1) What inspired you to write this book?
The short answer is I did it as a follow-up to my first writing book,
"Everything You Need to Write Great Essays You Can Learn from Watching
Movies." Not much of a story. But, the inspiration for "Everything
You Need..." is far more interesting. I'd been holding personal statement
workshops for high school seniors for about 25 years. The thrust of the
workshop was that writing is a process. It's not only about getting 500 words
(or whatever) on paper. I was looking for a way to connect with the students,
most of who either did not read or did not read deeply. I couldn't use
literature as an example of the writing process because the students didn't
identify with it. But I found out, quite by accident, that they were quite
conversant with how movies were made. They read the fan Web sites. They watched
the bonus material on DVDs. They made their own YouTube videos. So I re-did the
workshop to use the process of moviemaking as a metaphor for the writing
process. It caught on. Later, when I complained to my wife that my college
students didn't write well she told me to stop complaining or write a book. I don’t
like complaining, so I decided to write a book, and I borrowed the movie
metaphor from my workshops. "Make Them Want You: How to Write a Standout
Personal Statement 15 Minutes at a Time" came out of requests from
students and college counselors to write a book that specifically addressed
writing the college application personal statement. I took the principles from
my first book and used them in "Make Them Want You."
2) Why 15 minutes a day? Why not just whip one out in an afternoon?
There's a practical reason and an artistic reason. Actually, there are
two practical reasons. The first one is that most high school students (and
probably an increasing slice of the general population) have short attention
spans. The elegant name is multitasking, but studies have shown that
multi-taskers are not as efficient as, I don't know the word, uni-taskers?
Nevertheless, high school students have trouble concentrating on one thing for
very long. So I wanted to give my readers a process that fit into their
lifestyles. Work a bit on the personal statement, work on something else, come
back to the personal statement for a while, and so forth. The other practical
reason is that writing scares people. I've worked with successful executives in
companies, large, well-known companies, executives who could crush a competitor
with a look. They were practically trembling when they told me they had to
write a speech or a presentation. (I have my suspicions as to why this is, but
it's a whole other story.) When I was growing up, and I had to do something
that scared me or bored me, my mother would say, "Well, just work on it
for 15 minutes and then stop. You can stand anything for 15 minutes." Of
course, what would happen is that once I started---after promising myself I was
only going to devote 15 minutes to whatever I had to do---I got lost in the job
and time flew by. But I always remembered: anybody can stand anything for 15
minutes. Later, I used the principle to help people overcome writer's block.
Just write for 15 minutes, even if it's gibberish. Then you can stop. It turned
out to be quite an effective cure for writer's block or plain, old
procrastination. I knew that high school students were excellent
procrastinators (as are college students), so I decided that the 15-minute rule
would be the organizing principle for "Make Them Want You."
Here's the artistic reason. Creative ideas need time to develop. One
reason is you have to prime the creative pump in your brain. Here's an example.
You spend an hour working on a problem. Maybe you come up with some potential
solutions, maybe you don't. But the next morning, in the shower, the answer
comes to you fully formed. Did it just pop into your head? Hardly. You'd been
working on it, somewhere in the back of your mind, for hours. That first hour,
that was priming the pump. You told your creative self what the problem was and
where to look for possible solutions. Then your creative self went off-line to
work on the problem while you did whatever else you had to do. By the time you
took your shower, there was the answer. Now, if you'd written up one of those
potential solutions you came upon in the first hour, you would have had a
solution (maybe) to the problem, but not a SOLUTION. But, the next day, wow.
You probably amazed yourself with your brilliance and creativity (and so you
should). You found a SOLUTION. Let's apply this to writing. You sit down and
whip out a personal statement. Maybe you think, "Well, I've done it."
Really, all you did was prime the pump. Give it a few hours, or a day, and
re-read it. You'll see all sorts of changes you can make. You may even come up
with an entirely different direction for what you wrote. That period of
apparent inactivity, while you were doing other things, that was really a
period of high creativity. It would be a shame to give that---and its creative
results---up because you decided, incorrectly, that you could dash something
off in an afternoon.
3) Why is a personal statement important?
Most learning in college occurs when students of different backgrounds
discuss the material they learn in class outside the classroom. Here in Los
Angeles most of the high school students I work with were born and raised in
Southern California. Their view of life is filtered through the experiences of
growing up in a large, metropolitan area. They have no concept of what life is
like on a farm in rural Iowa. Nor, can they filter their life and opinions
through the experiences of a farmer. College gives both those students, the
Angeleno and the Iowan, an opportunity to learn from each other. The colleges
know this and so when they build their freshman classes they look to create the
kind of diversity that fosters this kind of learning. From what I've learned
from college admissions officers, the personal statement is one of their key
tools (if not the key tool) in creating the diversity they're aiming for.
Grades, SAT scores, and letters of recommendation only tell colleges part of
the story. The personal statement can fill in the gaps and give colleges a
snapshot of a student they couldn't get any other way. Also, the personal
statement is the only part of the college application process that tells a
student's story in his or her own words. Everything else that I
mentioned---grades, test scores, letters of recommendation---are someone else's
opinion of the student. But hearing from the student directly, via the personal
statement, is extremely valuable to colleges. It's why most colleges give the
personal statement significant weight in the admissions process.
4) Are there other advantages (besides college applications) of having
written a personal statement?
The University of California and the College Board (the SAT people)
conducted independent research and both discovered that a student's writing
ability was just as good a predictor of a student's success in the first year
of college as the entire SAT. (For people who don't know, all the SAT predicts
is a student's success in his or her first year of college. It doesn't predict
graduation rates, or GPAs or career potential.) Many people were probably
surprised at this, but I wasn't. In order to write well a writer has to master
multiple skills: communication, critical thinking, research, attention to
detail, visual thinking, persuasion, and probably a few others. The point is,
anyone who masters those skills ought to have a bright future, not just in
school but in a career as well. So writing isn't a task or a chore, it's a
preparation for life and success. In my workshops I point this out to students.
I ask them to consider the personal statement not one more hoop they have to
jump through on the way to college, but preparation for success in any
endeavors they choose.
There's more. As our culture becomes increasingly inundated with data,
there's an increasing need for storytelling. Data is sterile. It often lacks
context. What makes data useful, what makes it come alive, is the
narrative---the story---that goes alone with it. Now, and in the future, there
will be a great need for storytellers to help us make sense of the world. Data
is also impersonal. It's hard for humans to bond with data, which has created
an increasing need to bond with people. (The social media explosion owes its
existence to our need to connect with others.) Bonding requires both parties to
exercise trust and openness. That's not easy to do. But the people who can do
it, the people who can bond, are the successful networkers of the future. All
those elements come together in a personal statement. You're telling a story
about yourself, and at the same time opening yourself up, sharing thoughts,
feelings, and attitudes you might never have shared before. Once again, writing
becomes an exciting practice field for success in life.
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