Get In Loser, We're Writing Our College Essays

Word of the week: Abecedarian (noun) - A person who is learning the alphabet. 

Bet you’ve never heard that word before. Did you know that the average 20 year old American knows around 42,000 words on average? Okay, that does seem like a lot. But do you know how many words exist in the English language? It’s actually such a vast, ever-changing and expanding amount that no one really knows. Not even experts. So for this blog, every word of the week will eventually connect back to the topic at hand. I was actually originally going to name this blog ‘The Lazy Logophile’, so that should tell you more than enough.

But back to the topic at hand…

College essays. Squeezing 16 years of life into a 650 word (shoe)box. Every single time I try to sit down and write anything, I find myself second-guessing everything. Could it be better? Cooler? Funnier? Show more of my ‘personality’ (whatever that means)? 

It has me feeling much like an abecedarian, in the sense that everywhere I step seems to be uncertain and wrong, like I’m relearning how to read and write while everyone has it figured out already. As I’m carefully trying to navigate the game of the college admissions process at an appropriate speed to appease the ever-looming early action deadline that sticks in the back of my mind like an accidental like of someone’s instagram post from 4 years ago (deep breath), I wish I could just go to sleep until November 2nd and let some other, more productive alternate reality version of me do all the work instead. But maybe there is something to be learned from all this forced self reflection in the end– I guess we’ll see.

Sincerely,

Anguished Abecedarian 🔤