Hi everyone, my name is Alyssa. I am a TA with LSAT Unplugged. I am also a consultant with LSAT Unplugged and you can reach me at this email. I'm going to say the email right now and we'll also put it anywhere else that we can.
So you can email me if you have any questions about this video at all at admissions at LSAT Unplugged.com. So just go ahead and email me at admissions with an S at LSAT Unplugged.com and that'll come to me. So I'm going to go ahead and get started. What we're doing tonight, I'm going to let you know we are going to read two essays that we have submitted from course members.
So if you today is May 19th, if you submitted your essay within the last few weeks, I'm going to read it out loud tonight and provide some feedback. I work closely with Ayaka and together we've developed a five-wave system in terms of the ways that we look at an essay, the ways that we critique an essay, we figure out how to make this essay and elevate it to be better and go ahead and show you that as well as show you kind of what we're thinking. So let's see if I can get myself set up here. The first thing I want to do is just give everyone an idea of the five-wave system.
Got it. All right. One second here. This is really beneficial for you.
Hopefully we're going to link this in the chat and link this below this video as well. So this is going to be great if you write an essay, oh great, give me one moment here. If you write an essay and you're thinking to yourself, how do I elevate this? How do I move this from point A to point B?
I would invite you to look here. So let's see if now this works. Okay, I hope everyone can see this now. Take me a second to get here.
So this is our five-wave system and I'm going to talk about this briefly. You'll see here that it does wave five of them, stage five. This is actually a mistake. This over here should just be like final touches.
They shouldn't say stage five on that. I'm sorry about that. I'll fix that. So this is wave one.
When we talk about topic, some interesting questions you can ask yourself is does this topic show the authentic you? For example, somebody might think that telling a story about getting a raise or a promotion at their job is the most relevant thing to them. But if that person actually has a really much more interesting story, maybe about how they learned a third language when they moved to a different country and it taught them a lot about perseverance and openness and learning and how to have empathy and change their perspective. A change of perspective might be a more interesting topic than maybe just like you getting a promotion at work.
It's all about execution. So is this interesting? And does it tell us something we would not know about you from other parts of your application, try to be redundant? Or I throw in some ideas of the way your essay can show you in a positive light.
For example, does it show that your team oriented? Do you have empathy? Do you have a service heart? Are you resilient?
Are you focused? And etc. There's a type of energy. Excuse me.
Also, after I look at topic of these next few essays, I'm going to look at structure. Have you told your story in a way that makes sense? And where this really shows up often for me is I will see a beautifully written essay. The whole first paragraph focuses on maybe like a grandparent or a parent.
And if that's a little bit more of like one processing their own story of sort of how they got here, I want to take that out if it's not totally relevant. So structure does every paragraph have a purpose and move your story forward. Silistically, it's really difficult to jump around different topics. So that's something in wave one and wave two.
Is it condensed? Does it make sense? Have you focused on maybe one overall storyline or do you have too many in there? The third thing I'm going to look at is details.
That would be intense structure. Most of the time, I will say when somebody submits their essay to me, I do edit and review essays. You can send your essay to the email that I mentioned earlier. Most of the time when I get someone's essay, I'm really only looking at wave one and wave two.
So this person may or may not have even chosen a topic. Sometimes people write about five different things and they're kind of shrugging and saying, I don't really know which direction to take this. So what time you get to wave three is if your topic is solid and you've made it focused. So wave three would be sentence structure.
For example, you want some of your sentences to be longer and some of your sentences to be shorter. And that's a very obvious and clear thing to say. But most of the time on your first draft, your sentences are probably going to be way too long because that's how we sort of think to ourselves. And that sort of makes sense.
So really chowing down those sentences, getting them concise. And have you gotten to the point as quickly as possible? I have a dog growling in here. If you hear, we just got neighbors.
I'm not happy about it. So another thing about wave three that is very important is, do you answer questions that may come up for the reader? So if you were to say, for example, something like, I did, I served time in course, I just served time incarcerated, that would be a very big lingering question that the reader might have, that for example, might say, well, what, what were you convicted of? What were you wrongly convicted of?
There's sort of a lingering question there. That's kind of a big example. I'll see if I can think of a smaller example later on, but you don't want to say anything that would pose a question for the person reading and never answer that question. That's something that's really good to give to someone and ask them to ask them to say, did anything come up for you that I didn't answer in this essay?
That's a really good thing. Ask someone who's reading your essay. Wait, or I'm gonna get style, stylistic choices with them. Again, it's pretty, it's, I would say it's not impossible, but it's pretty difficult to stylistically create something very unique.
If you are trying to have maybe a different style for essay, make sure that you've covered wave one, two, and three first, I promise, it's gonna make it easier. And wave five, deep polish. Is it clear? And doesn't have any redundant ideas?
If you've been through something particularly hard, it might be alluring to try to really reinforce that thought, but you'd be surprised at how much you can get done in two page essay and how much you can further yourself without saying the same thing over again. And then you might take a look at grammar. So if you catch any grammar mistakes or word choice mistakes in these essays that I don't pick up on, it might just be because I'm focused on wave one too, which does take a long time. And then instead of stage five, they should probably say like a big zoom out.
Then once you've really gone all these ideas down, you would want to ask yourself, how does this single essay fit in place with the other essays that I'm going to write or that I've already written? You have an opportunity with your application to show different sides of you. And that's definitely a process. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and get started.
I'm gonna take a sip of water and I am screen sharing the essays that I will be reading out tonight. I'll be reading about loud. And you can follow along with me. And you can always email me if anything comes up for you.
Can you one moment here? Well, I'll take a sip of water. All right, let's go. Being a student has many lessons that teach you about life as well, such as being a better group member, attention to detail, passion for learning, empathy, and teaching you resilience.
We each learn these lessons through different routes in life and school happened to be my teacher. Life is a novel. We each have our own chapters that make up what we call life. I will show important chapters in my life that show how schooling has made me who I am today.
One of the early chapters would have to start off with one of the hardest strategies of my life. But which great story isn't right, which I still reflect back on to this day. One day during the third grade, I was called out of my class by my mother who asked me questions about my father. Was there anything suspicious today when he dropped you off?
Were you guys followed? I would come to find out that my father had been arrested for being an illegal resident and that the country would be sending him back to India. I'm not going to harp over the tragic details. Rather, I'm going to explain how this drastic change helped me appreciate books and teach me an important lesson.
Now, I was never a great student. In fact, being brutally honest, I was terrible, sloppy, and impatient. That is until I picked up a book and began to read. From the first chapter, I was obsessed.
I devoted myself to reading and it eventually helped to raise my performance and other subjects as well. This passion per reading would translate into a drive for learning, which I will discuss later. This period of time also taught me resilience. My hero, my everything.
My mother at this time had to take care of two children while also running a business during the rough economic times. To this day, I still cannot grasp how she persevered and got us through it. But every time I want to quit something challenging or procrastinate, this memory jolts into my head to remind me that there is no such thing as too difficult, just how hard you're willing to work. Which helped me countless times during late nights studying for finals.
During this time, I also ran into a little issue of being bullied. Now, I was always teased for my parents, being a young sick boy, excuse me, I don't know how to pronounce that word. Please correct me if you're listening. I had a little bun of hair and when I grew older, I would don a turban.
But this was when I first began to really notice the effects it would have on me. I would always shrug this off with some quick, witty joke or join in on the laughter, a blessing to be able to think this way. But it always sat in the back of my mind that these kids chose to laugh at my differences, which wasn't the best feeling. I keep this in mind every single time I meet a person from different beliefs, culture, politics, ideologies, philosophies.
I found that explaining my religion reduced to the amount of teasing I received. Thus, I learned to be more informative about my faith. One thing I also discovered at this time was the joy I got out of meeting others who were also different. Because I realized no matter how great the differences are, I was always able to find something to relate to and share that with them.
My childhood raised me to be the empathetic and compassionate person I am today, which has also helped me in group settings as this curiosity helps me meet group members and get to know them better, especially in college where you are immersed into a place with tons of different beliefs, which has been a blessing to learn about the different ideas. An obsession can be beautiful. During my first year of college, I suffered from a depressive episode during my second quarter after being homesick, all of my first causing me to doubt my ability to perform academically. I had to fix my entire approach to school in order to not find out.
My obsession with learning took work and dedication and it was an insane challenge going from not caring much apart from reading to focusing on every detail and lessons. This obsession translated over into other parts of my life, such as the gym and sports. I watched however, the obsession with learning has always grounded it and served as an anchor. I want to learn as much as I can and hopefully keep learning.
This taught me to focus on the tiniest details, making sure I learned something inside and out as much as I can, which ended up being a great habit during my studying for the LSAT. This obsession helped me turn around completely and thrive in classes which is reflected by the complete turnaround on my transcripts after my first two quarters. And that's where it ends. Excuse me for my mispronunciation if it works.
Teaching you, I'm not sure of this first word up here, but let's go ahead and check my chat and make sure I have anyone. Right off the bat, this is definitely a powerful story. This person has gone through a lot. It also seems as though this person has a certain mindset and strong, they're strong minded.
They seem like a very strong person, which is good because when somebody is reading your application and getting into law school, I like to say you want to answer two things. I'm assuming that this is a personal statement, but that's because I don't have it labeled. It could be a diversity statement and maybe it is a diversity statement. It also could be there are certain hardship essays that some schools ask for.
This could be a hardship essay. It also reads a little bit like an addendum at the last final pages, but if this wasn't a agenda, it's much too long. So maybe this person has just written a lot of ideas in one thing. Something that I always say with a personal statement that the reader is doing is one, they're trying to figure out if you have what it takes to finish their law school program.
And second thing that they're trying to do is figure out why you want to go to law school. This isn't quite telling me why the person wants to go to law school, which is why I think that this might be a diversity statement if I had to choose because it's not really answering that big why, but it is showing us that this person has different perspectives. If you're just tuning in and you're new to the idea of a personal statement versus diversity statement, personal statement, why you want to go to law school, are you strong enough to make it through a program? Do you have grit?
If you don't have a story about grit, are you thoughtful? Are you detail oriented? Are you team oriented? Can you point to something in your life that would show why law school is a reasonable next step for you?
Diversity statement, the way that you want to approach that is how have your experiences altered or maybe informed you in a way that when you show up in that classroom, you might provide a different perspective. I like to imagine myself in a class and we're creating this discussion and I might have a different perspective than maybe the person next to me. So that's what my diversity statement would be about. That's why I think this is a diversity statement because a lot of the points made in the SSA point to how they might think differently than somebody else standing in the fisting next to them.
Let me see here if I can go and share my screen in a way that would allow me to show us the topic selection once more. Excuse me? One moment here? All right, everyone, thanks for hanging out with me.
Okay, so if we look here, I'm going to look at wave one. So does this topic show an authentic version of this person? Does it tell us something we would not know about other parts from the application? And you know, is it does it show that they're resilient?
Definitely shows that they're resilient, absolutely. Something that I would like to point out about this particular essay is that this essay has a lot going on in it in terms of topic. This, I would say, has too many topics. Let's see if I can get my screen share correctly.
I apologize for this. So this essay has too many topics. The reason for that being is if I were to sort of mentally stay with the person as a reader, I'm picking up on the fact that their father was arrested. So their father was arrested, which seems like a very intense situation in one person's life.
They talk about how they say that they're going to tell us how their father being arrested for being an illegal resident. They say that they're going to explain how that changed, help them appreciate books. But I actually don't get that in terms of how that specific change made them appreciate books. All I know is that eventually they did pick up a book and then they became obsessed.
I'm not really picking up on a relationship there, but I'm going to stick with topic. So bringing up an idea as intense as your father was being arrested, it feels very intense. Definitely an important part of a person's story. But I actually don't believe that this is the depth of this particular applicant's story.
This person actually spends a lot of time telling us how they turned around their academics by reading. I can see where that would be influenced by a huge situation in one's life. Maybe, and I'm assuming here I'm kind of pulling like what most would be supported. Perhaps this person is was inspired to do better in school, to create a better life for themselves, but I'm not seeing a direct relationship there.
Another thing that they're bringing up here is the devotion of books, which I think is interesting and personal. When they do bring up their mother, so we have the father being arrested and we have a devotion to books and we have the mother who seems like a wonderful mother, but doesn't really have to do with the applicant. If I were to be very picky, I would say that in one way bringing up your mother and saying that she was taking care of two children and running a business, very impressive, very impressive. But time and time I hear feedback from admissions officers that say your mother is not applying to law school.
You are applying to law school. So bringing her up could be important to tell a story of how she inspired you, bringing her up could also show us that you yourself are a thoughtful person. Definitely I see, oh, well, this person appreciates their mother. They sound like they're a very kind person, which is important if you are trying to go to the law school community.
But every single space that you take away from telling your own story is tricky. You have to talk about your mother only in relationship to you. How did that move you forward? How did that inspire you?
And really, it's nice, but there's just such valuable space in any essay that you write. Focus more on yourself would be my advice. So we have father arrested, we have books, we have the mother taking care of you. And we have the memory, which does inspire you.
But I think it's a little bit out of place structurally, if I were to go into that in terms of, I'm still trying to figure out what the core message of this entire essay is. We also have the issue of being bullied, which is important, but it feels a little bit out of left field. It's kind of what's happening in this essay is like a layering effect, where there's just a little bit too much going on. It feels like the person is recounting maybe all of their hardships, and which makes sense.
If you are a person and you're alive, it would make sense that you would be thinking yourself, well, this thing happened and I kind of moved past it. And also this thing happened. And also my mother was inspiring me, also saying happy with my father and also as being bullied. That court kind of layering makes sense in real life.
In an essay though, it doesn't work. You have to be a little bit more focused in terms of the story that you're choosing to tell, which is hard because you have to figure out what parts of this story are vividly the most important in relationship to you. I do appreciate how the Blaying talks about how this makes this person more open-minded. And it seems like a better communicator.
That's a really beautiful point to make. I really like that. We talk about depression. So there's a fifth thing going on.
Same thing, that layering thing, and then this happened, and then this happened. Sometimes when the layering thing is happening, I'm not a psychologist, but it's sometimes the layering thing is happening number one, because this applicant can't actually figure out which idea is the strongest. Like if you were to say to me, I had a really hard life and you tell me one part of this story, I believe you. Actually, if this applicant is listening in right now or to this video, if anybody's listening in right now, one story is strong enough.
It can be tempting to create this layering effect to show a white board of look at everything I've been through, and I'm still standing. But you actually don't need this layering effect of all five things in order to be impactful. I like to say pretend that the reader is already on your side. So you can write an entire essay about your depression in college and how you got yourself out of that, and that would be an impressive essay.
And then you could talk about your father's arrest or you could talk about your mother and how you propelled yourself in academics. And I think that this person doesn't speak enough on that. I think that I would actually like to hear a lot more about that. They use a lot of vague language.
They could talk about being bullied. That's an entirely separate essay. So pretend that the reader is already on your side. You don't need the layering effect.
I like this part about the obsession and the dedication. I think it's interesting to say that it leaked into other parts of their life. I think that that is very thoughtful. And I'm picking up from reading this essay.
This person seems like a really interesting person, which is good. I think that that that's a great thing. This person obviously works out and also does sports and also likes to read. And now I want to go to law school.
So I'm thinking this person seems like a very well-rounded human being. And I like to say that after an essay, I don't have to agree with what you're saying, but you should seem intriguing to me. I should say, yes, I would like you to come to our school. And I get that.
But I would watch the mention of Jim in sports. I think that it's not actually as powerful as, for example, telling us more about your journey with reading and how to reading transform you. Were you reading fiction books and did the transformation into these fictional places give you sort of this outlook on life that just kind of kept you inspired and kept you hungry for creativity and curiosity. Or, for example, let me go ahead and reshare the screen here.
Or, for example, were you reading nonfiction books and you were reading biographies and autobiographies? And were you reading about people that you wanted to emulate or that you agreed with? So you could talk about that. Were you reading fiction?
Were you reading nonfiction? Were you reading your school textbooks and realizing that learning about history was incredibly intriguing? And then what did you do after that? Did you come across any of the barriers?
The bullying is interesting. But I think that this person could go more in depth about themselves. The speaking about the mother and father, you know what, I'm just going to say it's really hard. It's really hard for someone to say, Alyssa, tell me about yourself.
And for me not to speak about my parents because my parents affected me as a child. Oh, we're not the screen share isn't going well. It's really difficult to talk about parents though. Let's see if this works like that.
I'm getting some some things in the chat here that my screen share isn't working. Awesome. Okay, so this works. So in terms of topic, I think there's too much going on here.
I think that there's actually multiple essays in this one essay in terms of what topic to go to go into. Absolutely, you could bring up your your father being arrested. I'm not trying to hash out something that was intense or a traumatic situation. But if you do bring that up, that never comes up again throughout the essay.
The essay, you want it to have some sort of, I call it a plum line, but that doesn't, that's like a dancer term. You wanted to have a cohesion from top to bottom. You're only really talking about one to two things, one to two ideas. So you could talk about your father, if you could talk about your dive into books, you could talk about what kind of books you read, you could talk about your relationship back to your father, you could talk about how that your time in school opened up your perspective, made you a better communicator.
And that's really all I need for this to be a powerful essay. If I had to choose, I would take out the mention about your mother inspiring you and letting you keep going. Or if you do keep that in, center it around yourself, center the statements around yourself. I would also take out the depression from college because that is your dendom.
That is your GPA dendom. Unless this person added their dendom, aren't you, I say, but that is our thing is your dendom. Also, focusing on the tiniest details, for example, when you say big things like this, taught me to focus on the tiniest details, making sure I learned something inside and out as much as I can, which ended up being great habit during my study. But else that's fantastic.
That's awesome. What do you mean by that? Do, did you use certain flashcards and did you color code them? Did you dive deep into a certain type of question?
Not that I necessarily want to learn no more about the LSAT. I will say that's a little, it's a little cheesy to talk about your LSAT. And don't hold me to that if you disagree, please write me. A little cheesy to talk about your LSAT because every single application is taken to LSAT.
Everyone's trying to take the LSAT. Everyone's trying to be detailed oriented for LSAT. So let's talk very personal. A good question to ask yourself is, can someone else have written this sentence?
And if a lot of other people can write the same sentence, take it out and tell us a little bit more about something that only you could write. And the last thing I will say is that this last sentence, this obsession, helped me turn around completely and thrive in classes, which is reflected by the complete term on my transcript after my first two orders. Really great. I didn't dumb.
I'm not seeing a final conclusion to the diversity statement. Maybe it's over here. My childhood raised me to be in pathetic and compassionate person I am today. So I would start out with the topic.
And then if I had to get into details, this is the last number of information I'm going to spend on this essay, although I feel like I could talk about it for an hour. It's such a strong person. This person wrote it. So there's lots of great things to pick out here.
This essay, switches language between talking about the world and using I statements. So it starts out as this like being a student has many lessons that teach you. So they're talking to the writer and using a language you and it's saying we each learn these lessons, which is again like a preacher, which dropped that language. I would say just drop any sort of preaching language, drop global vague language, don't try to say you to the reader, don't try to say we just say I, this is what happened to me.
And this is who I am much better and much easier to receive the reader and much easier to digest. So I was thinking about how to have co-kitians throughout the entire essay. And I will say that it shows up again. There is something that shows up when it talks about like you.
And I wrote it down, but now I've actually lost it. Excuse me. So it shows up another time where this writer talks about that you and says you. And I would just, after I decide on a topic, go a little bit deeper into that.
If you say that you became obsessed with it, how did you become obsessed with it? What types of books were you reading? Were you reading sunrise to sundown? Were you just finding it more interesting?
How did that really translate? Like for example, this sentence right here, I keep in this in mind every time I meet someone, show us, don't tell us. Did you meet someone in an elevator that had a different belief system from you? Did you have a good conversation?
You could tell us about that one time and by telling us about that one time, it's going to be a lot more powerful than just telling us I do this every time. Oh, I really want to find a you. Here we go. It's right here.
So I would go through, take out the U language, take out the U language. It's right here. So especially in college where you are immersed into a place with tons of different beliefs, especially in college where I was immersed. That's going to get you off to a really good start in terms of beginning of assessing.
I'm going to take another sip of water and I will read our next essay. Please, excuse me for one moment. Thank you. All right.
Let's go ahead and get started with our second and final essay for the night. On January 12th, 2010, a day will never forget. At 4.53 pm, a massive earthquake. Oh, you know what?
Excuse me. I think that this is the incorrect essay. I'm going to go ahead and read it. We'll go ahead and go for it for a minute.
At 4.53 pm, a massive earthquake occurred in my country, Haiti, which not only killed close family and friends, but also destroyed my school and my home. All hopes and dreams were shattered in a matter of seconds. My parents saw that there were no other alternative, but to migrate here in the United States. That's where everything in my life suddenly changes and my journey to America begins.
Coming to the United States, I knew things were going to be different, but it was nothing compared to what I've imagined. I've had to adapt to various things, such as the culture, the language, the food, et cetera. Along with all those changes, one major experience that totally caught me off guard was me getting bullied by my classmates. Here, I was still trying to find them how I just survived an earthquake and trying to fit in another country.
Here, I was also dealing with classmates making fun of me because of where I was from. No sympathy was shown to a poor girl who just experienced such tragedy. I remembered being so weak and helpless. Also with the language barrier, I could hardly defend myself.
Growing up in a religious family was honestly the best thing that ever happened to me. In the midst of the chaos, my parents would always pray and encourage me to persevere and push me to beat all the obstacles that came away. Although it took me a couple of years to fully grasp the language and although also being the introvert that I am, I made certain during my first semester in college to speak up, I tried my very best to get involved, participate in skill shops, community service, group projects, et cetera. I knew it was not going to be easy, but I just had to try.
I refused to let my weaknesses hinder me to move forward in my personal and professional life. I said to myself if I survive an earthquake, overcome language barrier, achieved many accomplishments that brought me thus far, and there's nothing I set my mind to, I can't attain. To conclude, I am proud of the Haitian. My roots truly shaped and molded me to be the very confident person that I am today.
I'm still learning and still adapting, but who isn't? Life is all about acclimatizing to whatever it takes you. Yes, I was born in one of the poorest countries in the world, but my beautiful country humbles me. It pushes me to work harder each day despite a paddy condition.
I strive to always educate as many people as possible to see there's way more to my country than what the world portrays it to be. So if you've listened in on other essay workshops between Ayaka and I, you will have seen this essay before. Something I do want to point out is it does touch base with a lot of things that I'm already spoken about in terms of bringing up family. I think it does a good job of saying my parents decided to move us to the United States.
I think it does a really great job of, let's see if you can see my desktop here. Oh gosh, I don't think you can. I apologize for all this technicalities. I'm just going to go ahead and speak on the essay and you'll be able to see it in the link below.
I think it does a really great job of jumping right into perhaps their actions and finding themselves bullied. I know that in the past Ayaka and I talked about, it does split in between talking about you and talking about I statements. I also would like to say that I think that it can be made stronger in which I don't believe that I've spoken about in the last essay workshop. This essay can be made stronger if they actually give us an example of what happened when they joined those clubs and those courses.
So the person says they were being bullied, they had a language barrier, they joined a bunch of clubs and then they go on to conclude the essay. I would really be interested. In fact, I would be more interested if I were this person, I would actually delete some of those statements about being bullied. If you say this sentence once, we understand what you're saying.
So you might want to give us one example of how you were bullied, which again, it sounds like I'm asking everyone to rehash out their term, which I'm not. Just be a little bit more specific. I think it'd be more powerful instead of saying I was bullied and there's a language barrier. You might say this person said this to me or this it would be common for XYZ to occur to me.
I was being bullied. You know, show us a little bit more and then immediately show us even more about what happened in those clubs. We did the club meet every Monday. Like you really give me a portrait into what that was like for you.
Did the club meet every Monday and were you shy in the first meeting and take me through this journey that I'm sure that you went through? Did you meet every Monday when you shy first? Did you volunteer to take on a project in the club? Did you have to give a presentation in that club?
Or did you just slowly start to make more friends and or people that we were accepting of you? Did you start to gain more confidence through that? Did you change? I'm sure that something happened in those clubs that would make in those organizations that would actually make this essay even stronger.
So give us an actual example of maybe what happened, what was said to you. And if you don't have an example, just tell us who we really want. I think that there's a little bit of a rehashing when this person, the writer of essay mentions, I couldn't understand why like a poor little girl definitely makes sense, but it is portraying you a little bit more of a poor person. And it's taking light away from the good things that you did do.
So you want the essay to be centered around, this happened to me, but look at what I did and center us around you. When you rehash that out and say, I'm a poor person and I'm a poor little girl, I just been through this earthquake. You're actually putting the limelight on your bullies in the essay. So take the limelight away from them, tell us one time that you're bullied and spend more time talking about what happened in those clubs.
And that could make this essay a little bit stronger, which I surprisingly don't even think that Ayaka and I got to talking about. I remember speaking a lot about the conclusion of the essay and how that could be made stronger. So I'm going to go ahead, I actually just have one more essay. I'm going to check the chat here and see if I have any questions at all.
Let's see if I can get this in here. All right, bear with me. Okay, so here we have it. I will screen share once more.
Okay, so here we have a personal statement. Pick water. I get started. Right me in the chat.
Do you have any questions? All right, this is our third and final essay of the night. I see that we have someone who's just joined us. So I'm going to go ahead and start reading and I'm going to quit to get based on the five-weight system.
I was eight years old when I made a plan to escape domestic abuse. I would become a professional dancer. I had just been awarded most talented new member of a children's dance company that was producing backup dancers for pop stars, making what I needed to do to earn my freedom seem obvious. I became obsessive over professionalism and the youth favoring careers of classical ballet, jazz, tap and modern.
I borrowed books from my school's library to memorize body positions and nutritional plans. When I reached my library's checkout time limits, I centered by making mixed CDs, slowly picking a song each for cardio stretching and strength. I earned my childhood nickname focus from the way I let my eyes bowl straight at older dancers, trying to absorb their movements. I volunteered at the dance studio to assist classes, proudly using longer hours to decline birthday parties on the weekends.
Shortly following the hours, I spent held up in my Texas bedroom, performing sit-ups and leg splits. I began to accept scholarships to train both New York and Los Angeles. Under a generous mentor's guidance, I was accepted to one of the most competitive undergraduate programs in the US that auditioned dancers from all over the world. I was an ideal student for demanding choreographers capable and willing to perform the relentlessness needed for dancing.
Choreographers requested me so often that the faculty held an emergency meeting asking me to take a semester off. I used the time to examine mind-to-body connections. I brought a notebook with me everywhere detailing the physics of letting the body swing, somatically approaching choreography. Upon my return, people almost stuck my cars on stage for a spur of the moment inspiration.
It was from hours of organization and studying the work down to win to take a breath. I have been described as magnetic, distinctive, compelling, and nuanced in the intense abstract textures of complex performance. One of my most rewarding performances included a piece in which the choreographer asked me to walk around stage imagining love for six minutes, while other dancers performed outrageous stunts. Flipping one another, legs reaching the sky while twirling, and jumping and reaching dramatically all around me.
The piece ended with me finally overcome with the love I was seeking. I expanded my legs and arms, allowing my head to reach back while my leg reached forward, stretching, stretching, finally free to swim, and ecstasy the other dancers had been building. Some audience members shared that they were interiors by the end of that piece. I felt moved, knowing I had practiced tiresome balancing posture rituals to maintain the focus required for that piece.
And yet, after two decades of commitment to the art form, I was caught up by reporter. Something weird is happening with the structure here. So I was like, for a local newspaper was interviewing me, and he asked me how it felt to perform on a stage as finally me. I was dumbfounded.
My child self had not considered that. She had chosen a youth favorite career to escape domestic violence. I left that night wondering what it meant to finally be myself as a reporter had asked. I walked down the street of a mission neighborhood in San Francisco and saw myself on posters outside the Mexican sweetbread cafe, feeling proud.
I thought of the unpleasant ways I come to build my set of mental resilience that afforded me such distinction in my artistry. In the middle of nights, filled with assault, I had concentrated on freedom. When my parents performed accident to terrorize, I used my imagination. I stayed focused.
My dancing has nourished me a compassion for humanity and a psychological endurance that I believe to be a value for furthering my education. The art of performance is impermanent fluid open to interpretation by the audience and to the dancers' time of showing. I find it interesting to produce something meaningful from endless amounts of detail. When done right, the large amounts of research and dance synthesizes can leave an audience member changed.
My own change occurred though when my father put his hands around my neck for the first time. The assault brought me to a basic glaring problem that had not been answered by the years of dancing. I learned how terrifying electric it is to have my life in someone else's hands. The injustice threatens to spoil my spirit and it changed the way in which I carry myself through the world.
I know my years of proven dedication, severe discipline and imagination can be recurposed. Okay, so let's look at the five wave systems. Let's look at topic. I think everyone can see my five wave system.
Again, it says stage five. It should just say final touches. Does this topic show the authentic person? Is it interesting?
Does it tell us something we wouldn't know about this person otherwise? I'm going to stop there. I think that this essay goes a little bit in and out of weirdly listing off that maybe could be found in the resume. This first instance in the third paragraph is a little bit out of place.
It feels like we're getting closer to the person's story and then this announcement of something feels stylistically a little bit weird. I feel like here I'm ramping up into this person's story and getting excited. They're going to New York and Los Angeles after this sort of like, I don't know if endearing is the red word. It almost sounds like kind of sending, excuse me, I apologize.
But this second paragraph here is telling us about the commitment that this person has and it's giving us pretangible steps of what the person did. Then I kind of get hit in the face with kind of like a stuffiness. If I were talking to this person, I would take the stuffiness out of one of the most competitive. You could be a little bit more personal for lack of a better word.
The same thing happens at the beginning of the fifth paragraph. Again, I'm a little bit hit in the face with a change in tone. For example, the second half of the third paragraph, it feels like it is becoming more personal. This person again is giving us really tangible steps in terms of what they did that made them successful at the goal that they were trying to achieve.
This is a really great example. They brought a notebook with them and they're actually writing down these things. It looks like it makes a difference in terms of their overall career. This is, I think this could be possible.
Maybe just take out a word or two when I was reading out loud. I was sort of stumbling over it. I think in terms of topic, this essay is sort of pulling me into directions. They're sort of giving me this topic of them, like achieving this incredible thing with their career and also what was happening.
Maybe creating an inner change. I think that there is a little bit more finessing to do in terms of what they choose to focus on. Topic-wise, there's a lot of excitement going on with the dance. They bring up something kind of like a big statement, like my own change occurred with this really intense thing that happened.
Clearly, the person's trying to say that was a moment in my life that I maybe had a change of perspective combined with the reporter. It looks like this really achieves a lot. Then they have a change of perspective and they want to do something else, which makes sense. I'm getting a little bit of the personal statement, the way I started out being in the class, the personal statement should say, do you have what it takes to make it through a program?
Are you service-heart-oriented? Do you have discipline? Do you have great resilience? Or are you team-oriented?
Can you work well with others? Any of those things are really great things. There's a lot more that's just on top of my list of my head. And also, does it show why a career in law would make sense for you?
I think this person could do just a little bit better. It looks like they're still in the stages of editing. If we go over here, structure, have you told your story in a way that makes sense? Does every paragraph have a purpose to move this way forward?
I think we're getting close with this essay. There's that tension between topic. I think that that was streamlined a little bit better. The structure would come through.
Even better. All right. Let me go ahead and stop the share. I'm going to check the chat.
So those are three really powerful examples of ways that people are getting started in their essays. Hopefully, I've shared some news that has been helpful. I will leave the chat open for about 30 seconds, 60 seconds. If anybody has any questions for me, you can email me at admissions at l7field.com.
I'm going to take a sip of water. Fantastic. So the slide is there for everyone. Nice.
The slide is there for everyone who would like it. It is the five-wave system. And I appreciate everyone being here with me tonight. And all right.
Everyone have a great rest of your night and stay later. Thanks for tuning into the show. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already to be notified of new episodes as I release them. And feel free to reach out if you need anything at all as we go through prep.
I'm happy to help. However, I can. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.