Photo and article taken from Link for Counselors online
Trust the College Essay Process
In our weekly staff meetings, we always discuss student wins and challenges. No matter how many years of experience we have with the Wow Method, we’re always learning.
Below is insight from David Bersell, who has been with us for more than seven years. He has worked with hundreds of students, trained countless IECs and school counselors, and now supervises training for our team of coaches.
This week, a student surprised me.
She struggled to talk about her ideas during the initial brainstorm. After more than an hour of conversation — and exploring additional topics and characteristics — we eventually landed on a clear theme, based on the idea she had the most to say about.
She wrote a short first draft and brief responses for the content exercises, where we ask students to write outside the essay and experiment with new openings.
While I was a little worried about how the essay would turn out, I kept her moving forward and tried to be steady and encouraging in my emails.
Her second draft was much stronger, but she still stopped short of the end of her story.
After two rounds of feedback, she added a paragraph each time. In just four weeks, we arrived at an essay that was both effective and genuine.
It was a good reminder not to write off students who aren’t the easiest, or who don’t show the highest willingness or ability at the start.
I was still able to help my student share who she is — without much additional thought or effort.
I’ll say it again (and again, and again, and again):
Trust the process.
You can download a free copy of the ten-step Wow Method here:
Susan Knoppow is CEO of Wow Writing Workshop. She can be reached at
[email protected]
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