When I was seventeen, I was told to hunker down. I was in an acting class and had just spent about fifteen minutes improvising a scene played out on a tightrope between the life I was living and the one I’d just created for my character. Real Life Improv - that’s what my teacher called …
Rewrite your college application essay with today’s point of view answering the question, “Is there anything else we should know?”
I misinterpreted most things by choice at seventeen; I couldn’t define good riddance; I chose not to know the difference between stay and go, but played the victim like a champion. You should know we’re fine, and you should know things got worse. In my college essay I wrote about accepting loneliness, leaving out what …
She Was Crazy That Way
It was 2014, after dinner but before Thanksgiving when I sawed off the head of a deer. We were in the back shed surrounded by the thick scent of fresh death, and I was just a guest, an outsider when it comes to survival. “This should get us through winter,” the father said to his …
Your First Breakup
By late August, we'd exhausted our summer nights with the sort of innocuous chatter that in hindsight can only be defined as endless foreplay - coyly beating around the inevitable. Chris would park his car outside my house, just barely seventeen, a shiny license tucked into the wallet kept safely in one of the deep …
Honesty
Many successful writers have contributed to advice books, advice blogs, advice twitter accounts, sharing their Expert advice on writing. And so many of them say: tell the truth. That’s it. Whether it’s fiction or otherwise, tell the truth. And I say to myself okay, I can do that. I took classes on how to tell …
Your Favorite Piece of Playground Equipment
As a human destined to forever be under five feet, a fear of heights is a trait I made sure never to possess. As a child, if there was something I couldn't reach, which happened fairly often, I'd climb. I climbed kitchen countertops to get cups and plates; I climbed the shelves in my closet …
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Describe One of Your Bad Habits and Why You Secretly Get Joy Out of It.
I’m not a cigarette smoker, though I’ve dabbled. I’m not much of a junk food eater, but I love a good dessert, and I follow a few TV shows but I’m really not one to binge. But okay, I’ll admit it - I do procrastinate when it comes to the boring topics, pick at my …
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What’s The Stupidest Thing You Used To Believe Whole-Heartedly
I suppose many who were children during and after 1995 went through a phase very similar to mine, however, did not quite take it as far as I did. 1995 of course was the year John Lasseter and the geniuses over at Pixar created Toy Story. Was it a completely made up story created entirely …
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Describe Heaven
Heaven. It starts on a mountain. 42 degrees and not a cloud in sight. I’m strapped into my snowboard and Poppy is there to greet me - the first person I knew to die. “Welcome to Heaven.” I follow him down the mountain. It’s perfectly groomed. Perfectly challenging. I get myself into an invincible rhythm …
The richest you’ve ever been
In order to discuss the time when I was at my richest, I believe it is important first to define the word rich. What does it mean to be rich? I’ll admit, my initial thoughts went straight to money. To be rich means to possess large sums of money, but upon further thinking, I considered …
