Starring Centre Stage

Applicants to American colleges persevere through a laborious application process. First come the SAT 1 tests, centrally marked multiple choice assessments of critical reading, maths and writing skills. Then SAT 2, subject specific tests. Then the forms, lists of courses taken in termly breakdown, extra curricular activities & levels achieved, athletic prowess and coaches' attestations, that Little Catrin can indeed run a 3 minute mile.  But central to it all are several essays on topics of your choice.  They are, the guidance says, seeking to 'personalise the form, to offer a window on who you are'.  500 word autobiographical vignettes on you at your best.

At first reading the prompt questions look anodyne enough. 'Write describing a person who had influenced you, and describing the influence they have had.'  'Write describing a life changing experience or an ethical dilemma you have faced.'  But this is a tricky act to pull off.  Typically, I'm told, these essays aren't the product of a sole author. An American friend who studied at Harvard and went to an elite high school, noted that she had six adults, two of them Harvard graduates, critiquing her college application essays. 

I always advise clients to imagine the competition. So in this case, imagine WellGroomedHighFlyer, daughter of two Ivy League grads, now lawyers both, from suburban town USA.  What will she be writing on, - on the life changing time with her exchange family in Mexico?  Her prowess and experiences in the first violins of elite national youth orchestra?  Which are the welltrodden topics the assessors will be blenching at reading yet again?  Now think what you would be contributing in different experience on a US campus. Which experiences express the heart of it for you?

And face to face, one to one, the Kenyan students seem to get it.  I've had such moving conversations these last few days, as students sift through their lives, and identify who they are and what has made a difference for them.  The student from Dandora, where the community lives on Nairobi's rubbish and toxic waste dump, who only got to high school thanks to a chance Irish sponsor. She spoke of the experience of growing up in a slum. Of sewage running down the streets, which, when it rains, reaches your home.  Of 15 families sharing their toilet. Of her peers with little to live for, now enmeshed in drugs, but how they turn ashamed from her, when they are on a high, wishing they too could have a sense of a future.

Another girl, an elected peer mentor at high school.  The government introduced guidance and mentoring initiatives a few years ago after riots in high schools.  She spoke of the stresses her peers brought to her, - money problems, homesickness, worry about siblings left in unstable situations at home, talk of suicide.  'Suicide, really, how often was that mentionned though?'  In her two years as a peer mentor there had been several suicide atttempts by girls in her year, and over ten students had discussed feelings of this magnitude with her.

The pressures of poverty run through almost every story.  Around a third of the students have described domestic violence and alcoholism. I'd say over half have lost a parent.  One lad describes losing both parents by the time he was eleven, and how he and his younger siblings set up house alone, until a member of his church came to bring them into his home at the height of the post-election violence. Living on a knife edge.  One lad's story hinges around his father breaking his leg.

'I didn't really understand why this was so important?'
'Because he was the breadwinnner. With a broken leg he can't earn. So we couldn't buy food, and we had to leave school.' 
Another girl speaks of how she, brought up by her single mum, has learnt to juggle the family finances.  From age 8, she, and her younger brother, would take Thursdays off school each week. They would go to the weekly market, where they would hawk paper bags to the shoppers.
'You split up to maximise sales. But it means you are more likely to be harrassed by the shoppers who will think we are streetchildren.' 
Again, I'm counselling against stories at full strength. This isn't Oprah.  We're not going for the Pity Card. You are highly qualified applicants who are applying as equals. Identify the heart of your story and focus on that.  But nonetheless.

But many others seem to lack confidence in the weight of their own experience. Have maybe never basked in the reflecting glow of a parent's eyes. Lack insight into how different things are elsewhere, and how laudable their survival, and survival with spirit and honour truly is.  Reading one lad's first draft of his experiences at athletics training camp, I plough through to page three, when he mentions that this was a pre-Olympic training camp.

'Really? Are you THAT good?' 

'Well no, no, its not true. I just thought it was more interesting like this.' 

Another writes of being presented with a (fictional) honour by the elders of her tribe, when authentic articulation of the person she is, is what is called for.  I really see its difficult for any teenager.  It's harder still between cultures. But in guidance theory, this is the fantasy stage, before a grounded sense of individual identity has been won through trial and feedback. 

British Quakers pose Advices and Queries which are read out loud in Meeting for Worship each week, for each worshipper to reflect on, privately, in their own lives.  

'Seek to know one another in the things which are eternal. [..] Remember that each one of us is unique, precious, a child of God.'

Yes, where we can, it would be good to support successful college applications, and this is the key, lifechanging objective for our students.  But more important for me, I'm coming to see, is this insight at the heart of the US applications process, that each individual is unique and precious, that each has a valued story to tell which deserves a hearing.  It's a privilege to be present, as some realise what their story, or what today's story, is, and the great deal they have to be proud of.