would bring to a community, the ability to recognize the unseen potential of everything around me. Like, please join us on our campus.

Greg Ungar (29:03)
Totally. And that reminded me when you said, take a risk. That was a word that came to mind with the word used in the essay, fractal. I was like, yeah, that's bold. But you've earned my trust, so you can use that word.

Ethan Sawyer (29:20)
Yeah. So we've got creativity. We've got family. We've got wonder. Something about this feels like adventure, like seeing things. There's also this like equality that I would call like perspective taking. That's so important for colleges these days. Like, can you take the perspective of others? Can you see things that others don't see or, you know, can't see or aren't seeing? Yeah. I mean, especially in such like a

in the last couple of years, a politically charged climate, it's like, where can you see good? Where can you see possibility? Where can you see yourself, you know, in others? So I'm seeing that here in a very apolitical way, just in a sort of like, hey, I see possibilities.

Greg Ungar (30:06)
Yeah, that's beautifully said. Excites me hearing that. It sort of asks, just you bringing it up, I feel like I want to do that more.

Ethan Sawyer (30:11)
Yeah.

Likewise, I always make the most out of any situation, knowing there's always a way to solve a problem. Walks hand in hand with my optimism. Here's a new quality. So we've gone from creativity to wonder to optimism. Side note, technically, all these values are being named in the first sentence of these paragraphs. And yeah, I make up that that was intentional. I wouldn't say, okay, every student writing a college, say name a value in the first sentence. In fact, I didn't even notice it. I've read this essay.

40 times or more. And I didn't notice that the author was doing that until just now.

manifested in Model United Nations. Here's the weave in, the college essay moment.

Greg Ungar (31:01)
Yes,

yes, I'm grateful to hear you say that because I felt that I felt like, okay, here we go with a real kind of I don't know if it's typical. I don't know what it is, but it's okay.

Ethan Sawyer (31:15)
Yeah, how did it feel? This one.

Greg Ungar (31:17)
I felt happy. was like, yes, and this is part of the job. This is something you have to do when you're writing your college essay probably, but I'm so with you that I want go with you more.

Ethan Sawyer (31:33)
Yeah, whether using history as a powerful crisis management tool or making even the smallest of logistical alterations to keep team morale afloat or in theater, where I the hats of playwright, lyricist and actor simultaneously to help make the production worthwhile for both us and the audience.

Greg Ungar (31:49)
Well, one, just, the fact that the writer, I mean, I'm in the theater. So the fact that the writer points to making a production worthwhile for the audience just makes me Sorry, I interrupted you.

Ethan Sawyer (32:08)
No,

that's fine. It's a long sentence. mean, it's manifested in UN in these ways or in theater where I wear all these different hats to make it worthwhile. I've learned to improvise. So there's another one, another skill when needed and think ahead while in advance. mean, another thing that I'm, go ahead, say what you're gonna say.

Greg Ungar (32:29)
to say, think ahead well in advance is really interesting. That's all I have.

Ethan Sawyer (32:34)
Yeah, I was noticing that too. The thing I notice here is like.

A couple years ago, I realized to what extent roles and identities are so important in these pieces. And this was an essay that was sent to me like five or six years ago when I basically had a sort of an essay review live session. And I was like, Hey, submit your essays for review. And the student submitted it. And I was like, well, you could, think there was a video somewhere of me like reacting real time to it. Just like, I think you're good. Like no notes, you know,

And I was just like, and the student had written several drafts and you know, and I think they said more than 10. And so I was like, okay, good, you know, and I wanted, and I wanted to like, let people know that, that they don't just come in, these don't just, you know, fall out of the back of the truck like this. But one of the things that I was gratified to reread when I read this one, whenever it was yesterday or today, is that these, that students for years have been talking about these different hats.

playwright, lyricist, actor. And it's sort of like, Oh yeah, this happens. Then in other words, I was kind of like self-conscious. think that I had like this roles and identities thing was something that I was sort of impressing upon as opposed to discovering something that's kind of been there all along. And I feel, I think I feel a little bit of relief going like, ah, yes, here's another essay where a student has subtly and artfully woven in the invisible hats that they wear and the

impact that has on me is like, I'm excited to know these different sides of you. I'm excited to know that you can be both the playwright, you know, and the lyricist and the actor, like that you have these different, cause each one suggests different set of skills. So I love when students do that. And I was loving just the little roles and identities sprinkled in here. Great. Great.

Greg Ungar (34:21)
Mm-hmm.

And I appreciated the putting side by side model UN and theater.

Ethan Sawyer (34:37)
Me too. Yeah.

Greg Ungar (34:39)
which sometimes I think for whatever reasons, it's either you're a model UN person or you're a theater person or you're a biologist or you're a dancer or like art and something else.

Ethan Sawyer (34:56)
That's so beautifully observed. love, so now I'm drawing a technique out of this. It's like, what are those roles that just exist side by side? I wanna explain, you don't need to even like, say many people, you you just put them side by side.

Greg Ungar (35:12)
That's right. That's right. And let the audience do what I did. They did it to me.

Ethan Sawyer (35:18)
Yeah. Yeah. How did these work inside of you? Like how did these show up? that's great. Yeah. It actually makes me want to think of like an exercise that's like, okay, imagine, think of these different parts of you that could potentially collide and then put them next to each other or find what, you know, what they have in common in case it's that ability to improvise.

Or when students are trying to come up with examples of improvising, like be varied in your examples of it, you know, walking through my city. Again, this is the conclusion, but Manhattan borough president during my summer internship, I listened to profound stories from inspiring citizens engaged in parts of my city often overlooked. Now this is checking an important box of like community service, helping others. I worked with my research partner to fill voids with positive necessities. So there's a, just a beautiful little weaving in of like, okay.

What does this thing on your extracurricular activities have to do with any of this? positive necessity serving empty school lots to locate possible future playground sites. Again, empty nothing.

Greg Ungar (36:25)
something.

Ethan Sawyer (36:26)
I'm excited for the new opportunities future children will have. In the ordinary locations where I'd once seen my personal alphabet, I now see room for meaningful humanitarian change.

Greg Ungar (36:36)
Yeah, and I just want to point out future children instead of children because future children are nothing.

Ethan Sawyer (36:44)
Wow. I bet you that one for the author wouldn't even have spotted and realized, but maybe that's really good. Yeah.

Greg Ungar (36:53)
So smart.

Ethan Sawyer (36:54)
For anybody wondering, do college admission readers read this slowly? The answer is a definite no. Like, will they catch future children, the subtlety of that? Probably not, but I love that you did.

Greg Ungar (37:07)
And I would argue that they don't consciously catch it, but it's working on them, I think.

Ethan Sawyer (37:18)
I think I sometimes think of this as like the roux. I don't know a lot about cooking, but I know that there is this dish that is typically made in New Orleans that requires this like thick broth and the quality of the roux, the R-O-U-X, the flour, everything that you put into that, the seasoning of that, even though it's going to kind of like get cooked in, you taste it.

Greg Ungar (37:45)
Mm-hmm.

Ethan Sawyer (37:46)
Like it disappears, but it doesn't disappear. Yeah. know, speaking of invisible things.

Greg Ungar (37:52)
Hehehehehe

Ethan Sawyer (37:55)
Beautiful. And that's what I want to, I hope that students remember is that this work that you put in, when it comes to the final draft, yeah, someone might skip over it. They might not catch all the nuance, but as you're pointing out, something is happening, even on a subtle level with the receiver. And I want to go one step further and say, and something is happening in you, I think in the work that it's taking to get to that.

phrasing, that understanding, that subtlety, that thing, like you're improving your ability to look more closely, to refine a thing, to care, you know? Yeah.

Greg Ungar (38:39)
Yeah, you're becoming too.

Ethan Sawyer (38:42)
Yeah.

Greg Ungar (38:43)
Your start when we write, it feels like there's nothing there on the blank page. It becomes something not only on the page. I just repeat, not as well what you just said.

Ethan Sawyer (39:00)
though opposed to nihilism, I'm grateful for our encounter. For without the world's nothings, it's an italics. There will be no room for new somethings, also an italics. And this killer last line, I will never let nothing get in my way again.

Greg Ungar (39:17)
It's

just like, also so smart, though opposed to nihilism, you know, just so you know, not a nihilist, things have meaning. I, you know, I read that and I, I already know that's true based on what I've read that this writer is not a nihilist or at least whatever impression I have of what a nihilist is, you know.

Ethan Sawyer (39:27)
Just to be-

Greg Ungar (39:47)
I don't know, but I love that they include.

Ethan Sawyer (39:50)
Yeah, me too. Yeah, it's like, think it's called hanging a lantern. It's like speaking the thing that someone might object to, you know, or might wonder about.

Greg Ungar (40:05)
This Lear line comes to mind, which I think this author would disagree with. Lear asks his daughter, one of his daughters, but one of them says, I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to praise you the way my sisters have. she says, he says something like, say something. And she says, some version of nothing. She says, you know, I can, what can you say? Nothing. And he says, nothing will come of nothing.

Speak again.

Ethan Sawyer (40:38)
It's just, you know.

Greg Ungar (40:41)
Something

will come of nothing. I'm convinced that this writer is correct and Lear is wrong. I mean, Lear means you're not gonna get any land if you don't speak, but I am moved by this piece to believe in the some things that come from nothing.

Ethan Sawyer (41:06)
Yeah, as you're sharing that, realized that like, I think this piece actually has shifted a little bit the way that I think about nothing. And I don't want to name that as like a bar for students listening potentially. like, I should strive to make the reader rethink a concept.

That's not a goal. I don't think that should be the primary goal of your college essay, but it is the impact that this story had on me. Is that when I come into contact with nothing, or sort of this concept, even especially in a playful context, it's got me thinking about it differently.

Greg Ungar (41:47)
Mm-hmm. Me too.

Ethan Sawyer (41:50)
Thanks for being here.

Greg Ungar (41:53)
Thank you, that was really fun.

Ethan Sawyer (41:59)
Thanks friends, as ever, for listening. You'll find the show notes at collegeessayguide.com slash podcast, including the text of this essay, the one we discussed, so you can check it out if you like. If you're interested in more from us, just sign up for anything at collegeessayguide.com. That's any of the opt-ins or free resources, and we'll share with you our latest resources, our upcoming free live events, and lots more. That's it. Stay curious.