Read This First: Phoenix’s Warning

My student Phoenix gave me some very good advice about how I should orient you before you start writing your college application essays. He said I should warn you about the nonlinear process.

You will most likely start your essay by telling a story from your own life, but you probably won’t know why the story is important until you’ve retold it a few times. It’s the retelling that I want to emphasize here. These retellings might be called “drafts,” but sometimes a writer will do much of this thematic problem-solving in their head or in conversation with a creative partner.

The point of the retelling is to figure out two things: one is to find meaning in the story (the theme), and two is to determine the story’s scope (where does it start and where does it end). Often the perfect outline is revealed only in the finished product. It’s not there to start with. The final structure may feel inevitable or even obvious, but trust me, it only feels obvious after the fact. An artist doesn’t start with a pattern. A pattern, for a woodworker or a seamstress—or an outline, for a writer—will only allow you to make what someone else has made before. Think about a fashion designer who starts the creative process with a fantastic bolt of fabric—I’m picturing a snow leopard–print faux fur with a long pile, and it’s begging to be made into something. For a personal essayist, the “fabric” is the life experience you have chosen to work with. The fabric has certain limitations but also many possibilities. The thing you make—the skirt, the jacket, the hat—takes shape only after a long period of creative rumination and after running some practical tests on the fabric. There’s a lot of trial and error. You unspool more fabric for a skirt and less fabric for a hat. For the essayist, that’s like trimming or expanding the anecdote to serve this or that theme. And if the material turns out to be ill-suited to your theme? You will need to change one or the other. This is what Phoenix meant by nonlinear process.

Phoenix came to me with 90 pages of preliminary notes and only a week to complete his Common App essay. When I challenged him to summarize his essay in one sentence, he said, “The story of my life through the lens of curiosity.” That was a great place to start, but I could see why he was struggling. The scope (being his entire life story) was too broad. And although curiosity is essential to the personal essay–writing process, it needs to serve a purpose. Curiosity needs to land on insight. And you only have 650 words to stick the landing.

In Phoenix’s notes, one story kept popping up again and again, so I figured this was probably the right place to start. (Generally speaking, any memory you are obsessed with is worthy of reflection in a personal essay.) Phoenix’s obsession was with how, as a freshman, he had gotten caught for tagging and was detained by the police. His parents were notified, and they had to come and pick him up. That night his father asked him What do you think your punishment should be? Phoenix decided to give up video games. For good. He chose this punishment because he had occasionally wondered who he could become without video games, and this seemed like the right opportunity to do the hard thing. That same night he disassembled his gaming PC and took the parts to the basement. That decision changed his life in many important ways.

Brainstorming yielded a long list of positive changes that resulted from Phoenix’s decision to quit video games. He started running, he picked up guitar, he read Dostoevsky, he wrote poetry, he meditated, and he wrote 400 pages of journal entries. Then, in his junior year, he tackled four AP classes, some in subjects he knew he wouldn’t be good at that fascinated him nevertheless. I thought these things were all interesting, and I encouraged him to try to sort out the list as a logical chain of cause and effect.

The essay Phoenix wrote over the next few days was great, and I judged it to be 95% completed. I was eager for him to resolve my proofreading suggestions and be done, since his deadline was in, like, 24 or 48 hours. Phoenix had some new ideas, though, and he wanted to do a more substantial revision. I trusted him, and his final draft was markedly different and better than the previous draft in three important ways. 

First, he raised the story stakes by framing his gaming habit as an addiction. This reframing was not only more compelling but more truthful. Second, he added counterarguments to his argument that video games were bad and that he was better off without them. His retreat from his gaming friend group was painful and left him vulnerable to antisocial impulses. Third, instead of montaging all of the positive changes that resulted from quitting video games, he decided to focus on only those changes that led to his decision to become a neurosurgeon. The chain of cause and effect looked like this: His addiction to video games led to an interest in recording his own thoughts and behaviors; his interest in self-observation led to an interest in psychology; his interest in psychology led to AP Psych; AP Psych led to his decision to enroll in college-level summer classes in Neuroscience; and his love of neuroscience led him to discover a career goal: He would major in Neuroscience and become a neurosurgeon. The essay’s ultimate emphasis on a career goal was perfect for a college admissions essay. 

Phoenix gave up video games to become a neurosurgeon. There’s your one-sentence summary. The scope of the anecdote extends from the inciting incident of getting busted for tagging in his freshman year to deciding to become a neurosurgeon in his senior year. The decision is meaningful because it marks a shift from self-absorption to altruism, which Phoenix captured brilliantly in his conclusion: “I will forever chase deeper and harder questions about the brain and behavior, and I will continue struggling to balance intellectualism with human connection, remembering that the reason I do anything is for people.” Phoenix did not know the theme of his essay—nor did I—until he had written these words: “The reason I do anything is for people.” Finally, he could see what it was that he had created. He had selected and stitched together moments from his life that added up to something, but it took a while to see it. And then, suddenly, he saw it. Not a linear process. Not easy. But, in the end, it was perfect.