Mass Culture As an Effect of WWI

Dartmouth College Entrance App – Supplemental Essay

Reflection:
My first piece of writing here is an evidence-based essay on the cultural effects of WWI that I wrote for a Humanities project during senior year. It’s a typical example of my high school evidence-based work. In much of my writing, I seemed to vomit all these ideas onto a document and try to synthesize them through complex syntax and descriptive writing. Often my paragraphs didn’t flow well, and my writing was clogged with jumbled words and overcomplicated sentences. Throughout my years in high school, I developed a better process for idea-generation, but it became a bit complicated. I’d have good points, but rarely one clear main point. In this essay, I had a thesis but I kept bringing up new ideas when I should have been re-stating and supporting my main one. I think the underlying issue was a lack of concern for my audience. When I wrote, I would be actively working through my own ideas. What I have since learned to do is to work through my ideas before I start writing, and then the actual writing is a process of communicating those ideas clearly.

My second piece is a more freeform, creative piece – my Dartmouth College application supplement that discussed my “hero”, whom I identified as one of my best friends in high school. In general, I think I am more successful with creative and personal writing than with persuasive or academic writing. This essay is what I consider to be one of my best college admission pieces. It’s the most truthful, and it comes from a place of genuine belief and emotion. I always have appreciated the opportunity to write without rules, and this type of setting made that possible. Throughout high school, my reflective writing took on a broader context. As I had more experiences, I would make connections within my writing that reached further away from myself, or possibly further within. I learned to write more clearly when discussing my own beliefs, and I learned the power of using fewer, more carefully chosen words. When I was young, my main strategy for writing was to just write way more than I needed to so my teachers would be impressed. As the years went on, much of my development as a writer throughout high school involved this idea of distillation. By the time I wrote this essay, I could distill my main points into short sentences, like “she taught you to see the world in third person,” or “she proves you wrong when no one else will.” These sentences speak for themselves, and are simple but concise and complete.