Since I was in seventh grade I had planned the whole college scenario: where I'd apply, where I might actually go, what I need to do to get in and so on. I always figured as soon as I had access to an application I'd fill it out in a matter of days, send it in, wait for a response and repeat the process for the 6 or 7 schools I'd apply to. I thought by Christmas I'd have a new school. As is usually the case with me, my thoughts were the antithesis of reality. I've completed two applications, one to a school I know I'm not going to. I've forgone the application process for three other schools because I know I won't go to those either. I have one application left to complete and less than two weeks to do so. Apparently, in the opinion of the Stanford Admission Department, prompted essays are the best way to judge someone's character, so here I sit, writing an instant message in one window, a text message in another, a blog in this one and an essay about my most meaningful personal activity in the last. And as I'm exercising my multitasking muscle, I realized that the latter of those is the least genuine form of writing. In the essay I can't begin a sentence with "And" like I just did, nor could I change tenses within a sentence, as I did in that same line. I can't overdose on commas, by far my favorite writing technique. I have to take into account the suits sitting around a desk up in Stanfordland and whether they're old or young, male or female, liberal or conservative (It's northern California, so that third one is pretty obvious). I get to insert a prompt into one side of my head and wait for some processed, synthesized, cookie-cutter word conglomerate to fall out the other side into Word 2003 so I can copy-paste it into Stanford's online application. It will have no personality. It will have no color, it will have no substance. It will scream "I'm a promising young student who would love to attend your institution in hopes of maximizing my chances of having an ideal life." I get this mental image of rows and rows of girls in casual dresses and guys wearing ties just smiling. Every one of them is intelligent, responsible, and qualified, yet none of them can be anyone, they all have to bow to the powers that be and submit the same lifeless text that I will undoubtedly send in. Writing isn't about capital letters and parallel structure and proper conventions and all the other arbitrary concepts that every English teacher and so called "scholar" will feed you for a period everyday at school. It's purpose. It's pouring your mind out and letting it fall where it may without trying to shape it or form it so someone might think you're a good writer. I can write whatever I want in that instant message window or in that text message, I can write whatever I want, however I want, in this blog. In that essay, I can do no such thing. Writing is not servitude. Writing is not appeasement. Testing the agility of my cursor as I dart from grammar error to punctuation error is not writing. Granted, no one's forcing me to apply to Stanford. I don't have to write three short essays and one long one for a school represented by a tree, but it seems as if there should be at least one person among America's "intellectual elite" who realizes that they aren't going to see or find any real people in what they receive and read. Open it up. Give us a prompt like "Write 3500 words. And begin." or "By the time I get to your essay, I will have read hundreds of others. If you can keep me interested enough to finish your paper without me having to throw back another cup of heavily caffeinated coffee, you will be accepted." I'll bet my Stanford acceptance/rejection letter on my belief that they will find more character in those papers than in any about meaningful activities, personal obstacles or influential people. Stanford asked me for 1500 words. I'm tempted to give them the 724 I just wrote.
-alex
