Summer Seniors

Tuesday was a day that I finally got to do what I had been looking forward to doing all summer, work with high school seniors applying to college. The other day our writing center team met with a group of Marriage and Family Health (MFH) interns from Lewis & Clarks who were hosting a program called summer seniors. This program offers guidance and coaching to Roosevelt seniors who want help both with their college application and with learning the skills necessary for college success. The summer seniors program was a great opportunity for our team to come in and help coach some of these students in writing their personal essay. I must say that this group of Roosevelt students broke the mold of what I had become somewhat accustomed to encountering. From what I had experienced in helping tutor at the SUN school, the typical Roosevelt student was smart, but pretty unmotivated to put their best effort into whatever assignment it was they were working on. This was not the case for these summer senior students. These students were incredibly attentive to everything the MFH interns were saying, put their absolute best effort into their first draft of their personal essay, which they only had a few minutes to write, and seemed to soak up every ounce of advice myself and the rest of the writing center team had to offer them.
To be honest, this ultra-attentiveness was kind of intimidating for me. As the student I worked with hung on my every word when I went over her essay, I got kind of nervous that I would screw up and miss something or give her some bad advice. Obviously, if I was feeling nervous critiquing her essay, I could only imagine how nervous she felt writing it. The particular student I worked with had high aspirations of attending a good college on a scholarship, but she admitted she was more of a math and science oriented student and felt that, in her words, she "sucked at writing." When I heard her say this I knew that my main objective of this session would be to get her confidence up. I know how hard it can be to write an essay when you think every sentence you are putting down is terrible. Also, the best essays are ones that are fun to write, and no one has fun writing an essay they think is horrible. I read her essay and to be honest it wasn't bad at all. I told her that it was a great essay and that all the pieces were there, she just needed to put a little pizzazz in it. We discussed some strategies to help her personality shine through in her words and she came up with a great hook to draw the reader in and by the end I could tell she was excited to get home and work on her essay even further. Hopefully, now that this student has a little more confidence in her writing it will show in her finished product and not only will she enjoy the process of writing more, but she will be able to produce a product that colleges will enjoy reading because they can see her emotional investment shine through in her final product.