2013 LA CASH FOR COLLEGEHow To Write A Personal

Statement Colleges Will Want to Read

Rebecca Joseph, PhD

rjoseph@calstatela.edufacebook: getmetocollege freeadvice

Iphone/Google App: All College Application Essays

To get us started

Why do you think admissions officers get so bored reading college application essays?

On your paper. List… What are three major ways you have contributed to your community? What are three major ways you have shown leadership or initiative? What about your life are you most proud? Why?

Jobs Internships Activities Clubs Service

.

One quick and easy brainstorming strategy:Letter to Future Roommates

Dear Roommate,

I love making lists. A series of lists serve as decorations of my walls, lockers and notebooks—speckles of organization in a lifestyle characterized by organized chaos.

One of my most recent list-making tasks began at two in the morning, with my trying to write about some part of my personality that I wanted to share. I began listing small things about myself, and found myself inspired to create a large list of tiny things that define many parts of who I am.

The first one on the list goes without saying.

I have problems falling asleep.

The pronunciation and spelling of my names serves a conversation starter wherever I go.

I move my lips when I anticipate other people talking.

I have the ability to create and develop different fonts in my handwriting.

The first things I look for in someone’s room are the books they keep.

I've been sleeping with a 2-foot stuffed bear for nine years.

All I want is to be able to buy a keychain with my name already on it.

I've been told that I have a silly sense of humor.

I have enough journals to fill an entire bookshelf.

I love documentaries.

One of my favorite words is “ubuntu,” which means humanity in Xhosa.

When I was thirteen, I tried writing an autobiography comprised of poems.

I am most compatible with people who I think are most like me.

I feel like a four-star chef when I make salads.

I'm an ENTJ.

My favorite colors are coral and cerulean.

If I could have any superpower, I would have the ability to be in two places at once.

I eat ice cream with a fork.

I’m obsessed with the game Bananagrams™.

I drink orange juice right after I brush my teeth—just for the sour taste.

Scary movies are the worst.

Another One...

Dear Roommate:

For a majority of my life, I have shared the same room with my two younger brothers, so I am confident you will become family in no time.  Based on my expertise, I have developed following guidelines to get us off to a smooth and sound freshmen year:

1.  All non-Dodgers posters will be removed at your expense, and Giants posters will be burned on your bed.2.  The use of anyone else’s toothbrush is frowned upon.3.  If you need to borrow my laptop, ask- don’t just take it.4.  If you need to borrow my underwear, don’t ask- just take it.

My fifth and most important recommendation is play whatever music you want.

Rock, religious, renaissance romantic, rap- whatever, I’ll listen to it.  In fact my friend from back home and I arrange rock and rap into mashups, so I can handle both. Even if the song you decide to play is just good, I know it can be great.  Maybe we’ll drop a beat, add some power chords, or back it up with a Disney soundtrack.  Don’t worry if our songs are completely different genres- the more diverse the tracks, the better the mashup. If you have an idea for something new, we can compose and perform it together.

I guarantee I will think that whatever you do with your time is awesome.  If you’re part of a book club and I’m part of an a cappella group, we’ll sing stories.  If I’m broadcasting on KZSU 90.1 and you’re a member of the Chinese Dance club, I’ll do play-by-play of your moves.

I would love to visit you wherever you live, and you’re welcome to visit me. I have lived in New York, Connecticut, Poland, Connecticut again, and Los Angeles, and I have visited over thirty countries.  That is, unless you fail to follow rule number one.

How Important Are Essays?

1.Grades2.Rigor of Coursework, School3.Test Scores4.Essays*5.Recommendations-Teacher and/or Counselor6.Activities-Sustained consistency, development, leadership, and initiative7.Special skills, talents, awards, community service and passions

What Do Colleges Look for in Essays?

• A better understanding of your background, which could help put the rest of the application in context.

• An understanding of why certain experiences or people have been so important to you, and thus something about what you value.

• A sense of an intellectual bent, a playful mind, or a sense of humor.• A sense of your commitment to the things that most interest you

and of how those interests developed.• A sense of the way you interact with others and/or are perceived

by them.• An understanding of a special talent you would bring to the college

or a special quality you might add to a residential community.• A good, and realistic, sense of the flesh-and-blood person behind

the paper.

Steps to Success

Help students :1)Develop an overall strategic essay writing plan2)Understand the different types of applications3)Create a master chart to highlight patterns4)Read successful sample essays5)Write a resume6)Brainstorm core qualities, unique stories, and short essay topics7)Use the “Into, Through, and Beyond” method8)Believe they can create amazing essays and control this process

Develop A Strategic Plan

• Ask questions to help you:

Discover how college essays should work together to help communicate key qualities and stories not available anywhere else in the application.

Understand the importance of starting early.

Value a writing process that involves many drafts.

Understand the Different Types of Applications

Help students understand the landscape:

1)The Common Application

2)Large Public Universities

3)Private College Specific Applications

4)Other Systems (Universal Application, etc.)

Four Major Application Types: 1. The Common Application

Many private and some public American use the centralized Common Application with their own supplements

www.commonapp.org USC joined the Common Application last year. Most top colleges have supplements with additional essay

requirements. Don’t start writing any essays until you see all the essays required

for your top schools. Major changes next year…new prompts, 500 word limit. Release

date of new prompts in March 2013. No topic of your choice.

1. Common Application Essays

One Long250-650 words – Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity

that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

Other Common Application Writing Pieces

ActivitiesThe Common Application leaves room for 10 activities and 5 honors with

limited spaced for descriptions. Additional InformationThe Common Application allows you to add additional information. Only use

this for truly exceptional needs to share more information. Required ResponsesThis is for students who switched schools or got into some kind of trouble.

Writing SupplementsThey range from one line to 650 words. Some schools have one, while other

have three. They can overlap. If it says optional, view it as mandatory.

One Activity ShortThis is different lengths for different colleges that opt to use it. Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work

experiences

Sample Common App Essay –Danielle-Syracuse

An 11-year-old girl wearing a pink sweat outfit looked up at me with her nut-brown eyes and tugged on my t-shirt. She pulled at her black tight ringlets. There wasn't a single piece of hair on her head that didn't seem to loop up and curl around another one. Tears began streaming down her face, as she said, “Hola, mi nombre es Daniela y soy de México. Puedes estar aquí conmigo? Tengo piojos en mi pelo.” Standing on the patio in front of the infirmary supervising all of the new campers getting their temperatures taken and waiting to be examined for lice, I replied with “Claro que si.”

For the next three hours, I had to control my desire to throw up, as I watched the nurse work his way through Daniela’s curls with a metal nit comb, sweeping the dead nits out of her hair, piece by piece. Every single time the nurse washed and conditioned her hair and brushed out the knots, her curls disagreed and resumed their original form. I listened to Daniela cry and screech when he would comb too hard or hit a knot. The dead lice filled a metal jar in front of me.

Daniela was a Mexican camper, who spoke very little English. So I collected all the knowledge that I acquired in Spanish classes and began to apply it to a real situation: to distract and calm down Daniela. As I asked Daniela about her flight, where she lived in Mexico, and about what is was like to be Jewish in her country, we discovered common interests that created a spark and initiated a common bond between us. Watching her tears disappear and transform into sporadic, majestic smiles revitalized me to keep up the positive encouragement. After the last louse was removed, the nurse finally dismissed her, and we ran up to the bunk as I helped her unpack. I had her change clothes, put her infected pink sweat outfit into the laundry bag, and took her to meet the rest of Bunk 7.

Sample Continued

Little did I know, in addition to being a counselor, I would be become the camp translator to the three campers from Mexico who were placed in my bunk. All three of these girls arrived knowing very little English, and my three co-counselors did not speak any Spanish. Spanish was no longer just another class in high school, but instead a tool for communication and the source of creating relationships with each one of my campers. These three eleven-year-old girls left their families and decided to fly to Los Angeles, take a risk, and enjoy a camp experience. It was my job to communicate with them and help them feel more comfortable by discovering a medium in which we could communicate.

From this came trust. I was their counselor, translator, and mentor. My normal counselor duties instantly doubled with the translation responsibilities I took on that summer. I helped translate our daily bunk schedules into Spanish, explained, in Spanish, the Hebrew prayers we said every morning, and managed bunk conflicts between other campers while incorporating both languages. I helped build bonds between campers by requiring English be spoken at dinner, and when one of my campers from Mexico was homesick, I pushed myself to speak only Spanish to allow her to hear the comfort of her native language. And when Daniela fell, hit the corner of a bench, and sliced her right shin down to the bone, I took her to the hospital, where I again I had to contain my discomfort at the wound while calming down not only the hysterical girl but also her frantic parents in Mexico.

Throughout those four weeks at camp, I learned the value of language and the connection I have developed for it. Languages are a source of communication and being able to connect to those all over the world is an ability I seek to achieve. My father’s native language of Hebrew drove me to study abroad in 10th grade in Israel, where I was able to embrace my heritage and roots as well as fully submerge myself into a less familiar culture. My four weeks at camp last summer showed me even more that language is far more profound than understanding, as it allows people to form relationships and further defines my citizenship in the world. Moreover, I clearly learned that while the field in medicine is not in my future, my passion for communication will enable me to go to many unexpected and yet amazing places and to use language as a source of comfort and connection.

Hi, my name is Daniela and I am from Mexico. Can you stay here with me? I have lice in my hair. Of course.

Four Major Application Types: 2. Large Public Universities

Many large and most prominent public universities have their own applications. Universities of Arizona, California, Indiana, Maryland,

New York, Oregon, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin—to name just some

They each have different essay requirements. They each have your report activities in a different way. But there are ways to use your other essays here as well. They have their own essays. You should gather their topics

and look for ways to use your common application essay as one of your essays for the public colleges, and visa-versa.

UC California

Two essays Respond to both prompts, using a maximum of 1,000 words total. You may allocate the word count as you wish. If you choose to

respond to one prompt at greater length, we suggest your shorter answer be no less than 250 words.

Prompt #1 (freshman applicants)-[Outside-In] Describe the world you come from – for example, your family,

community or school – and tell us how your world has shaped your dreams and aspirations.

Prompt #2 (all applicants) [Inside-Out] Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment,

contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are

Lucy-UC San Diego and Johns Hopkins

One day, I’m playing paper bag puppets with a five-year-old girl. The next, I’m in the middle of a tug-o’-war match with an eighty-year-old grandmother.

With the child, I pretend my recently designed paper bag puppet is a monster, and I teasingly try to “bite” at her own puppet. With the grandmother, my face is stern as I tug urgently at our “rope”, a paperback book.

“Roar! Ahh!” I squeal in defeat as the little girl triumphantly bites back at my puppet monster. She laughs as my monster flops down “dead” on the table, and we begin again with designing a new set of paper bag puppets.

“If you could please give that back to me,” I say soothingly to the elderly lady. “I can continue reading aloud for everyone here.” The Alzheimer’s patient had taken an interest into tearing apart the bindings of the very book I was reading. Finally, I regain control of the book, as a caretaker steps up to assist the lady back to her seat.

The two places where I volunteer most of my time are polar opposites. At Sunrise Assisted Living, I work through awkward moments while attempting to make life more enjoyable for the elderly residents in our care. Two summers ago, I also began helping out with the children’s Summer Reading Program at my public library, awarding prizes for filled reading logs and supervising the arts and crafts table. I’m surrounded by two extremes that place me right in the middle of this one-shot known as life.

On one side, I see mounting confusion and acceptance of death—a struggle for dignity and a mourning for the past. Then I see the children who spend each day fully, living only in the moment and never looking forward or back. Above all, I see life as a delicate substance, both fleeting and precious. It deserves more protection and security, and I aspire to become an influence on life itself. I’m looking into the field of biomedical engineering to improve the lives of all people—I will be the problem solver, building an impact through modern technology to help the innocent youth and the aged generations. In all worlds, there is suffering, and in all worlds, there is hope to make things better again. So I hope to make an impact on our ephemeral and explicit lives.

Four Major Application Types-Other privates and other systems

• Georgetown, Tulane, MIT are still holdouts. They have their own applications. You can use many essays more than once.

• Other systems-like Oregon State use short responses. Make sure to address new qualities in each response.

Develop A Master Chart

Keep a chart of all essays required by each college, including short responses and optional essays. View each essay or short response as a chance to tell a new story and to share your core qualities.

I recommend three sheets. 1. Major deadlines and needs. Break it down by the four

application types 2. Core essays-Color code all the similar or overlapping essays. 3. Supplemental essays. Each college has extra requirements

on the common application. Again color code similar types: Why are you a good match for us? How will you add to the diversity of our campus?

Write the Fewest Yet Most Effective Essays…

Look for patterns between colleges essay requirements so that you can find ways to use essays more than once. This holds true for scholarship essays.

Common Application=UC 1 or UC2UC1=University of Washington and University of Colorado essays with slightly different endings.

Danielle—Long Common=Colorado=Washington=UC 2Lucy=Long Common=UC 1

Where to Begin: Brainstorm

Plan to share positive messages and powerful outcomes. You can start with life or family challenges. You can describe obstacles you have overcome. You can reflect on your growth and development, including accomplishments and service. College admissions officers do not read minds, so tell them your powerful life stories. Some states can use only socio-economic status, but not race, in admissions, but in your essays, your voice and background can emerge.

1. Think of your activities you wrote about in the opening activity

2. What story can you tell to hook us into one or two of your activities?

 

Stuck…here some tips to get you pick possible topics

1. Read through Dr. Joseph’s tips for brainstorming. They include

1. Starting by writing three short activity statements2. Reading model essays from actual college

websites3. Looking at other college’s essay prompts-U

Chicago, Tufts4. Writing a “Where I’m From” piece5. Creating a letter to future roommate or an

amazing list of what makes you you.6. Reading models from other students.

Three Shorts- What Qualities Does Each Reveal?

Work I spent the year tutoring 45 students whose test scores did not meet the Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) standards set by the

state. Throughout the year, I spent the time playing word games and math games with the kids, while secretly trying to find the secret to winning those games. My time spent at Hoffman-Boston was such an amazing experience, but it was anything but easy. There were days when the students were frustrated, and even days when I was discouraged. But I never gave up on them. I always came back the next Tuesday, ready to show them addition and subtraction tricks I had up my sleeve. When they took their tests in May, 43 of the 45 students met the standards that they did not meet the year before. Upon being recognized by the county for my volunteer work, I realized how much we were helping these kids. On a larger scale, I realized how much I cared about the well-being of the students in the public school system. My work with these kids paralleled my desire to excel at the hidden pictures. Those pictures, hidden within the contour of the portrait, mirrored the potential of these kids, many of whom lived in single parent families, to push themselves and succeed.

Volunteer A long line of little ducklings dawdles behind me. I begin singing Five Little Ducklings and they all follow with their own

individual adorable dances. The two year old children then toss pieces of bread into the pond, and I watch in awe as real baby ducks come trailing along towards the kids. One duck is a little too friendly to one child, so being the mother goose I shoo away the duck and comfort my anxious duckling. The kids I work with at the Westside Children’s Center for children coming from low income backgrounds are my heart and soul. Their well-being is linked into mine and I can’t help but grow attached to each group of children I work with each summer. Their ability to grow emotionally and mentally amazes me, and I love to watch their daily and weekly and even yearly individual and community transitions. As much as I wish I could help out year round, I know my little ducklings go off on their own separate paths, but they will always leave an imprint in my heart.

School Leadership Red coat, riding boots, and whip in hand, I face 700 pairs of eyes as the spotlights twirl around our Homecoming Pep Rally

and finally shine directly on my face. More than just the ringmaster of our circus themed rally, I am the ringmaster of my school. I am not just the head of the student body; I am Head Prefect: spirit leader, policy changer, organizer, event planner, liaison between faculty and students, and Honor Board member. I balance acts, ranging from the anticipated running of assemblies to the unexpected role of deciding the fate of several classmates sent before the Honor Board. As their ringmaster, my constituents see the final product, the flash, but they don’t understand what happens behind the scenes. I collaborate with faculty, staff, and the administration in order to change the way that the school works from new schedules to new creative, community building events. I’m not just here to serve the school. I’m here to transform it. I am the ringmaster, after all.

1st person only.

Always write in the first person. Remember, these are autobiographical essays, even when you talk about other people. Remember the colleges are looking to accept you, not your relatives. So use the one third and two thirds rule. If you choose to write about someone or something else, you must show how it affected you for the majority of the essay. Your essays show colleges why you belong on college campuses and share how you will enrich diverse communities.

Into, Through, and Beyond Essay Approach

Follow Dr. Joseph’s Into, Through, and Beyond approach. Lead the reader INTO your story with a powerful beginning—a story, an experience. Take them THROUGH your story with the context and keys parts of your story. Make sure the reader understands your initiative, leadership, development, and continuity. End with the BEYOND message about how this story has affected who you are now and who you want to be in college and potentially after college. The beyond can be implied in many pieces that are so strong that moralizing at the end if not necessary.

It is not just the story that counts. It’s the choice of qualities a student wants the college to

know about herself

Into

It’s the way the reader can lead the reader into the piece—images, examples, context.

The 1,200-degree scorching coals surprisingly left no imprint upon my soles. There were just the hundreds of tiny embers glowing on the ground and the fire department on alert at the opposite end. I had just walked on fire.

I was weak and exhausted. During the day we would protest across from the Armenian Embassy in Glendale. We would hold up signs, posters, and banners. We passed out fliers to oncoming traffic. Twenty seven fellow protesters and I chained ourselves together and put tape over our mouths to symbolize our hunger, our deep hunger for change, and yes, for food. We slept outside on wet grass having sprinklers turn on us every night at 2:30 a.m. Every morning, we cleaned up in a restaurant, and the smell and sight of the food tested me. But when I felt doubts arise, I would remember my great-grandfather who barely survived the Armenian genocide. For months, he had little food or water and had to go on a death march which few survived. If he could make it through those conditions, I knew I could make it through this week. And I did.

“We have great crack.” Four short words that forever changed the way I viewed public speaking.

Through

What happened…quickly…yet clearly with weaving of story and personal analysis Make sure we see your leadership, initiative, development, and initiative Specific focus on the student Great summarizing, details, and images at same time

Last year, I volunteered as a Confirmation leader at St. Raphael’s Church in South Los Angeles . St. Raphael’s is like a home to me and I basically grew up in those old, moldy pews. Brian proved to be the biggest challenge I faced that year. We had a long history together. We were in the same class at grade school until sixth grade when he was held back. I hadn’t seen him since I graduated 8th grade and went to an all girls’ school, and now here we are sitting in class every Sunday morning, me as a teacher and him as my favorite student. Throughout the year, dare after dare, he tried everything he could to push my buttons. He sought out fights, cursed, and even called me a n****r but I didn’t give up. I quietly disregarded his statements and moved on. I would not let Brian and his derogatory comments break me. His dreadful behavior lasted until after our retreat.

As a child, I viewed my lack of understanding of the English language as temporary obstacle; as an adult, my mom’s grasp of the English language was a limitation—impaired communication was knowing what you wanted to say but being unable to articulate it. As my grasp of the English language grew to surpass my mom’s, I would often receive phone calls from her at work in which she would ask me the meaning of an English word or ask me to translate a word from Spanish to English so she could use it. My mom taught me not only to appreciate and take advantage of every opportunity presented, but also to use my skills to help others. At the time a seemingly insignificant moment, when a non-English-speaking man at Barnes and Noble wanted to put a book on hold but did not know how to tell the cashier, I translated for him; it is because of my mom that I discovered the joy of helping others.

Beyond

Ending that evokes key characteristics Conveys moral

If the friendships found in mixed cultures can be so strong, so influencing as to, say, bring success in a most challenging class, or make memorable nights with a best friend, why not overlook the differences in details and embrace them? There is great power in bringing people together; I’d like to make it happen and, from there, see it blossom into something powerful.

All five of us completed the 2011 Los Angeles Marathon on the rainiest and coldest day we ever experienced. My greatest accomplishment was to help students achieve the goals they thought impossible to complete. I learned that I have the strength and character to accomplish and succeed, and that though the road may not be easy, it is possible.

Take the Time With These Essays

Use active writing: avoid passive sentences and incorporate power verbs. Show when possible; tell when summarizing.

Have trusted inside and impartial outside readers read your essays. Make sure you have no spelling or grammatical errors.

Free Write

You are about to meet your new college roommate. What are five cool things about you that you want your roommate to know.

Final Thoughts

Tip 10. Most importantly, make yourself come alive throughout this process. Write about yourself as passionately and powerfully as possible. Be proud of your life and accomplishments. Sell yourself!!!

Students often need weeks not days to write effective essays. You need to push beyond stereotypes.

You must ultimately submit what pleases you. Essays cannot be manufactured. They convey truth, unique stories, and

writing skills. Admissions officers can smell “enhanced” essays. Students have two to five minutes to grab the attention of a essay reader. You can find many great websites and examples but each student is

different. Admissions officers often say essays make or break an ultimate decision

for students applying to “match colleges.” Facebook friend me: getmetocollege freeadvice

As you work on drafts and revise…

Does your essay start with a story that hooks us in from the first paragraph? If you start in the past, do you get to the present very quickly? Colleges want to know about the recent you. Do you write only in the first person and not spend too much time describing anyone or anything else? If you are writing about your community or family, do you get to the present and your life and life works

quickly? Can this description only connect to you and your story of who are you and how you are making a difference?

Do you only tell one story and not try to tell your entire life story? If you are writing about an obstacle or challenge overcome, do you get to how you have responded and

made a difference in the life of your community within the first half of the essay? Endings—

If you are responding to UC 1, do you end with how your story has affected your dreams and aspirations—in terms of majors, life goals, and your community?

If you are responding to UC 2, do you make sure to connect whatever you writing about to a major activity or project you have done?

If you responding to the Common Application long essay, do you end with a bang. You don’t have to have a formal ending like the UC applications.

Do you have a metaphor that goes through the entire piece…does this metaphor reveal who you are and what you offer to potential colleges? You can embed this metaphor throughout out a piece.

Can I close my eyes and picture your story? Does it make you sound unique and not like anyone else applying? Can I see your leadership and initiative and the power of what you will offer my college campus?

Do you tell new stories and qualities in each separate essay your write? Do you make sure to reveal powerful information and core messages that colleges will need to know to admit you and give your money to attend?

Two of my favorites…Tyler-USC

I knelt on the ground, aching from the asphalt grinding into my dusty and blackened knees. A piece of thick blue chalk in hand, with one fluid sweep of the arm, and then another, I connected two paths, creating a loop, where one path swung back and reconnected with itself. I stood up. Colorful lines intertwined with each other, knotting, weaving, splitting off, and joining back together. Taking careful steps, I walked over my creation, around the corner of a building, and watched as it continued to stretch out towards one end of school. I spied the start, looked back around the corner, and imagined the end.

A few middle-schoolers stood at the edge of my maze, eying one particular path from their feet, all the way until they lost it, then returning to their school day and continuing on to class. A pair of freshman walked the paths, twisting and turning, often looping back around; careful to stay within the lines I had drawn. I walked back to where I was working, picked out a new piece of yellow chalk, and quickly broke an open end of a path into two open ends, then two into four, sweeping, crossing over, then under one another, morphing into green when the yellow chalk ran out.

“I did it!”

I looked up. One of the freshmen stood at the end of one of the numerous openings of my half finished maze, arms raised above his head, spinning slowly in circles. Staring blankly at him was his counterpart, still lost deep within the curls of the maze.

It was not for myself that I had drawn the maze. It was for the kids mindlessly walking from class to class, staring at the asphalt under their feet as they thought about equations and essays. I created it so that these kids would have another world to enter as they crisscrossed the school, letting their minds wander to a land of color and art.

But just as easily as I can draw a chalk line on the ground, I can drowsily greet hundreds of students on a misty morning, moisten the ground, and wash away my chalk line. My work with film is different though. When I create films, I expect them to last forever. I expect to be able to dig them out of an old dusty attic box, plug in a dusty and outdated DVD player and watch what I made. When I come up with an idea, a thought, I expect that idea to be buried deep within the folds of my memory for eternity, waiting to be rediscovered.

But not chalk. When using chalk, I expect whatever I make to be gone almost as soon as I draw it, which makes whatever I create all the more precious. When I only have a few seconds, a few hours, a few days to cherish something, those fleeting moments become all the more powerful. All I can do is work to make the most beautiful creations possible and cherish them while they last.

Matt- U Penn

Last summer, in my Abnormal Psychology class at UCLA, I learned that people are abnormal when they act, think, or behave in ways that fail to meet society’s norms. I wondered whether I fit this category because I suffer from ADHD, which I control with daily medication. Does this make me abnormal? According to my Abnormal Psychology book, the answer is yes, because I fit the symptoms for ADHD, a disorder it identifies as abnormal. Yet while I may be abnormal to a textbook, I act like a regular 17 year old kid when I am on my medication. Heading into the last week of class, I still did not know clearly whether or not I would truly be considered “abnormal.” The weekend before our final, one of my classmates was brutally murdered by a career criminal, and I felt my world stop. As soon as I found out, I called my mother, and together we tried to make sense of what happened. We couldn’t. My friends couldn’t. My abnormal psychology professor couldn’t. So I decided I needed to make sense of it myself, and in doing so, I came to the realization that I am far more normal than what my textbook says. I may take medication for my condition every day, but on or off my medicine, I am still the same person. I feel and care about others. I have deep emotions and know that the chaos within me after Lily’s murder was completely natural. This realization motivated me to redefine my views on abnormality. People are abnormal when they don’t have empathy. People are abnormal when their actions deny humanity. I left my Abnormal Psychology class knowing that I live in a world where I am lucky to have medication to help me focus, a mind that constantly seeks new knowledge, and feelings that still cannot comprehend the brutal loss of a friend. Although I came to an understanding of what abnormal behavior might be for an individual, I still do not know what to think about abnormal behavior and its impact on others. While Abnormal Psychology helped me analyze my relationship to abnormality, textbooks cannot teach how to fix a society’s inability to deal with people like the man who murdered my classmate. Despite these enormous unanswered questions, I have taken the label of abnormal off my back.

You Can Make Your College Dreams Come True

Rebecca Joseph, PhD

rjoseph@calstatela.edufacebook: getmetocollege

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