Distinctive

By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D.

One of my favorite writers is the master of the personal narrative, David Sedaris. He definitely knows how to open a story better than anyone else, but he also connects ideas in unexpected ways, touches on the right details, and makes you genuinely care about what he’s talking about – even if it’s about imagining a name for his family’s North Carolina beach house or finding a seat on a cross-country Greyhound bus (if you’d like to check out his work, here’s a website with some of his essays). Part of his appeal is that he’s very funny and sometimes straight-up outlandish. Part of it is also because his stories are highly relatable. The other part, and the part that you should care most about, is that his stories always answer the question, “So what?”

So what? You may view this concept as shockingly blunt, or ideally as short and sweet, but that question, more than any other, is what you should ask yourself when you’re writing your own personal narratives, especially for colleges. Tired and frazzled admissions readers constantly ask themselves this question when reading your essays. They want to know why the stories you’re sharing actually matter, why they should care, or in other words why you are someone worthy of admission. This is not necessarily where you need to start, and getting there is hard; but it is definitely where you need to end. So, now that you know the seemingly simple core question, how do you answer it? Again, the answer is simple and relies on two other questions you should constantly ask yourself while writing: “How?” and “Why?”

When we were all in elementary school, we learned the 5 Ws and H of writing: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. Most students who sit down to write their college essays have absolutely no problem with the first four interrogatives. Expressing who’s involved in their story, what happened, when it happened, and where it happened doesn’t require a lot of deep thought. It’s with those pesky last two questions that almost everyone gets stuck. It’s not easy pulling out how you made something remarkable happen, and it’s certainly a lot less easy to understand why you embarked on that journey in the first place, and how it has impacted your approach to life. This is why so many people make fun of the personal statement’s demands, which seem to ask seventeen-year-olds to bare their souls in 650-words or less.

Yet, as you work on your college essays, you can get to the core of your motivations and “bare your soul” if you constantly ask yourself “How?”, “Why?”, and “So What?” Let me give you an example, starting with the four easy Ws.

The day after I graduated from college, I jumped on a plane and headed to Rome.

Who – Me

What – I flew to Rome

When – Right after my college graduation

Where – The airport and Rome

This sentence took me maybe five seconds to write. It is full of factual information that I can recall without much effort. The simplicity of it, however, invites you to learn more, just like the simplicity of your own essay’s premise, which should lead you to ask how and why. If you don’t know how to do it, let me show you how. Take a piece of the main idea and probe even deeper with either how or why. Why did I jump on a plane and head to Rome?

I was an art history major and my favorite period was the Italian Renaissance. I spent the first semester of my senior year studying abroad there, which led me to fall in love with the city. I didn’t know what I was going to do once I landed. I just knew that Rome was where I needed to be.

You might want to ask why again. Why did you go right after your college graduation?

I had interviewed for business jobs during the second half of my senior year, but the idea of working under fluorescent lights in a cubicle for the next forty-five years of my life made my stomach churn. I knew that that was the wrong choice for me, whereas in Rome, everything felt right – the lifestyle, the art, the history, the people and their values. Even though I didn’t have a job lined up, I knew that once I got there, everything would fall into place. Plus, I was done with school, my future was wide open, and I was not responsible for anyone else but myself. This was the perfect time.

You can either ask why again, or move onto how. Why did you believe everything would fall into place? How did you make everything fall into place?

I have always possessed a fierce will and a strong stomach for calculated risk-taking. I knew I had the smarts to identify the resources I needed to find a job. I also had established a nice network of Rome-based friends while I was studying abroad there, so I had a place to live and I wouldn’t be alone. There wasn’t much to fear.

I made it happen with a combination of networking, researching, and pounding the pavement. Within a week, I had three job offers – one from a law firm seeking an English-speaking paralegal, another from a cultural association, and a third from an English school. While I thought I might want to go to law school in a year or two, the idea of having jumped on a plane to escape fluorescent lights and a cubicle only to enter them once in Italy ultimately didn’t make sense to me. I also didn’t think that teaching English was in my future, and the school was located far from my apartment. So, I accepted the job at the cultural association, where I spent my days learning and sharing Roman history among the sites of the city. It was one of the best experiences of my life, and ultimately led me to seek a Ph.D.

You can of course ask even more questions. Why did you want a Ph.D.? How did you learn everything? How did that choice several years ago impact the person you are today? If you have even more questions, that’s great! You should keep asking them until you run out, and how and why can no longer be answered. When you’ve reached that point, then you’ve achieved the “So what?” factor. In my case, the “So what?” is why and how I decided to pursue a Ph.D. For you, it could be anything, as long as it expresses a driving force in your life.

Of course, reaching the “So what?” factor on your own can be hard, and this is why it’s important to have one or two outside readers whom you trust and who can interrogate you. If you’ve run out of whys and hows, they may come up with new ones that force you to go even deeper or lead you to ideas you hadn’t considered before. Once they’ve exhausted all of their questions, you can then rest assured that your essay has achieved its purpose.

Digging like this takes time and patience, as well as a lot of reflection. Most people don’t know their answers right away and they need to stop and think about them. You may need to write a piece that is significantly over the word limit until you create something long enough that you can mine for great ideas. I just hope that now when you think about it, you realize that baring your soul isn’t as hard as it seems.