Distinctive

By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D.

One of my favorite shows of all time, Breaking Bad, opens with one of the most unforgettable scenes in television. The main character, Walter White, is wildly driving an RV in nothing but a gas mask and his underpants, while his accomplice, Jesse Pinkman, lays slumped in the front passenger seat, also with a gas mask covering his face. As the sound of police sirens becomes clearer, the camera cuts to the back of the vehicle where two other men lay dead on the floor, tossed like socks in a dryer by the maneuvers of the escaping Walter White. After making a bad turn, Walter drives the RV off the road and down a dusty desert ravine before crashing. He then jumps out of the wreck in a panic with filthy fluids flowing out behind him.

This scene raises so many questions. Who is this crazed man? Why is he only wearing his underpants and a gas mask? What happened to everyone else in the RV? What is that nasty brown liquid that has poured out of the vehicle? Why are the police chasing him?

If your college essay opened like this, I can guarantee you that your admissions representatives would be dying to read the rest of your essay. The opening in medias res with multiple conflicts combined with many well-planted mysteries is exactly the kind of drama that engages people. Why be boring when you can be Walter White?

When brainstorming ideas for college essays with my students, I’m constantly listening for stories with great conflict. Conflict is drama, and drama makes people interested in what you have to say. By extension, saying something interesting (controversial, mysterious, troubling) makes you stand out. Yet, I’ve had several students balk at the idea of presenting problems. Perhaps they are conflict averse, and when problems arise, they duck away from them. While this is understandable in life, it’s problematic in creative writing. Perhaps they don’t want to admit to having problems, because it counters the image of perfection that they’ve so carefully cultivated over the years. Or, perhaps they just find problems to be “negative.”

Unfortunately, admissions reps are tired. They’re bored. They want to be entertained. Plus, no one believes you when you say that you have no conflict in your life. I personally face several conflicts a day, most of which are minor, like needing to take the trash out for a second time because my husband forgot to discard some food in the first bag. Some are much bigger, like when someone broke into my house and stole every computer (that only happened once, thank goodness). The thing about conflict or problems or negativity is that they give you an opportunity to show how you handle yourself when faced with difficulties. Under pressure, are you a cracker that crumbles, or are you carbon that turns into a diamond? Personally, I prefer to be carbon.

Of course, to become a diamond, you can’t leave the conflict unaddressed. Doing so would be negative, not to mention highly problematic for your admissions reader, who might view you as weak or indifferent. You need to show how you can shine through conflict, and come out of it stronger than ever before. Let me give you an example. One of my students was tutoring basketball players in hopes of making them recruiting eligible. The father of one of these students told his son that there was no hope for his education. Ouch. While it’s painful to be told that, the tutee shared those hurtful words with my student who then made it his personal mission to prove that dad wrong. And did he ever! Through intense work over a year’s time, my student pushed that basketball player not only to get his grades up high enough to get recruited, but to earn straight As.

Clearly my student’s story has a happy ending, but do you always need to solve the problem? Not necessarily. While it is certainly what we hope for, sometimes we come out of conflict without a solution, but a much better understanding of ourselves. Maybe the problem is someone else, and let’s be honest, we can’t always change other people. We can, however, change our own response to people or situations that hurt us, and become more emotionally intelligent in the process. That, too, is appealing to admissions officers, because you’re showing that all important quality of growth.

Admissions officers LOVE growth essays, and conflict is arguably the most expeditious way to demonstrate it in a college essay. So if you think about it, as much as you probably don’t like it, you want (some) problems and negativity in your life, because without something challenging you, you’re unlikely to become the best version of yourself. So with whom or what can you find conflict? Literary tradition identifies the following places:

• You vs. Someone Else – Think about troubled relationships with a friend, family member, or acquaintance.
• You vs. Nature – Think about climate change, death, earthquakes, allergens, basically anything that’s part of our earth.
• You vs. Yourself – Think about a time you’ve questioned your sense of self, or you got mad at yourself for making a poor decision.
• You vs. Machine – Think about a malfunctioning car, AI, computer, or piece of technology that you’ve gotten frustrated with.
• You vs. Society – Think racism, ageism, misogyny, politics, or basically any expectation that the world you live in places on you.
• You vs. The Supernatural – Think about ghosts, or the trials your god, or gods, put you through, if this aligns with your belief system.

From there, identify your nemeses, even if one of them is yourself, and then think about how you’ve solved any of your problems with them. By doing so and then reflecting on how that experience changed you for the better, the more easily you can identify stories that admissions officers want to read. 

You may not enjoy the experience of getting caught up in conflict, but by engaging with what’s difficult, the more you’ll realize what you value and what you’re capable of. By doing that, you’ll find that you’ll not only write compelling essays, but also gain a clear sense of who you are. And that alone makes conflict priceless.