Sunday Essays

It was a crisp and sunny autumn Sunday in Menlo Park, with nothing much planned. There was a trip to the Farmer's Market, laundry to do, and a Trader Joe's basil plant to be repotted.

This kind of leisure makes me restless and leads to dangerous introspection about all of the useful or exciting things I could or should be doing. But then the world rushed in and rescued me.
I heard two chimes on my desktop computer and saw that two e-mails had arrived--both with attachments.

"Take a look at what I wrote," each sender asked earnestly. "See what you think."

THE COLLEGE APPLICATION ESSAY

The first request to "take a look" came from a seventeen year old young woman, I'll call "T", who was writing an essay for a college application. I tutor "T" occasionally at her Palo Alto home. She is a very good student, but had asked for some extra help in the wake of her devastating  family loss--her beloved Dad died suddenly at the start of the year of a heart attack. He was getting out of his car and the family found his body in the garage. Their home had become a house of mourning for many weeks. But now, everyone was literally getting up off the couch and tentatively making plans.

T and I had been working on ideas for  her college essay which, as college essays often are, was about how she overcame a challenge. We both knew what the challenge would be, but how could T write about it clearly without letting emotions overcome her--and the writing. She chose to intertwine two challenges--writing about how both some injuries and her Dad's death had impacted her potentially professional ballet career. She said that her Dad was the one who took her to dance class and watched and analyzed her moves, with the  fervor of a sports coach. She described her attorney Dad as a tall, lanky man dressed in jeans and a down vest, crumpled into a tiny folding chair next to the "dance moms" at the studio, intently watching his daughter both in person and up on the video monitor. 
She smiled through tears as she remembered him as "Dance Dad."

 I listened to her ideas and recollections, both of us struggling for composure as we shed a few tears. Now, a month since I had seen her, the essay was done, and she wanted to share it with me.

There were no edits needed here. For one thing, T, had not asked for any. For another, the words had to be hers.  Last but not least, it was a great essay--a standout--that at least in my opinion, would impress the college admission officers.  At the end of my ordinary Sunday, just before Sixty Minutes was about to start, I typed back and told her so. I did ask a question, though. In one part of the essay she mentioned wanting to recover from tendonitis soon enough to dance her favorite role in The Nutcracker. "What was the roles," I asked. "It may not seem important, but little details like that can make an essay "pop" and offer the reader a chance to know you better.

T wrote back, politely, that she had reached her word limit on the essay and would not be adding anything, but thanks for the opinion. She then told me that one of her favorite roles had been the Snow Queen.  I knew that the Nutcracker had been the last ballet that her father had seen her perform in, just a month before he died.  I imagined him either enthralled with her performance or taking notes, perhaps on an i-phone hidden in his lap. Maybe he even sneaked in some photos.Those images were mine, not T's, but the power of her storytelling had led me to create them. 

"Dance Dad" will remain with me for a very long time.

THE PERSUASIVE ESSAY

I had expected the second request that I received on Sunday because I asked a very conscientious Chinese student in her first year at Menlo College to check in with me.  Her American name is Leah.  Her English is excellent and she was able to matriculate immediately into college English classes, without any prerequisite language courses. 

But Leah does not just want to be good; she wants to be great. And all week she had been struggling with a persuasive essay on housing discrimination faced by African Americans. Her essay was inspired by a class reading-- an Atlantic Magazine article by Ta-Nehisi Coates called "The Case For Reparations".  Which meant that Ashely first had to understand what reparations are and were and why African Americans might ask for them.She also had to learn how to do scholarly research and statistical research to describe policies such as "redlining" in which mortgage lending officers(MLOs) separate blacks and whites into neighborhoods in which white buyers and sellers receive more favorable treatment. This meant that she had to learn acronyms like MLO. And she had to learn the three pillars of the persuasive essay--logos(logic), ethos(trust and authority) and pathos(emotion). 

Still with me? We had worked on all of these skills and concepts at the Writing Center, and now Leah was taking the weekend to do her final draft. 
Before she left for the weekend she exclaimed, "I think that racism is RIDICULOUS!"

Then she paused and asked, "What I just said...is that pathos?"

I nodded.

Now, on this Sunday night, the final draft was ready. I opened the e-mail attachment, as if unwrapping a gift or unveiling a painting.

The title of the essay read: Discrimination Still Exists for African Americans In the Housing Market.
The "still" in the title would get to the heart of the matter.
There was the thesis--right in the title.
I hope that her professor agrees.

I corrected some tenses, added some plurals and inserted some commas. I checked her sources for MLA style.
The paper was good to go!

CONCLUSION

Here is a photo of the basil plant that I transplanted on Sunday morning before the e-mails arrived. It is my most tangible accomplishment. When George grinds it into pesto,  it will be my most edible accomplishment. As for the less tangible edits and reactions, they were an honor and a privilege to do--"taking a look" being one of the most wonderful things that a writing teacher or a friend can be trusted to do.

Maybe the edits will be accepted, maybe they won't. But important observations and conversations were held--at least online. I still favor old school personal conversations. But the e-mails provided immediate feedback. I am listening. I am here. And what you say is important. Tell me more. It was also reassuring to know that the writing that all of us did--in forms longer than a tweet or text--still matters.