Jay Dayrit: What Makes Us Human
Jay Dayrit shares about working with students on their college applications.
In a few months, college applications are due, along with the dreaded personal statement. Every year, I help a few kids shape their essays. I do it as a favor for my friends. It started when a buddy asked if I could look at his son’s essay, which was smart, not because I’m a great editor, but because it’s like teaching your own kid to drive. There will be yelling and maybe some crying. Better to hand that task to someone else.
College applications have variations on the same question: What distinguishes you from other qualified applicants? Students lament, “My life is so ordinary!” Their rough drafts overcompensate with hollow platitudes and words they found in a thesaurus. My job is to identify that one sentence, usually buried somewhere in the middle, that carries the weight of an entire novel. And I ask, “What’s this about? That’s where you should start.”
One girl didn’t think it was noteworthy that she experiences life in mathematical models, that she, for example, visualizes the Doppler Effect formula whenever a siren passes by. She thought everyone did that, until I pointed out almost no one does that.
While their experiences may not be extraordinary, the unique perspective they’ve gained, if they can articulate that, is what’ll make them stand out. I caution against using AI, because AI will homogenize their voices. We’ve all done it, fed an email to a chatbot and it came back with cringy language, like “client-facing initiatives” and “growth hacking.”
The three girls I worked with this summer all turned in rough drafts that had tangents that went nowhere and verb tenses that didn’t agree. I was delighted! We can fix that later. But their essays did show fallibility, vulnerability and introspection far beyond their 17 years, all the things, no matter the age, that make us human. With a Perspective, I’m Jay Dayrit.
Jay Dayrit is a writer who works in editorial operations. He lives in San Francisco.