697 - What Anyone Can Learn From the College Essay Process

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Mignon Fogarty, Inc.

Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2019

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even if you're not applying to college right now, the format of the college essay has a lot to teach about writing and self-reflection. A college essay can be an exploratory journey that ends up being about much more than getting into college. College Essay Guy, Ethan Sawyer, talks about how he helps students find their story. LINKS AND SPONSORS | Stitcher App: http://stitcherapp.com/grammar | True and Co.: http://trueandco.com/grammar | Grammar Girl Email Newsletter: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/newsletters | Graduation Sweepstakes: http://bit.ly/qdtlifeaftercollege | Grammar Girl's AP style webinar: http://bit.ly/GrammarWebinar2019 | GRAMMAR POP iOS GAME | Optimized for iPad: http://bit.ly/iPadGrammarPop | For iPad and iPhone: http://bit.ly/GrammarPopMobile | GRAMMAR GIRL BOOKS | http://bit.ly/GrammarPopBooks | GRAMMAR GIRL IS PART OF THE QUICK AND DIRTY TIPS PODCAST NETWORK | VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475)

Transcript

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0:00.0	[♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪
0:04.8	Grimer Girl here, I'm Anyaan Faggedy, and today I have an interview with Ethan Sawyer,
0:09.2	better known as the College essay guy. Even if you're not writing college essays,
0:14.5	Ethan has amazing insights about what makes a great story, and therefore what makes good writing.
0:20.5	Each year he helps thousands of students and counselors through his online courses,
0:24.3	workshops, articles, podcasts, and books, and he works privately with a small number of lucky students.
0:30.0	I recommend his book College essay essentials to all my friends with kids in high school.
0:35.6	But I also just really enjoy talking with him, and I hope you will enjoy listening.
0:42.7	Hey Ethan, thanks for being here with me today.
0:45.7	Thanks for having me, I'm excited to talk to you.
0:47.8	You bet. Well, gosh, I'm happy to talk to the College essay guy. I have friends whose kids are
0:52.6	working on their college essays, and I always recommend your book when I hear of people doing
0:57.8	that kind of work. And I think that there's a lot people can learn about general writing,
1:02.8	just from the kind of work you do with college essay students, too. So why don't you first give
1:08.7	a little background about how long you've been doing this, how you got started, and how people
1:15.2	can work with you if they want to? Sure, yeah. So this started for me. This was kind of my job out of
1:21.6	college. I graduated at Northwestern in 2003 and really thought I wanted to study screenwriting
1:28.2	and moved with my best friend to Los Angeles thinking that that was going to be my career.
1:33.9	And got a job helping students work on their college essays and started applying screenwriting
1:40.0	structure and teaching them things like narrative structure and what is an inciting incident and how
1:44.8	all that works. And that was kind of fun. And so it started off as just being like, oh, look,
1:49.6	here are these structures that we can use to say things about ourselves. And then over the last,
	...

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