Writing a college admissions essay can be stressful and really frustrating. Ther... e’s a lot of pressure to make it perfect! Ugh, there’s nothing worse than that feeling for a writer. My job as a tutor is twofold: one, to make the process easier and more enjoyable, and two, to give students writing skills that will help with all the essays and papers still to come in college. The best way to do this, I find, is to break the writing process down into small steps. First, we'll talk. I'll prompt you to open up about your life experiences, what you have to offer prospective schools and future classmates, and what you hope to gain from the college experience. From there we'll start to do some free and easy writing. This will just be low stakes sprinting, i.e. writing as fast as you can to a prompt, usually with a five or ten minute timer set. The sprints will start to loosen up your writing mind and give us some words to work with. Once you start to build a pile of words we’ll be able to recognize what it is exactly you want to say. From there we can identify parts that could serve as your essay's beginning, middle and end. Once we have that basic shape in place we can start to revise. In other words we'll read your draft over several times with an eye for making each sentence as clear as possible. Let me say it again: my job here has two parts. One is to make writing the college admissions essay as fun and stress-free as possible, the other is to help you learn to write the kind of effective essay you’ll be producing over the next four years of college and beyond. I look forward to writing with you!read more