Some people celebrate May Day on May 1, dancing around a pole to celebrate the beginning of summer. Some observe International Workers’ Day, honoring labor and workers’ rights. For me, May 1 is decision day.
Unsurprisingly, given the tens of thousands of applicants
answering the same essay prompts, certain topics popped up over and over. Overcoming
a sports injury. Lessons learned from a service trip. The loss of a
grandparent.
There is plenty of advice out there about writing personal
statements, including how to avoid such clichés. A Google search of “how to
write a college essay” yielded 744,000,000 results. Then there are the high
school guidance counselors, university admissions officers, editors for hire, and
private college counselors ready to chime in. And nowadays, AI can enter into
the equation as well.
I don’t remember most of the thousands of essays I read, but I remember my favorite. It was about grocery bags.
A kid in Texas worked as a bagger in a grocery store, and one
day they ran out of bags. The assistant manager had failed to order them; and
some of the customers did not respond well to the situation. Some of them even
took it out on the kid.
The A story, as we say in writing, was what happened the day
the bags ran out. The B story, the parallel narrative that explores the themes
of the main storyline in more depth, was how the teenage writer learned that
adults have their own limitations, and that he could hold his own when dealing
with them.
He had a terrific, sincere authorial voice, and I not only
checked the “admit” box on his application, I also checked the box for
“exceptional essay.” That kid would be long out of college by now. I hope he
had a wonderful time, and I hope he’s still writing.
