Hey friends, and welcome back to the podcast. This is our series called On Becoming, the art and craft of personal storytelling, where we take a close look at real essays by real students, and we analyze what makes them work, why we love them, and how they came to be. So in today's episode, we've got an essay that begins with this sentence. Robes are the textile version of comfort food. They're my chicken noodle soup. And it is indeed about the different robes that this student wears.

and how each one of them shows a different side of who the author is. I'm joined by Andrew Callery, who is a college counselor at Detroit Country Day School, who aside from his day job working with students, helping them tell their stories, has for the past nine years in his free time volunteered in our Matchlighter Scholars Program, which is a program that pairs high achieving low income students with amazing counselors and essay coaches for 10 hours of free one-on-one support.

So if you are a high achieving, low income student, you're applying to college this year, or if you're a counselor interested in volunteering, go to collegeSAGuy.com slash match lighters, or you can check out the link in the show notes. We'd love to have you. In this episode, Andrew and I get into where this idea of writing about robes came from in the first place, how the student shows which sides of herself that she wanted to show and connect them to the different robes, how students can briefly weave in a learning difference.

into a single paragraph in a personal statement. And I share a couple of tips for sticking the landing when it comes to the ending of the personal statement. If you're the kind of person who likes seeing how things get made, whether it's a great meal or a board game or a movie, this is the podcast for you. Andrew Callery is a graduate of Villanova University and the University of San Francisco, where he studied psychology with an emphasis in counseling. He's worked in both public and private high schools as a counselor, loves helping students craft essays that are genuine reflections of their lived experience. Andrew's also worked for a number of years as an admissions reader with a highly selective institution, and he's read thousands of essays as a result. Hey, if you want to follow along on the essay that we're reading, you can find it on our show notes page at collegeessayguy.com slash podcast. Hope you enjoy.

Hi Andrew, welcome to the podcast.

Andrew Callery (02:34)
Ethan, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here today.

Ethan Sawyer (02:37)
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you. I'd love for you to set context for this essay that we're talking about today. How did it come to be?

Andrew Callery (02:47)
So, you know, I'm a big fan of the brainstorming exercises that you and the team have put together. And I think that the 21 details exercise is at face value really simple and yet also really profound. And so when I was working with this student, she was really great at truly embracing sort of the stream of consciousness that we invite students to get into when they're doing an exercise like that. And... One of the details that she included was that she had a collection of robes. And I don't think she thought anything of it. It was just, that's something that I collect. And, you know, it's not every day that I see a student talk about a robe collection. So in my mind, ⁓ I sort of went to like, could this be a great metaphor for us highlighting different aspects of who this person is? Because I always love a montage essay, to be honest. I think narrative essays are great for students who aren't willing to take that risk, but for students who are and who have a lot of different things about them that I think colleges would be interested to learn about. think the montage works so well. So I pitched the idea to her about using robes as an analogy for who she is and what she brings to any community that she's a part of. And she was willing to run with it. So we had a lot of fun thinking about all the different, I think she's got like 20 robes. So obviously we couldn't do 20 different paragraphs, but we had to narrow down which of her robes she felt like would best symbolize the thing that she was gonna talk about in each paragraph. And we had a really good time with it. So all of this is to say, I love the 21 details exercise, hashtag 21 details exercise. And I think that it can really lend itself well to a unique essay.

Ethan Sawyer (04:41)
Yeah, I love what you're saying. It's just for folks who are listening who aren't sure what that means. Like we basically have this exercise where you just named 21 random facts about yourself and you just get as expansive and as weird and as specific as you can. And sometimes interesting things happen and sometimes it ends up being detail for a supplemental essay or sometimes if a student's writing about, you know, something that they will bring to a roommate scenario. It's like, here's the perfect detail for the third sentence. And sometimes it leads to a whole topic as it did with us. So it's really cool. And the thing that I take from this, Andrew, is I want students to encourage them to be expansive in their brainstorming and to kind of go broad. Because if you get sort of hooked into your first idea, which might be like something connected to extra curricular activity or, you know, that particular challenge that you're facing that month, you might miss out on these opportunities to find a topic that is expansive to talk about lots of different sides of you, like this could be. And that montage that you're talking about for folks who don't know what that is, that's basically just choosing a theme and then using that theme to jump around in space and time and talk about lots of different sides of yourself.

Andrew Callery (05:57)
Yeah, when I was first getting started in college admissions, I just printed out a list of the Common App essay prompts and I would give that to the student that I was working with and say, which one do you want to write about? That's where I was in that point in my career. But since I've grown and since I've learned a lot more about different approaches to helping students brainstorm, I actually find that let's figure out the Common App essay prompt later. Right now, let's do some exercises and generate different topic or different ideas and then we'll make it fit with one of those. And so, you know, I don't think we would have been able to say a Ropes collection would be an answer to a common app prompt. We got there and it worked out really well for her.

Ethan Sawyer (06:36)
Right, great. Well, I've got all sorts of questions about this one, but I'd love for folks to just hear it as a story, as a piece. Would you be down to just to read it through for us and then we can talk about it?

Andrew Callery (06:47)
Be happy to. Robes are the textile version of comfort food. They're my chicken noodle soup. I wear my robes like I wear my values, openly and comfortably. They are not just confined to Netflix binges or study marathons. Allow me to unravel the stories behind four of my cherished robes. First up is my luscious royal blue crinkled velvet treasure adorned with a Ravenclaw crest. This is my get lost in a book robe, imbued with triumphant memories of the first novel I ever voluntarily read cover to cover, despite struggling with dyslexia. Picture this, a third grader trembling before a sizable congregation tasked with reading Psalm 139 verse 14. I was terrified of stumbling over the words. The only four letters I could focus on, F-E-A-R, weighing me down. Now envision an 11th grader confidently interviewing the CEO of Kindbars in front of 400 people. Leading the interview, I focused on connection unburdened by my past fear of reading aloud. If my third grade self had owned a wand, I would have wished away my dyslexia and a heartbeat. Now I know better. The challenge is where the real magic happens. Next, meet my floor length fuzzy masterpiece in deep plum. This is my quirky, comfy robe lovingly worn down to threadbare perfection. Its unconventional charm reflects my early educational journey. Imagine eight years in a one-room schoolhouse actively learning through quests instead of tests and being guided by mentors and Socratic dialogue rather than traditional teachers. Whether we were designing and building dueling capture the flag towers for our playground or recreating explosive special effects from movie sets. I loved it because we were a team, learning from our failures and each other. Older students were my primary support system whenever I was stuck. My experiences with this diverse group of mentors shaped how I lead and developed my appreciation for the unique gifts that each individual brings to a group, no matter how quirky. Now I pay it forward, pouring myself into mentoring younger students as a physics TA, and leading my school's efforts to cultivate a community of inclusivity and belonging. Enter my pink, cute, girly number. While it might exude an aura of feminine softness, this robe is my challenge the norms statement. Shattering expectations seems unavoidable for me given my interest in STEM, sports, and fashion. My friends laugh at my split screen featuring a flipping physics video and a smoky eye makeup tutorial.

As the only female house cup leader for my grade, people know me as a go-getter. Whether my science teachers are assembling a competitive TEAMS roster, or the boys in my grade are recruiting a coach for their must-win rec soccer grudge match, I'm their person. As a female in STEM and sports, I'm comfortable being my authentic self. I wear my pink girly robe proudly.

Lastly, say hello to my chalky blue mulberry silk wrap, a secondhand gem thrifted on thread up. I prize it not only for its buttery softness, but also for its sustainability. This robe made from renewable resources and sourced through online consignment is the tangible embodiment of my future aspiration to integrate superior materials, processes, technologies and designs to minimize environmental impact.

I have been fortunate to have learned from engineers in labs, factories, and makerspaces who inspired my love for solving real-world problems using math, science, and entrepreneurial innovation. This robe is dedicated to sustainability, just like I hope my future as an engineer will be. Trimming my wardrobe down to dorm closet dimensions will inevitably require leaving behind some of my most beloved and comfortable robes. Each symbolizes earned wisdom,

Yet I recognize I'll need to carve out space for fresh robes and the new lessons, people, and experiences they reflect. After all, the real journey begins at the end of a comfort zone.

Ethan Sawyer (11:17)
So good. So good. Yeah. What do you?

Andrew Callery (11:20)
Right?

What do you do? Something like that in high school? Absolutely not.

Ethan Sawyer (11:26)
Same, Gosh, there's so much here. There's so much grounds that this piece covers. Well, let me ask you, what do you notice? Because you've looked at this a few times. Just hearing it aloud today as we're recording this, is there anything different or new that you're noticing as you hear it today?

Andrew Callery (11:49)
You know, I'm struck by her humanity in this. I'm struck by her confidence. Like she's owning who she is. She's owning what she's struggled with. She's owning the fact that she's okay with talking about her robe collection. I just love how authentic and kind of unabashed this essay is. And like, it's not, she's not bragging. She's just kind of saying like, this is who I am. These are the things that I've learned. These are the things I've gone through.

Here's all the things I'm gonna bring with me if you want me to be part of your community next year. I just love this essay.

Ethan Sawyer (12:25)
Yeah, me too. I'm curious, how did you help this student figure out, I could say which robes to focus on, but it's really like which sides of herself she wanted to show that, you know, that I imagine she connected to the robes. I'm assuming that she picked the sides of herself first and then the robes versus the other way around, but you tell me, how did that go?

Andrew Callery (12:44)
think we talked about which aspects of her we wanted to, she wanted to include in her essay. And we started with the values exercise. So our goal at the end of every personal statement is to kind of, if we had to boil it down into a sentence, or when I talk to my students, I say like, when you think about your admissions rep presenting you to the committee, what is it that you want them to say they learned about you from your essay? And so when we were looking at her core values,

I asked her, what are some life experiences that you can talk about that will illustrate these values kind of in action? So we ⁓ tapped into her educational history when she was growing up and how she had that really unique experience of being in a one-room schoolhouse, which is really uncommon, I have to think. And we talked about how that informed her leadership style. We talked about authenticity and how that...

showed up for her being a female in STEM who was very proudly a nerd, I would say, but also very proudly someone who liked fashion, liked to express herself with a unique style. So the values really kind of fed into the life experiences that then led into each of the paragraphs that we could attach to one of the robes. I did ask her to kind of give me a tour of her robe collection and tell me about the fabrics and the colors, because that was a fun

aspect of this essay too, is she's really descriptive with how she describes, with how she talks about her robes and the materials and even like the fact that one of them is threadbare. You know, like I loved that aspect, that description.

Ethan Sawyer (14:23)
You know, the experience I'm having when reading it is like almost like the experience when someone or when a student, for instance, says, you know, here's a journal and they take me inside their journal and they sort of show me select pages or they say, you here's a photo album. It's important to me. And they take me through the photos. I had this experience of it's yeah, I'm going back to this term. Like it's a, it's sort of like a safe intimacy where it's personal, but it's, it's guided and it's controlled because the student is really has a sense of agency about which pieces of themselves that they're showing.

which to me seems like the college essay or application in general, but it's like, I love this version of it that the students bringing here.

Andrew Callery (15:00)
Yeah, think, again, I think that's the beauty of the montage essay is that each paragraph is something brand new. You know, it's tied together with that common theme, but there's really no predicting where a student is going to go when they're talking about whatever the object is that they're using as the metaphor. I have to imagine, I've never been in a committee room, but I have to imagine, you know, this probably worked well for her. I mean, I do know that she did get into the college that she was targeting.

But I have to think that like for the admissions reader who was reading this and then having to, you know, kind of go to bat for her in the committee room, talking about this essay gave him or her so many like good little nuggets to be able to talk about.

Ethan Sawyer (15:44)
Yeah, I've noticed, I want to get into the text of the essay in just a second, but I've noticed there's this trend, it seems, in counseling, where more and more admission officers, they're reading fast, and they're, in some cases, in those counselor rec letters, looking for bullet points. They're trying to get the information relatively quickly. I'd love to check with you, and as a school counselor, I'm curious, in your recommendation letters.

Are you finding yourself using the bullet point or are you sticking to narrative? And I asked this because I think that in some ways this structure kind of provides really beautiful bullet points that are very easy to digest and they're palatable. But just as a sidebar for a second, have you noticed that trend as well in recommendation letters, either your own letters or of colleagues?

Andrew Callery (16:38)
Yeah, I'm still writing a narrative letter of recommendation, but what I have started to do is to bold certain phrases that I want to make sure that I'm drawing the reader's eyes to. Because, you know, I read for a selective institution. I know what it's like to start fresh at the beginning of the day, and I know what it's like to reach the end of the day. And I want to make sure that if the student that I'm working with is at the end of the day, that I'm making that job as easy as possible on that reader to get the nuggets that I want them to get.

So I haven't moved to a bullet point format, although I do hear from college folks all the time that they're very happy to have that format. I kind of am in the middle. I do the narrative, and I also bold the things that I want them to see.

Ethan Sawyer (17:22)
Well, let's get into some of the craft of this thing. There's the opening sentence here. Robes are the textile version of comfort food. They're my chicken noodle soup. Like where did that come from?

Andrew Callery (17:33)
That was completely her. I wish I could take credit for that, but I can't. It's just so, like, I just love it. Like, it's so honest. Like, when she, I imagine like when she gets home, she throws on a robe and that's her way of sort of decompressing and feeling comfortable. And, and I, like, yeah, chicken soup. There we go. Everyone can associate with that.

Ethan Sawyer (17:37)
I'm glad you're not.

Yeah. She says, I wear my robes. Like I wear my values openly and comfortably. They're not just confined to next Netflix binges or study marathons. And then this sentence, which so beautifully launches the whole story, allow me to unravel the stories behind four of my cherished robes. Like that's such a beautifully orienting sentence that allows me as a reader to be like, okay, I can settle in with my, whatever it is, my next cup of coffee and let's go and give me the take, take me on the tour. You know, so it just.

I want to just underline that moment for students who might be listening and go, yo, set your reader at ease with your structure so they don't have to be hunting for your topic for half the essay.

Andrew Callery (18:35)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like this intro is really brief. mean, it's, you know, we've got some semi-colons here, but it's really two sentences, three sentences. We didn't spend a lot of time getting into where we were going.

Ethan Sawyer (18:47)
Right. Which I love. I love that it's like, okay, we're ready to roll. And you know, some students might say, well, I want to, I want to skip the intro and just get into the robes. Well, just a little bit of orientation I think helps the reader again, not be the way I think of this is like, you don't want the reader to like have the Ram, their mental Ram being taken up, figuring out what is the topic here? Set us at ease, let us know what's going on and boom, we're in. this, second paragraph.

First up is my luscious Royal blue crinkled velvet treasure adorned with a Ravenclaw crest. I love the specifics here. This is my get lost in a book robe imbued with triumphant memories of the first novel I ever voluntarily read cover to cover despite struggling with dyslexia. So I'd love to hear just a little bit about how the conversation went around talking about dyslexia. And you know, I imagine for some students, I don't know if it was true for this student, but they go, you know, should I,

make my whole essay about dyslexia. How did the conversation go around this?

Andrew Callery (19:45)
So I'm looking back at her 21 details exercise and this was number two that she listed. So to me that was like, okay, this is important for her because you know, I think as we get down to the teens and certainly number 20 and 21, least when I've done this myself, I'm like scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to figure out what else I can say. So if she's entering into this exercise with, I'm just gonna go and start, you know, writing out things. The fact that that was number two,

to me suggests that this is important. So I think, you know, this was a while ago that I worked with her, but I'm trying to think that I asked her to tell me more about that. I think, you know, my counseling skills come in real handy when I'm doing, when I'm at this stage of the essay writing process with students, because I try and just approach everything from a place of curiosity and open-ended, you know, tell me more about what dyslexia has meant for you or something along those lines.

So I think that's kind of how we got here. And I love how in this paragraph, she, you know, she owns her dyslexia. There's no, you know, she's not looking for pity. She's just kind of saying like, I've got dyslexia. And when I was younger, when I was in third grade, it caused me a lot of fear. When I was in front of my church and I was reading, you know, out loud. But then the second half of the paragraph talks about how much she's grown and like she skips over.

what it was that enabled her to get to a place where she was willing to interview a CEO of a well-known company in front of 400 people. And I don't think for a college they needed to know the ins and outs of how she arrived at that place. I guess if she wanted to do a narrative essay and talk about dyslexia, then yeah, we would need to know what that journey was like. But in this paragraph, we don't. We just get to walk away from this paragraph knowing that

She came a long way from where she was when she was in third grade to where she was as a junior in high school in front of a bunch of people talking to an executive.

Ethan Sawyer (21:44)
Yeah, I love what you're saying here and the phrase that's in my head is like extraordinary efficiency and what I mean by this is like sure she could have done a whole essay on this journey, but Given the structure. It's like okay. How can I work this into a paragraph so that it's it's a part of my story, but it doesn't it's not my whole story and The simple thing that the students doing and so this is like a kind of a pro tip side note for students is Consider like a before-and-after shot so

Her before shot picture this a third grader trembling before sizable congregation tasked with reading Psalm 139 14. She's terrified. You know, she's afraid. And then next sentence now envision 11th grader confidently interviewing the CEO of kind bars in front of 400 people. So a simple, like almost like images in your phone or your parents' phone of who you were and who you've become signaling that growth. And then what I love in the next sentence, there's this beautiful. So what moment? So she says,

leading the interview, meaning with the CEO, I focused on connection unburdened by my past fear of reading aloud. And that to me is such a cool moment where we get a little, here's what this meant to me. In this case, here's the part of myself that I was able to be spacious, you know, for this moment of connection. And at the end, she says, if my third grade self had owned a wand, I would have wished away my dyslexia and a heartbeat. Now I know better. Here's another insight at the end of this paragraph, the challenge.

is where the real magic happens. Beautiful one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight word insight. I'd be curious to know when it came to, you know, drawing out some of these insights, these moments where she's sharing these like, so what moments, what are some of the questions either that you asked the student if you remember, or that you like to ask when it comes to making meaning of these specific details and experiences?

Andrew Callery (23:36)
Yeah, I think about the question, what are you hoping colleges will learn about you from this? Or what are you hoping they will understand about you from this specific anecdote? And I don't remember if I asked her that question, if I even needed to, but if I did, I suspect she would have said something about, I would want colleges to know how hard I worked at overcoming the barriers that dyslexia put in my way.

Ethan Sawyer (24:00)
Yes, love it. Let's, I would love to go into the next paragraph. She says, next meet my floor length, fuzzy masterpiece in deep plum. This is my quirky comfy robe lovingly worn down to threadbare perfection. Now there's this moment of curiosity, like when, when, when the new robe is introduced and this is something that's such a subtle thing. But what I do as a reader is I lean forward and I'm like, all right, new advent calendar, you know, door, where are we going next?

She says, it's unconventional charm reflects my early educational journey. Okay, there's a hint. And then she goes, imagine eight years in a one-room schoolhouse actively learning through quests instead of tests and being guided by mentors and Socratic dialogue rather than traditional teachers. So I'd love to hear where did the inspiration come for this paragraph?

Andrew Callery (24:49)
I'm trying to remember which brainstorming exercise it was where she talked about this as her educational foundation, but you know, this is unique. mean, talk about an educational experience that sounds like incredibly formative for her. So I wanted to know what she gleaned from that, that in my mind, I'm like, okay, well, colleges are going to love the fact that you already know how to work with other people in this sort of unstructured setting that you figured out different.

how to navigate different age groups and roles. In the back of my mind, I'm always thinking about those admission nutrients that you and the College SA guy team talk about. So I was like, this is something that we really need to unpack. So again, I don't remember where this came up in brainstorming, but I knew it was something I wanted to learn more about. When I heard about this educational experience, ⁓ it sort of stirred up in me. I wish that I could have been this silent observer in that one room schoolhouse.

seeing how she was navigating the difference, seeing how she was sort of inserting herself, but then also not inserting herself in these different group dynamics. I just thought there was so much here that colleges would love to learn more about.

Ethan Sawyer (26:02)
Yeah, there's the, mentioned the admission nutrients for folks who were wondering what are those? These are qualities that colleges like to see things like intellectual curiosity, things like, you know, service to others, things like collaboration. If you can find these, we'll put these in the show notes, but I see collaboration, especially in this paragraph. She says, when we were designing and building dueling capture the flag towers for our playground or recreating explosive special effects from movie sets. I loved it because we were a team.

learning from our failures and each other. So it's like, this is, she's like, I've been on this. I've been doing this for years. Older students were my primary support system whenever I was stuck. My experiences with this diverse group of mentors shaped how I lead. So here's the, what, and develop my appreciation for the unique gifts that each individual brings to a group. So there's sort of like an empathy value there. I'm also seeing like perspective taking, you know, her ability to see other strengths, which to me feels like leadership.

no matter how quirky she says. there's like inclusion that's implied. Now I pay it forward. She finishes the paragraph saying, pouring myself into mentoring younger students as a physics TA and leading my school's efforts to cultivate a community of inclusivity and belonging. Now I think students sometimes wonder, how do I weave in those extracurricular activities without seeming like I'm bragging? I mean, this is like such a good example of that because the student has led with the values that are important to her and

you know, she's highlighted them here, community of inclusivity and belonging. And she's giving this particular activity as an example of those values.

Andrew Callery (27:35)
Yeah, the other thing that I think is really neat about this paragraph is, know, ⁓ she was an aspiring engineer. And she's not talking about some robotics, you know, competition or Science Olympiad or anything along those lines. But I do think, you know, you can look at this paragraph and you can look at what she's talking about. And she's been experimenting since she was very, very young. And so, you know, there's that scientific aspect to it where there was trial and error.

And there's also this collaborative, you we've talked about this, this collaborative aspect of this paragraph that, you know, I think it's very, would imagine it's easy for a college admissions counselor to read this and think, yeah, like her and her and our makerspace, like she's going to be working with people. She's already knows, you know, how to navigate the disappointment of an idea that didn't actually work out in reality. There's just so much going on here that actually I backs up our fit to major, believe it or not.

Ethan Sawyer (28:28)
Yeah. ⁓ yes. Touch a great point. Because we now have Reddit, we know that this is coming. She's planting these seeds of like, are the values, the skills, the qualities that will serve me in that future major. And it's wild, but I could see a student thinking, Robes? How is that going to connect to being a future engineer? And yet here it is. If you've got the values and you're connecting it to different sides of you, it's like,

you can almost like do a brainstorm where it's like robes value robes related values and then like engineering related values. And then you can kind of do this like Venn diagram thing where you think about, which are the values that connect to both of these? And you don't even need to mention engineering explicitly. In fact, probably don't early on cause it kind of spoils the ending. You kind of weave those in, right? Like the sixth sense, you kind of bury those moments. And then when she says engineering at the end, our mind explodes, it goes back through the story and it's like, ⁓ of course.

Yes, all of these things, it's inevitable. It's been there all along.

Andrew Callery (29:30)
Yeah. And you know, right now with so many supplemental essays that give students like 150 words or 200 words to explain like why they want to study engineering at that particular school. can use your personal statement if you have the savvy to do it. You can use your personal statement to add a little bit more credibility to why you want to study that particular field.

Ethan Sawyer (29:50)
Yeah, and you can get creative with it as the students doing. And I want to say to students listening, like you can do this at the beginning, middle, or end of the process. Meaning you can plan this out ahead of time and be like, all right, I want to write my essay on, well, I want to be an engineer, but I want to show it through robes. And you can be like really tactical and like plan it out. Or it could be that you discover this midway through where you're like, I don't know what to do for my ending.

but I should probably connect to my major. And then you go, okay, I'm sort of hinting at some of these values along the way. Maybe I can make them more explicit and that can help you sort of revise those middle paragraphs. Or when you're getting closer to the end and you're like, cool, great Robes essay. What does it have to do with engineering? You can kind of do this later and weave in some of those values along the way. And certainly that's going to lead to some revisions, but I'm curious, how did it go for this student? Was it more of a beginning plan full, you know, this is the plan all along. Was it more of a middle like, it would be nice to weave these in.

Or was it more of towards the end, like, okay, let's retroactively, like, bring some of these qualities in.

Andrew Callery (30:49)
I think honestly, I think it was just a convenient sort of side effect to her just being in the process. This was not intentional. We were not trying to infuse engineering into these paragraphs. It just sort of happened because that's who she is.

Ethan Sawyer (31:05)
Yeah, neat. That's so cool. That's the fourth one that I didn't mention. It's like sometimes if you're just, if you're showing parts of yourself and you're using values, which are pretty elastic anyway, cause they connect to lots of different things. mean, you know, honestly, when you look at engineering, there's so many of these different things when we're talking about things like collaboration and inclusivity and, you know, over the ability to overcome challenges and so many of the qualities that she's showing and probably going to connect to engineering. They're probably going to connect to other careers as well. Yeah. But neat. I love that.

Enter my pink, huge girly number, she writes. While it may exude an aura of feminine softness, this robe is my challenge the norms statement. Shattering expectations seems unavoidable for me given my interest in STEM sports and fashion. My friends laugh at my split screen featuring a flipping physics video and a smoky eye makeup tutorial. As the only female house cup leader for my grade, people know me as a go-getter. I love that. They weave in of the roles here, you know, female and STEM, a go-getter.

It seems like she's choosing moments throughout to really do this thing that you mentioned, which is like, you know, show who she is, like as an agentic force in the world. And it makes it really easy for me to see her on a campus, on a college campus.

Andrew Callery (32:20)
Yeah, I was actually wondering if maybe we had had the roles and identities exercise when I worked with her, but we didn't. So she was ahead of her time highlighting these different identities.

Ethan Sawyer (32:30)
Yeah, it's so funny that this is for folks who are listening, the roles and identities exercise is a simple one that you just basically pick a series of and identities you identify with things like go getter and maker and, you know, scientist. And, you know, this is an exercise that I sort of happened upon a couple of years ago and created based on, based on, actually it was based on a list. was an idea that came from a list of adjectives for helping, you know, describe students in, recommendation letters. And there was this little like,

piece at the end that was like avatars, like how would I describe this dude? And I was like, yo, this could be a whole exercise. And when I started to think about it more, I was like, I think this is like been there all along, you know, this is sort of like, it was, you know, it's always been there. So now as I look back at essays, like you said, even before roles and identities, I see this again and again, sometimes explicitly and sometimes, you know, the roles and identities are implied. She says, whether my science teachers are assembling a competitive

teams roster or the boys in my grade are recruiting a coach for their must win rec soccer grudge match. I'm their person as a female in STEM and sports. I'm comfortable being my authentic self. I wear my pink girly robe proudly. I love that. There's, there's a continued theme here of like self acceptance too. And confidence, which feels, it feels really good. I'm just like, this is a person that I feel like when I, when I get these are like short sentences, I wear my pink girly robe.

proudly, you the challenge is where the real magic happens. She's got these really like stick the landing moments at the ends of these paragraphs that helped me get these little windows into who, she is and what she's about.

Andrew Callery (34:07)
Yeah, when I think about this paragraph as a whole, I think it suggests to an admissions rep that, or admissions counselor that this student will be able to sort of navigate multiple communities with ease. She can go back and forth between being a nerd and being a proud female without skipping a beat.

Ethan Sawyer (34:25)
I love that. Yeah, I see that too in her second-class paragraph She says lastly say hello to my chalky blue mulberry silk wrap a secondhand gem thrifted on thread up I prize it not just for its buttery softness, but also for its sustainability now That's a beautiful transition because the thing that the thing that the that she's about to talk about comes in the word at the end of the sentence so Quick tiny writing note. There's this thing where you're when you're doing a transition if you just put the word at the end

we go, ⁓ okay, here's what we're going to next. This robe, she says, made from renewable resources and sourced through online consignment is the tangible embodiment of my future aspiration to integrate superior materials, processes, technologies, and designs to minimize environmental impact. I've been fortunate to have learned from engineers in labs, factories, and makerspaces who inspired my love for solving real world problems using math, science, and entrepreneurial innovation. This robe is dedicated to sustainability.

just like I hope my future as an engineer will be. What do you notice here?

Andrew Callery (35:27)
So again, we went back to 21 Details and one of her details was that she liked to thrift shop. And so I was like, okay, well, we're talking about robes in this essay. Tell me, please tell me that you thrifted a robe at some point. And she's like, well, actually, Andrew, as a matter of fact, I did. And so that to me was like, okay, good, because we can tie in some of what you're hoping to do and what's important to you from a more academic standpoint or more future career standpoint.

Sustainability is really important to her. It's one of her values. And so like the analogy here was just like a beautiful connection between the robe, but also what she's hoping to do and like what her goals are as an aspiring engineer.

Ethan Sawyer (36:11)
Yeah, I love it. And I love, there's even like a slight tone shift here that I really appreciate where the language is, it's been sort of casual in a great way, you know, throughout and very personal. And here, when she talks about, you know, she says, using, you know, integrating superior materials, processes, technologies and designs to minimize environmental impact. There's like ⁓ a rigor that comes in where I trust that this is something that she spent a lot of time thinking about. And then she gives her stack of evidence, which is like,

I've been without bragging, you she's sort of hinting at activities list stuff, but I've been fortunate to have learned from engineers and labs, factories and maker spaces who inspired my love for solving real world problems using math, science and entrepreneurial innovation. It's just, it's such, again, another great example of mentioning those activities and you know, things that will be obvious from those other parts of replication without needing to be like, you know, braggy about it and, or, or, or super getting into the super details. Cause cause I think that would maybe potentially.

pull away from the sort of central theme or thread that she's got going here.

Andrew Callery (37:13)
So I think similar to what you said, Ethan, you know, I like that this paragraph is a little bit more formal. I wouldn't say that it's overly formal. It's definitely not jargony, but I'm left with this note of sort of seriousness that I appreciate in the context of this essay because, you know, she's not being playful in this paragraph. She's just talking about what's important to her and how she aspires to make an impact in her career, which I think, again, communicates values to the colleges that are reading this, but also shows...

her chops in a certain sense. I mean, she'll get into that with all the supplemental essays she has to write. But I just think this paragraph ends the essay on a really scholarly, important note.

Ethan Sawyer (37:56)
Yeah, there's a real strong intellectual curiosity that I sense here. And not just that, but she's like done stuff. And for students who are thinking about, okay, I maybe want to bring my major in at some point, if you're going to try this move, which is to say, bring it into like a second to last paragraph, just make sure that you've woven in some values, some skills, some qualities that don't seem random. In other words, that seemed, they kind of set it up.

And you can do this subtly. You know, she's got a few mentions earlier where she talks about collaboration. She mentions her love of science, you know, being a female in STEM, just so that when we get to that, it's not sort of like, what, where did this come from? It's sort of like, yeah, I can see. Yeah, this totally makes sense. If you do this too much, like if she was like female in STEM all the way throughout the whole essay and then mentioned she wants to be an engineer, it might be like, yeah, we kind of knew. So it could seem a little redundant. So you want to kind of find the balance between.

you know, a couple details, but not like 12 details. And that's how you find that surprise and inevitability sweet spot.

Andrew Callery (38:57)
Yeah.

Ethan Sawyer (38:59)
For the final here, she says, trimming my wardrobe down to dorm closet dimensions will inevitably require leaving behind some of my most beloved and comfortable robes. Each symbolizes earned wisdom. Love that. Yet I recognize I'll need to carve out space for fresh robes and the new lessons, people and experiences they reflect. After all, the real journey begins at the end of a comfort zone. Talk to me about this ending. How, if you remember, I know it's been a few years, but how did this ending come about? What was the conversation around it?

Andrew Callery (39:28)
I I remember her struggling with figuring out how to wrap this up. And so whenever a student is sort of at this point where they know they need to write a conclusion, they know they need to exit this essay, but don't know how to go about doing that, I say, okay, well, let's think about the future. Everything you've written about right now is sort of in the past or has informed who you are in this moment right now. But as you imagine the future and you imagine the...

the impact your higher education will have on you, what does that mean? And let's make sure we tie it back into this thread that has been following us the entire time. So when I said that to her, that helped her to realize, okay, I'm gonna talk about robes again. I'm gonna be a little fun here and talk about how I have to trim it down to a dorm closet dimension, which is truth. And I like that she is making space for unknowns. I mean, she doesn't know what.

the new lessons or people or experiences she will have in the future, but she's showing colleges that she's excited about that. And I think that's a really great note to end on.

Ethan Sawyer (40:36)
I love that too. Yeah. There's this small move that I want to name. She's kind of like giving the thesis here at the end where she's saying that basically the thesis is like these robes represent lessons, people and experiences. She could have put that early on in the essay. She could have put that in part of her opening, but I like that she says it at the end because it's, it's sort of confirming of what the whole story has been about. And so I'll say this to students sometimes like if you feel like you're

thesis could be a little bit lighter or like your launch line at the later at the, the beginning could be a little lighter, like allow me to unravel the stories behind four of my cherished robes. You kind of just need to make us curious about where you're headed. And then you can intend, in some cases can take whatever you wrote in the thesis. That was like the clearly established boom. This is what this essay is about. And you can kind of move that to the end. And it has this experience of like, almost like, you know, I use the word cinching where it kind of pulls everything tight together where it feels like, ⁓

Got it. Now it's all of a piece. I see why you've taken me on this journey. It all makes sense. And she could have ended there, but she had this one more sentence. After all the real journey begins at the end of a comfort zone. And I'll just flash back to the opening where she says, robes are the textile version of comfort food. So she's used this word comfort. And I imagine, don't, haven't seen it, but I imagine on her values list, like comfort was a big thing.

But of course, and she comes back to it at the end, but it's comfort in this different context where she's like, the real journey begins at the end of a comfort zone. And it's just such a beautiful, subtle, know, bookend that brings us right back to the start. So love that. just, this is, this is such a good ending.

Andrew Callery (42:19)
And it just, again, there's confidence in that statement where, you I imagine as a college, they're like, okay, this student, they're ready. They're ready for what we're gonna offer. There's no hesitation there.

Ethan Sawyer (42:32)
Yeah, I really sense that too. Andrew, what do you hope students will take away from this process? Like, how do you hope that they will engage with it?

Andrew Callery (42:42)
Yeah, well, I think first I would say, I try and say this to my students and I'm working with them, like you are interesting. You may not think you are, but you are. And I think, you know, this essay is so much fun to talk about because it came from someone writing some innocuous statement about one of the things they like to do in life, which was to collect robes. And like now you can see how far that got us. So every student is interesting.

And I think, again, the 21 details exercise, we're gonna bring it right back to where we started. I think that exercise is like so valuable to students because when they enter into that stream of consciousness and they just write what comes to them, man, we get to a topic that's unique almost instantaneously. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that there is the potential for rich symbolism in things that sort of seem commonplace.

if you're willing to kind of get into it. So, I know montage essays can sometimes start to sound the same where, here at my school, for instance, we've got sweaters where students can put patches on their sweater. And that's probably a common essay topic where you're talking about patches on your sweater. But it's kind of an invitation for colleges to get to know you in really important ways and multifaceted ways.

You know, from this process, would hope that students would understand that there's a lot of things that are part of their life that they may not think are interesting, but that could be really exciting to write about and for colleges to read about.

Ethan Sawyer (44:16)
Yeah, I forgot who said this quote, but what I'm present to as you share that, Andrew, is like, the way to be interesting is to be interested. Speaking about these things that you are interested in, whether it's a robe or, I don't know, Latin or, you know, something, you know, your water bottle. I mean, like, I love this point that you're making that it could come from just the, literally the objects in your room.

Andrew Callery (44:25)
Yeah.

Ethan Sawyer (44:45)
the things that you sort of don't think about on a daily basis, taking the time to slow down and go, okay, what's really here? What does this connect to? And doing a little excavating and connecting into your values, I think is such a rich process. And I'm so grateful. I can see the work that the student did and grateful for your work as a guide here, helping the student doing some excavation. Thanks, Andrew, so much for spending some time with me.

Andrew Callery (45:14)
My pleasure Ethan, thanks for having me.

Ethan Sawyer (45:20)
Thanks friends, as ever, for listening. You'll find the show notes, including the text of the essay that we read, at collegeessayguy.com slash podcast. If you're interested in more from us, sign up for anything at collegeessayguy.com and we'll share our latest resources, our upcoming free live events, and lots, lots more. Thanks, y'all, and stay curious.