111: Using the Secrets of Screenwriting to Write Your College Essay

Ethan Sawyer  0:00  
Ethan, Hello, friends, welcome to the College Essay Guy podcast. I'm your host. Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy. What I'll typically do on this podcast is interview folks from the admissions world and just talk about college admissions and not just talk about them, but then try and figure out, okay, what can we glean from this, and how can we use the tips and tricks to generate practical, actionable steps that you can take with the goal of bringing more ease, joy and purpose to the college application process. Now, because my specialty is the college essay. I thought I would take the mic for this podcast and share with you a presentation that I started giving. I want to say in like 2011 it's called using the secrets of screenwriting to write your college essay. And I'll explain on the podcast how I got to that point, like how I even started connecting screenwriting with college essays in the first place. I'll share with you two exercises that I love that can help you generate some great content for an essay. Then I'll share two structures that I think can work for just about any essay. I'll talk about the four types of college essays, and I'll share with you what I believe the end of an essay should do. There's a question that I believe the end of your essay should answer so all this and more. I hope you enjoy it. Here it is, using the secrets of screenwriting to write your college essay. Enjoy. Okay, so this is using the secrets of screenwriting to write your college essay. And let me set this up for how I even started connecting screenwriting to college essays. So when I was in I think I was a junior in high school, is when I first got the job. I worked at a video store called Video land in Miami, Florida, and I was obsessed with movies, like the kind of obsessed that I would like watch movies before I'd go get the bus at school. So I'd be like, get up at like, 530 and watch a movie, and then I'd come home and I'd watch two more, and I'd like race through my homework so I could watch I'd sometimes watch two or three in a day, and I loved them so much, in fact, that when I went to Northwestern, which is where I did my undergrad, I studied screenwriting. And there was a moment when I was with my best friend Ryan, and I was like, This is it like? This is what I want to do with my life. And we would stay up and pull these all nighters in a place called Fisk Hall, which was the only 24 hours open place, because it was like for the journalism students and we would basically like work on screenplays. And so after I graduated and Ryan still had one more year, we moved to Canada, like you do, and decided to write our first screenplay. And it was terrible. I mean, it was like, you know, about three friends graduating college and not sure what they wanted to do with their lives. So it was like, you know, very personal and autobiographical and all that. But, but it was like, you know, we were following our passion. We were doing something that we really, really loved and felt committed to. So after Ryan, actually, after we finished that screenplay, it was our first one. Ryan had another year left in school. I moved to New York, and he had basically this vision. He's like, I'm gonna apply to one school for screenwriting and for graduate school, and if I get in, I'll go there. And by the way, don't do this. Don't just apply to one school. But he was like, you know, if I get into USC, I'll go there. And I was like, Oh, great. It's the best one. So, you know, he applied to USC. And I remember being in New York at the time and talking to Ryan about this on the phone, and I was like, you know, it was such a long shot that I was like, Look, dude, if you get into USC, I'll move to LA with you, you know, I'll leave this I'll leave this town. And, you know, be careful what you say to your friends, because Sure enough, he got into USC, and we got in his 92 Corolla named Blue. I think I gave him 500 bucks so we could get across the country in it. And we packed up all of his things and a few of mine, and we moved to Hollywood to make it big and screenwriting, and Ryan kind of actually did make it big, like Ryan went on to write for Gray's Anatomy, and he wrote for Chicago PD, and a show that just went off the air, but it was pretty good. And he's like, still, he's a working screenwriter, and I went on to become the College Essay Guy, you know, again, like you do. I'll explain that connection in just a second. But before we split paths, we were still, you know, we were living in, in this apartment with with two roommates, and we were, I was basically like, getting the benefits of his USC screenwriting education, because he would come home with, like, books that he was reading, or new techniques that he'd learned, and I was absorbing it all. And, you know, we were staying up late talking about screenwriting structure. And a lot of these books, all these different ideas boil down to this one core idea of the hero's journey, or what's sometimes called the mono myth. And you can Google that to find out what it is, but basically it's this notion you'll be familiar with from movies. There's a hero who's called to adventure at some point and then has to cross the threshold from the known and familiar. Your world into the unknown, and along the way, there's maybe a mentor or a helper figure. There are, you know, different challenges along the way, usually there's some big, you know, life and death experience, you know, either literally, you know, life and death or sort of emotionally. There's this kind of abyss that the character goes through. They come out on the other side with, you know, having been transformed, having learned some things. And, you know, I got a day job during this time, working with students on their college essays. So at the time, you know, this was when they were working on this certain prompt for the University of California schools that asks students to describe the world they come from, and how it's shaped their dreams and aspirations. Now, since then, the prompts have changed. But this was a really powerful question, and as students were diving into or as I was helping them dive into their worlds, you know, some students identified as having been through challenges in their life, and some students not so much so as you're listening to this, whether you're a student or a parent or a counselor or whomever, it's just an interesting question to ask. Have you been through challenges in your life or not so much? And then for the second part of this, prompt, dreams and aspirations. You know some students knew what they wanted to be or do, and I'll ask you listening to this, whether you're a student, parent or counselor, do you have a sense of what you want to be or do in the future, or not so much? You know, some people don't really have a sense of that. And as I thought more and more about this, I realized that the answers to these two questions split into four types of essays, and I labeled these just a, b, c, d. You know, the A type essay is a student who has faced challenges and knows what he or she wants to study. The Type B essay is a student who has not faced challenges but does know what he or she wants to study. The student who in the C type category, yes, challenges, but don't know what I want to study, and then type D students who haven't faced challenges and don't know what they want to study. And one thing I want to emphasize about these is that these are different types of essays, that each one of these requires a different approach, or at least a different approach works better for different types of essays. These aren't types of people. So it's not like I'm saying, Are you a type A person or a type D person? No, because even if you know, you know I've been through challenges, you may not want to write about them, right? And and even if you know what your career is, you may not want to write about that. You may want to write about it in another essay, or you want to write about something else. So keep that in mind going forward. Okay, before we get into structure, though, which I'm kind of starting to talk about a little bit. I want to talk to you a little bit about content. And in fact, I want to do a little exercise with you that involves helping you, you know, dream up some potential topics or some potential details that you could include in your essay. So


what you'll need for this is a pen and paper. If you're old school or you can feel free to like type these in on your phone or whatever you like. So this first exercise is called the essence objects exercise, and I've got a longer version of this on my website. It's like 12 minutes long. I'm only going to do this for like five minutes with you, so you'll just get a sense of it. So for this exercise, I want you to imagine a box, and in this box is a set of essence objects. Now, what do I mean by Essence objects? Well, I'm talking about objects that, for you, represent important qualities, values, meaningful parts of your life. So I'll give you a couple examples. For me, one of my essence objects I'm wearing on my wrist. It's a green and blue friendship bracelet that my wife gave me, and my wife actually gives me a friendship bracelet every year, right around the same time, around my birthday, and it's the only gift that she gives me. And there's this really cool moment each year. So usually it takes a year or so for it to wear the old one to wear off, but she re ties a new friendship bracelet that she's hand woven. And it's really cool, because I feel like we are remaking the connection and recommitting to one another. It's kind of like a little mini a recommitment ceremony. And so this bracelet, which I wear all the time, represents my connection to my best friend, my wife. So that's one, so you can see, it's like just a bracelet, but it's more than that, right? Another essence object that I would put in the box is a there's a Bible that my grandmother gave me when I was seven years old, and I read. I was raised as a missionary kid and moved around a bunch. But that Bible represents, you know, Wednesday night family dinners at the church in Weaverville, North Carolina, and those early relationships, it represents, you know, even like my the relationships that I had with with young people, like with like my friends, like running around in the yard, because so many of my friends were at church. It also reminds me my grandmother. Another thing that reminds me my grandmother, another essence object would be barbecue sauce, because I eat barbecue sauce. Us a lot. I love it. And so that would be one. You get the idea here, right? So it's basically a set of objects that represents important parts for who you are. So think about that a second. What essence objects would be in your box? And I'll just give you a couple questions or a couple things to think about. You know, is there an essence object that reminds you of your relationship with your dad? For example? For me, it's North Carolina basketball, because that's how he showed love. To me, it was one of the ways we watched we played basketball. We watched old movies together. So like the Dirty Dozen that movie would go, in my essence, objects box, that old war film, is there an object that reminds you of home, whatever home means to you? What's something you're afraid of?


Unknown Speaker  11:00  
What object reminds you of that fear, or is there a challenge that you've been through in your life?


Ethan Sawyer  11:07  
You might have said earlier, yeah, I've been through something. What's What's something that reminds you of that challenge, a difficulty that you went through. Another one might be, well, actually, let's stick with the challenge for a second. If you have been through a challenge, you might ask yourself, you know, what value or quality helped me get through that challenge? And if it's something that you're currently facing, ask yourself, what, how could I make it through this? What resources, inner, emotional resources, could I draw on? What strengths do I have that could help me or that have helped me in the past.


Is there a goal you have for your life, something in the future that you think would be awesome to achieve, whether it's a career or, you know, something like going skydiving? What essence object would remind you of that? What about your relationship with your mom? And I know I'm going fast, by the way, but this is just to give you a sense of the exercise. How would your mom be expressed in terms of an essence, object, what reminds you of your connection with her? And if you don't have a relationship with your mom or your dad, it could be the person who plays that role in your life, or it could just be an object that reminds you of that lack of connection doesn't have to be something nice. It could be that the relationship is complex or strained. So that's the idea with this exercise. And again, there's a longer version of this that that you can find on the website, but that's kind of the gist of it. So the next exercise involves. It's called the values exercise, and it's a really short one, but for this one, you'll need to just Google values exercise, College Essay Guy, and you'll see a big list of values. And you can do this without the values exercise, but it helps to have kind of a menu. And so what I want you to do with this is I want you to think about what are your top 10 values. And if you've got the list in front of you, you can pause this if you want and go get the list. But what are your top 10 values? Put a little check mark beside them. And in fact, I'll let you pause if you want to, you know, take some more time with that. But I'm going to move on, just for the sake of keeping things moving for those folks who don't have the values list. But actually, let me just read a few of these out. In fact, you know, I'll share mine for today. Serenity is one of my core values for today. Creativity, autonomy, inspiration, community, vulnerability, efficiency,


listening, quiet, those are some of my core values. So once you've got a list of 10 or so, the next step of this exercise is to try and whittle that down to five core values, which might be tough and that's good. That means you're really doing the exercise. So some core values for me, of those that I chose to me were probably to me. I'm repeating to me. I mean, I only mentioned seven or eight, so I would say, actually, I'll let you decide. I'll let you do yours. And then if you pause, if you need to. But then the next part of this exercise, and pause if you haven't done that, but if you have, what are your top three values? If you had to identify those, for me, my three core values that I'd say right now are autonomy, efficiency and creativity. So pause if you need to, and we're moving on. What's your top value for today? You. Yeah. And for me, I'd say my top value is probably efficiency. That's really important to me today. So if we were in person and hanging out, I'd be like, Okay, what's your top value and why? And if you're listening to this with somebody else, you might even pause for a second and just share what is your top value for today and what is it connected to. You might also find that one or more of your core values is connected to your essence objects list. And that's, you know, that's not by accident. These are really just two ways of getting at the same stuff. And what is the stuff? This is you each one of these things that you've written down if you were doing the exercises makes for a story. Why? I like to call these hyperlinks to your soul hyperlink in the sense you could click on it, I could, I could ask you about any one of these essence objects, and they would like, there would be something there. And so the process of just spending a few minutes doing these can help you begin to think about what's important to you and who you are. Okay, put those aside for a second. So we're gonna shift gears into, you know, sometimes students ask me, What makes a great college essay topic, and I think the answer to that is there are two ways of answering it. One is, I like to call it elasticity. And by elasticity, I mean, do you Hey, can you find a topic that's stretchy enough to talk about different parts of who you are, and by different parts, I'm really talking about different core values, because I think at the end of a great college essay, you should be able to know like, three to five core values of that person, not just one. Sometimes students will focus on, like, hard work, and that's all you pretty much get from the essay. Is that that's a hard working student. But you know, if you look at their GPA and it's a 3.8 you know, they're hard working, right? So I really challenge students to come up with something, to find a topic that demonstrates several of their core values. You should be able to point to where those are in the essay. Another way of saying this, the second way of looking at this, is a topic with a lot of surface area, and there are a couple different ways of looking at that, which I'll get into in a second. So back to this notion of the four types of essays we've got, on the one hand, students who are writing about challenges, and on the other hand, students who are writing about not challenges writing about something else. And I want to talk to you about two structures, the first of which is called the narrative structure, and it's great for students who have faced challenges. And this is the part where I kind of ruined movies for you a little bit. This is coming from the screenwriting studying, and this is pretty much how I would say most movies are structured, especially in the US. So think of it this way. Every movie has got an outside story and an Inside Story. Now I say every, I mean many movies. And by outside story, I mean it's the thing that we think the movie is about. It's what the major plot is about. So for example, the outside story might be that the universe is being taken over by the forces of evil, right? A giant action movie, you can maybe guess. Probably think of some movies that for that, for which that's true, and then the inside story might be more about a young man who must learn to believe in himself. You can probably guess several movies that I'm talking about. But I'm thinking of Star Wars here one really neat way. And this was a light bulb moment for me, in my in my kind of, my USC screenwriting education, again, my best friend's education. He came home one day, home one day and Ryan was like, every character's got a want and a need. And I was like, Whoa, and the outside story is the want, the inside story is the need. So think of it this way, that every character has a thing that they're pursuing that they think is going to like, get them to the next step of their evolution or life, but there's actually something deeper that they're really needing. So in terms of the narrative structure, here are the basic parts of it. The first step is called status quo. Status quo is basically the opening circumstances of the film. So it might be like it was just another sunny day in Los Angeles when all of a sudden, boom, something happens. And this something that happens that launches our story. Is called the inciting incident, or the status quo change. Now the inciting incident for most Pixar films comes right around minute 13. You can, you can check me on that, and then what you know, the inciting incident kind of starts our story, and it usually asks a question, which I'll get to in just a minute. But over the course of the next let's say, 40 minutes of the movie, there's the raising of the stakes. And this is the third part. So it goes status quo. Life was like this inciting incident. Something happens part three, raising of the stakes, the raising of the stakes, part of the movie, or, as we'll talk about in a few minutes, the college essay lets us know why this was such a big deal to the main character. And in your college essay, your main character is you, if I didn't need to say that, then comes, oftentimes, in a movie, a moment of truth. And in the moment of truth, this is the fourth element, the student, or the. And the main character often has to make a decision between going back to the way life was and really trying something new, or going about things in a way they wouldn't have before. So they make a choice, and the results of that choice lead us to part five, the outcome, or the new status quo. So just to bullet point those for you, and I'll give you an example from a movie in a second, its status quo, inciting incident, raising of the stakes, moment of truth, and then outcome, or new status quo. So let's talk about a movie example. I'm gonna give two actually, and I'll do them kind of briefly. The first one is Toy Story. And it may be a long time, you know, maybe you saw that movie A long time ago, but here's how Toy Story works. So the status quo is, you know, the movie starts off, Woody and Andy are best friends. So Andy is this kid, and he's got this tall toy named Woody. And how do you know they're best friends? There's this essence object, which at the start of the film, you know, you see Andy writing his name on the bottom of Woody's shoe. Okay, so that's the first 10 minutes of the movie. And then it's Andy's birthday, and something happens, and this is the inciting incident. The inciting incident is When Buzz Lightyear arrives. Because essentially, you can think of your inciting incident as the answer to, what is the worst thing that could happen in this world. So the status quo is just setting up what the world is, and then, boom, something happens to disrupt it. So what's the worst thing that could happen to these two best friends, especially from Woody's perspective, that something or someone would come in to threaten this relationship, which is what Buzz Lightyear represents, the threat raising of the stakes things become more and more important. Woody realizes he's really jealous, et cetera, until there's a moment of truth before I tell you what the moment of truth is, I want to set up for you that in the inciting incident, this is when the want and the need is launched. So stay with me on this. What does Woody's want? Well, he, of course, wants things to go back to the way they were. Let's get rid of buzz. Let's get buzz out. But what is his deeper need? We know, knowing audience members emotionally intelligent as we are, that Woody isn't he needs to get over this jealousy, actually, and there's a deeper need. And it's the needs to, need to, put simply, to let buzz in, right, to be more open. And so we're watching the movie with this dramatic tension. Woody is chasing his want to get buzz out, when really we know that he needs to learn the opposite, to let buzz in. The moment of truth arrives when the crazy neighbor kid who has got Buzz Lightyear tied up and woody has to make a choice. Is he going to let buzz go and just get buzz out, essentially by not doing anything? Or is he going to actually make a choice to save buzz? Which he does, which is why the movie has a happy ending, because he learned


his lesson, right? But that is a really clear moment of having to battle between his want and his need and the outcome, or the new status quo is at the end, it's not just Woody and Andy, it's Woody and Andy and buzz. They're all best friends, right? That's kind of the gist of it. But then, of course, you know, because Pixar films often have a circular ending, the movie ends as it began with its it's, you know, oh, wait, Woody's got or not Woody, but Andy, the kid, has a new present. And, uh, oh, no, it's a dog. So it kind of sends us the message that the cycle is going to repeat. One more quick example. If you don't need another example, you can fast forward Finding Nemo. I love this. Movie begins with the status quo of, you know, Nemo and Marlin are all they have each other in the world. So the very beginning of the film is, you know, there's a dad fish and a mom fish. They have all these babies, and then a shark comes along and basically kills most of the babies, all but one, and even the mom gets killed. So it sets up in the status quo. And that's the hook, by the way. And you'll pardon the pun on hook that you know, Dad and Nemo now that they've lost all of the brothers and sisters and mom, this is like, You're all I have left. So the inciting incident now you can ask the question, what's the worst thing that could happen to this dad and this son? Is that they would be separated or lose each other, and that's exactly what happens when Nemo follows the butt, aka the boat, or boat, aka the butt, and gets pulled away, and it's the worst thing that could happen to to Marlin. Right now, we've learned a little bit of information right before that happens, that Marlon, based on this traumatic experience from when Nemo was just a little tiny egg, that he's kind of traumatized, and he wants Nemo to be safe and to keep him close. Right? In fact, a lot, you know, when he's going off to school again, you'll pardon the pun. At the beginning, he says, you know, be careful. Don't do this. Don't do that. And so, you know, he's kind of traumatized right now, when Nemo gets taken away, it's like his greatest fear coming to life right along the way, he's introduced the friend, you know, the Dory, the Ellen character, who gives the main character, Marlon, someone to talk to and to experience his change through. That's oftentimes why you have these comedic relief characters, is that the main character needs someone to talk to, so we can see that character changing. So what's Marlins want to find the Nemo? What's his deeper need? Though? The. Opposite, right? Not to find and hold on to him, but ultimately, to let him go. And we're watching it kind of on a subconscious level. We may not be aware of it right at the start. We kind of start to realize that later on, raising of the stakes, lots of stuff happens. They almost die, and trying to find each other, trying to find each other. And then there's the moment of truth. The moment of truth for me, at least. And this, by the way, this is just a structure that I'm well, it's already, it's there, but I'm kind of reading into it. The moment of truth, in my opinion, is when, when Dory gets caught in the fish net. So they found Nemo, and you know, everything you think is going to be good, but then suddenly, you know, Dory gets caught in the fish net, and Nemo says, I gotta go save her. And dad says, wait, no, it's like his worst fear. And we're watching to see, will he actually let him go? Has he learned his lesson? Ultimately, he does. Nemo goes and saves Dory. Yay. Dad has learned his lesson. That's when the catharsis really happens. And so the new status quo is very clearly set up at the end of the film, when Nemo, like at the beginning, is going off to school, but this time, and we're kind of watching his audience members to be like, Is dad gonna behave in the same way? To behave in the same way this time? However, instead of saying, you know, be careful, don't go he says, have an adventure. And we know he's fully learned his lesson, and the parents cry, because that's the journey of every parent, and the journey that I'm going on right now with my daughter. So anyway, that's how the narrative structure works in films, but how does it work in an essay? So I want to share with you a personal statement from a former student and and I'm going to point out along the way where the elements of narrative structure are coming in. So this is called the with Debate Essay, and it


was written by a student who had faced challenges and who knew what she wanted to study. The clock was remarkably slow as I sat, legs tightly crossed, squirming at my desk. Just raise your hand, my mind pleaded ask. But despite my urgent need to visit the restroom, I remained seated, begging time to move faster. You see, I was the type of kid to eat french fries dry because I couldn't confront the McDonald's cashier for some Heinz packets. I was also the type to sit crying in front of school instead of asking the office if it could check on my late ride. Essentially, I chose to struggle through a problem if the solution involved speaking out against it. Okay, so pause right there. We've established the status quo, and I would ask you, like, what's the problem? And the problem and the problem is that she's shy, and not just kind of shy, like super shy, like, can't even ask to go pee or ask to go get Heinz ketchup packets. And by the way, those Heinz ketchup packets are a great essence object. In other words, they're an object that represents something larger, in this case, representing the thing that she couldn't access, or one of the things she couldn't access because of this problem that she had, which was she was too shy. Next paragraph, my diffidence was frustrating. My parents relied on me, the only one able to speak English to guide them. Ah, raising of the stakes. So even though we don't have the inciting incident yet, and what you'll see is some of these parts are interchangeable. I think Aristotle once said that a story needs a beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order. You'll see that in this moment where she says, my parents relied on me to translate for them. Essentially, that's what makes us realize, oh, wow, this is more this is more important than we thought, because it's important to not only her, but also her family. So it's more important that she overcomes this problem. My parents relied on me, the only one able to speak English to guide them and always anticipated the best from me. However, as calls for help grew the more defunct I became, I felt that every move I made it was a gamble between success and failure. For me, the fear of failure and disappointment far outweighed the possibility of triumph. So I took no action and chose to silently suffer under pressure, near meltdown, I knew something needed to be done. Mustering up the little courage I had, I sought ways to break out of my shell without luck. Recreational art classes ended in three boring months. I gave up self defense after embarrassing myself in class, after school, band, library volunteering and book clubs ended similarly. Continued effort yielded nothing. So again, she's raising the stakes. Now, how is she raising the stakes? Why is this becoming even more serious? Well, look at all the stuff that she tried and quit in trying to overcome this problem. So she gets to this point where she says she's silently suffering under pressure. She tries all this stuff and fails. So it's like nothing has worked, disillusioned and run dry of ideas. She says, I followed my mom's advice and joined a debate club. Ding, okay, so this is the inciting incident, and given that the essay is called the with Debate Essay, you probably knew that was coming, but this is the moment where her life is about to change, and it's also the answer to what is the worst thing that could happen to this girl who's too afraid to speak up for herself to join a debate club right where she would have to, like, defend her ideas publicly, as expected. She writes the club only reaffirmed my self doubt, eye contact, greater volume, no thanks. Now in this moment, she's doing what every hero does when their first call to. Action in these great films, she's resisting the call to action. So here's the thing that could potentially change her life, just as you know the moment when they ask Indiana Jones or whoever that there's one last mission, and what they always say is like, No, I'm retired. I'm not going to do it, you know? And of course, she does. She says, soon the club moved on from how to make a speech lessons to the exploration of argumentation. We were taught to speak the language of persuasion, capital P, and play the game of debate. Now it's a debate, so you can tell how she's changing. Eventually, I fell in love with it all by high school, I joined the school debate team, began socializing and was even elected to head several clubs. I developed critical and analytical thinking skills and learn how to think and speak spontaneously. Okay, so this is a really important couple lines, because she's basically giving her core values, or another way putting it is, like the superpowers that she developed through her challenge. So let me reread that sentence. By high school, I joined the school debate team, began socializing, so she's getting better with people. Was even elected to head several clubs, so she's developing some leadership skills. I developed critical and analytical thinking skills and learned how to think and speak spontaneously. Now, why is it so important to get in your core values? I think that this is how a school will know what skills you're bringing to the college campus, right? And it's also a way of helping connect who you've been your challenge to who you want to be. Now, in this case, she has a specific career picked out. You don't have to. I just want to remind you of that, okay, but in this case, these values serve as the magic glue connecting the part one to part two. Here's part two of the essay. I became proud and confident. Moreover, I became eager to play my role in the family and family relations strengthened. In fact, nowadays my parents are interested in my school's newest gossip. Four years of debate, and now I'm the kid up at the whiteboard, the kid leading discussions and the kid standing up for her beliefs. That's a beautiful line, because it gives us the new status quo. So in other words, whereas the original status quo was, she was too shy to ask to go to the bathroom and to ask for ketchup packets. Now she's the kid at the whiteboard, the kid leading discussions and standing up for her beliefs. So what I like to call that as a before and after shot. Who were you once? Who have you become? That's a great way of showing somebody that you've changed. Here's the conclusion. And I think a great conclusion should answer the question, so what in a meaningful and, if possible, varied way? Here's what I mean by that. More importantly, she writes, I now confront issues instead of avoiding them. It is exciting to discover solutions to problems that affect others, as I was able to do as part of the first place team for the 2010 United Nations global debates program on climate change and poverty. I take a natural interest in global issues and plan to become a foreign affairs analyst or diplomat by studying international affairs with a focus on national identity. So she worked in the career there, in particular, she writes, I'm interested in the North South Korean tension. What irreconcilable differences have prompted a civilization to separate. Policy implications remain vague, and sovereignty theories have their limits. How do we determine what compromises are to be made? And on a personal level, why did my grandfather have to flee from his destroyed North Korean hometown, and why does it matter? So she's answering, so what? In a really great way, there's one more paragraph to go, but notice that she's going back and forth between the sort of global thing that she's interested in doing impact and the personal, like, how does this relate to my life? Here's the last paragraph. I see a reflection of myself in the divide at the 38th parallel. So she's seeing that North South Korean dividing line and saying, that's me. Because I see one part isolating itself in defense to outside threats, and another part coming out to face the world as one of the fastest developing nations, just as my shy persona before debate, and extroverted character after debate are both part of who I am. The Korean civilization is also one. And just as my parents expect much from me, the first in my family to attend college, I have grand expectations for this field of study. So she ends with this beautiful metaphor that ties the whole thing together in a way that I wasn't really tapped into in terms of narrative structure, until recently, when I realized that her want all along was to get over this shyness and to put it behind her and to become somebody who's outspoken and all that. But then I realized at the end here, when she says, just as my shy persona before debate and extroverted character after debate are both part of who I am, and that mirrors the Korean civilization. I realized that this is an essay about accepting both parts of herself, you know, the shy parts and the you know, outgoing parts. So in that case, her need, if her want, was to put the shy part of herself behind her and to get over that. Her need is to actually accept and embrace that part which she does. At the end. Okay, back to these four types of essays, because I want to share one more structure with you and one more example essay, and then we'll be done. So for the other two types of essays, this B and D, which is students who haven't faced challenges, I have another different type of structure that I like to use, and I call it the montage structure. And the main difference between the montage structure and the narrative structure is that the narrative deals with events. We'll call them story events, or, you know, moments that are causally connected. So for example, in the essay we just read, the first thing was, you know, she writes about being shy, and then she joins debate, and then she becomes less shy, right? Those are causally a led to B, led to C. In the montage structure, events are not connected by cause and effect. Events are instead connected by a theme. So, and I'll give you a couple examples in just a minute, and there aren't as many films that do this. You know, usually the films we watch are all causally connected and about somebody learning a great lesson. But there are films such as like baraka and samsara, and even, you know, some of the Terence Malick films, like tree of life. Here's the example essay, and then I'm going to talk to you about what theme connects all the events and other themes that you could potentially use for your essay. And by the way, this was written by a student who had not face challenges, but who did know what he wanted to study? So this essay begins as a kid, I was always curious. I was unafraid to ask questions, and didn't worry how dumb they would make me sound. In second grade, I enrolled in a Summer Science program and built a solar powered oven that baked real cookies. I remember obsessing over the smallest details, should I paint the oven black to absorb more heat? What about its shape? A spherical shape would allow for more volume, but would it trap heat as well as conventional rectangular ovens? Even then, I was obsessed with the details of design, and it didn't stop in second grade.


A few years later, I designed my first pair of shoes, working for hours to perfect each detail, including whether the laces should be mineral white or diamond white. Now you might pause for a second and ask, what kind of person would care about whether the laces are mineral white or diamond white. You might even ask, like, what values does that person hold? Or you might ask, what strengths does that person hold? Even then the author continues, I sensed that minor differences in tonality could make a huge impact, and that different colors could evoke different responses, so we have a clue in high school. He continues, I moved on to more advanced projects, teaching myself how to take apart, repair and customize cell phones, whether I was adjusting the flex cords that connect the IPS LCD to the iPhone motherboard, or replacing the vibrator motor, I loved discovering the many engineering feats Apple overcame in its efforts to combine form with function. And once I obtained my driver's license, I began working on cars. Many nights you'll find me in the garage replacing standard chrome trim with an elegant piano black finish, or changing the threads on the stitching of the seats to add a personal touch. As I believe, a few small changes can transform a generic product into a personalized work of art. My love of details applies to my schoolwork too. I'm the math geek who marvels at the fundamental theorems of calculus, or who sees beauty in a equals. There's a long formula there again. It's in the details, one bracket off or one digit missing, and the whole equation collapses. And details are more than details. They can mean the difference between negative and positive infinity an impossible range of solutions. I also love sharing this appreciation with others, and have taken it upon myself to personally eradicate mathematical fundosis, my calculate calculus teacher's term for extreme fear of math. A small group of other students and I have devoted our after school time to tutoring our peers in everything from pre algebra to AP Calculus BC, and I believe my fluency in Hebrew and Farsi has helped me connect with some of my schools, Israeli and Iranian students. There's nothing better than seeing a student solve a difficult problem without me saying anything. You probably think I want to be a designer or perhaps an engineer? Wrong? Well, kind of, actually, I want to study endodontics, which is, I'll save you the Wikipedia lookup, a branch of dentistry that deals with the tooth pulp and the tissues surrounding the root of a tooth. As an endodontist, I'll be working to repair damaged teeth by performing precision root canals and implementing dental crowns. Sound exciting. It is to me. The fact is, it's not unlike the work I've been doing repairing cell phone circuits and modifying cars. Though there is one small difference, in the future, I'll still be working to repair machines, but this machine is. One of the most sophisticated machines ever created, the human body. Here, my obsession with details will be as crucial as ever. A one millimeter difference can mean the difference between a successful root canal and a lawsuit. The question is, will the toothbrushes I hand out be mineral white or diamond white? So there's a lot that I love about that essay, but I want to point something out to you, and this will be what you could potentially use if you're thinking about an essay of this structure. So first of all, the theme that connects all these random details is the student's career. So this student happened to know what he wanted to do. He also had all this stuff that he wanted to share about himself. And the thing that connected all the stuff was the career. So if you'll notice, in the first paragraphs, he says, As a kid, I was always curious, so he's demonstrating curiosity. Second paragraph, I love designing shoes, so he shows his meticulous attention to detail. Next paragraph, taking things apart. So he's showing that he's good working with his hands. Now we don't know it, but eventually all these things are going to connect, and that's what makes it a great, I think, a great essay, but also makes for a great film, is that there's something surprising but inevitable about what happens at the end. Now for you, if you know what career you want to study, one thing you could do is just take a sheet of paper and on the right side, in the top right corner, you just write the career, right, I want to be a doctor. And then underneath that, you just write, what are the qualities that I would need to possess in order to be a great doctor? And then that's how we wrote this essay, by the way, is I asked a student to identify what are some qualities of a great endodontist, and he said, Oh, curiosity, working with hands, helping others, et cetera. Then next to that, if you're doing this on the left side, write one example of how you have developed or demonstrated this quality in your life. Get really specific. Look to your essence objects list. The qualities could come from your values list, or they could come from the values exercise that again, you can Google. But once you've come up with, say, four or five examples, ask yourself, Okay, what order did these happen in? And you might even put them in chronological order. Now, if you don't know your career, and by the way, if you do want to write that type of essay, I'd say reveal the career closer to the end, because it's more surprising, a little more fun for the reader. But if you don't know your career, you can still repeat this exercise, but instead of writing the career in the top right corner, just write like amazing human. So if you want to become an amazing human, what qualities would an amazing human possess? And these are going to be your strengths, right? So just make a list of the values, or as I like to call them, superpowers, that you possess, and then next to them, what's one example or something that demonstrates that you possess that quality. Put those in chronological order, because they'll help with your you know, as you're ordering the events in your story, and they'll help you write your transitions. Because you can basically say a few years later and at the end, you don't need to end with your career. You can instead name the values more explicitly and say, no matter what I do, X, Y and Z, will be important to me. Okay, so those are my tips. And if you're looking to, you know, try and find a topic, one thing you could consider doing is just taking your essence objects, exercise and your values exercise, and just having a conversation with somebody. And if like, let's say one thing that's really fun is to do it with somebody else, and whether it's a student or a parent or counselor, and both of you do the essence objects and values exercise and just share what you discovered from those exercises. Another simple way to think about what is your topic is to just ask yourself, have I been through challenges or not? Now? Another exercise that you can do is you can actually create a timeline of your life and just map it out, like, what are the major events? One way to do this would just be to speak it aloud to a partner and have your partner just write down all the things. And then this is the fun part. Have your partner speak back the story as they heard it. It's kind of cool. You get to hear your life story. Another thing to ask is, do I know what I want to study? If you do? What are the essential qualities of that career? One tip I would give is try and come up with some unusual values, or, you know, things connected to that career. In other words, many students will write about the doctor essay about helping others. And you know, you know, there are some, and maybe collaboration has kind of become more, a little bit more cliche. But you might look at that values list and go, Okay, what are some values that not everybody is going to put in there? I want to be a doctor essay. And again, if you don't know what career it is, you can just make a list of the values. Come up with an example for each one. Make sure you don't leave money on the table. In other words, if there's something really important or, like impressive on your activities list, as it were, if you've filled that out or that you've done in your life, don't think that's going to be obvious just because you have that somewhere in your application. Make sure that you work that in somewhere. If it's not in your main essay, make sure that that's somewhere in your in your application. Another tip, if you're kind of struggling to. Figure out, well, what do I want to write about? You might need more content, and this is especially true for students who haven't faced challenges and don't know what they want to study. So there are a couple other exercises. You can Google these 21 details exercise or everything I want colleges to know about me list. These are two great ways to generate some more content for your essay. You'll see those explained at those links. If you're looking for more resources, I've got a basically a guide for how to write your personal statement. It's free for students. You can find it on my website, college essay guide.com or in the show notes linked here. If you're a low income student who's interested in some more support, I have something called the match lighter Scholarship, which, again, you can apply for via my website that offers four hours of free one on one essay Help for Students. Check that out at the link. You can apply. It's pretty easy. I wish you lots of luck and fun in this process. It's a great one. It's one that I've dedicated a good portion of my life to, and I've got much more at college essay guy.com check it out and stay curious. Thanks for listening. If you're not on my email list yet, I'd love to share more resources with you. Go to the home page, college essay guy.com you can go, scroll to the bottom and type in your email. I swear I won't spam you ever What else do I want you to know? Are you? Have you ever seen my Tumblr page? That's kind of cool. I don't talk about that a lot, but there's, there's a lot going on on that page. You can actually kill two birds with one stone, and if you just scroll to the bottom of the home page, you'll see an imported version of my Tumblr page. But you can also check that out by googling College. Sa guy, dot Tumblr, lots of college and writing and grammar and, you know, admissions, fun anyway. What else that's it. Have an awesome day. You.


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