Garden Tales

Garden Tales

Last summer, my 3-year-old discovered the joys of pulling fresh vegetables from the garden and eating them on the spot. One day, he found a bed full of carrots and pulled one up immediately. When I saw him eating it, I couldn’t figure out where he had gotten it. How had this bed of carrots grown without my noticing?

Further investigation revealed that the bag of carrots from the grocery store was no longer in the refrigerator. Turned out my husband thought they might be a more popular snack food if they were “caught in the wild.” Turned out … he was right.

I had a good laugh about the magic carrots—and I never told my son the truth about them, either. Why spoil his fun?

The thing about essays, though, is you can’t plant whole carrots. When your reader goes to ‘harvest’ your ideas, they will be able to tell the difference between ideas like roots that require a thoughtful tug to extract, and carrots pushed into the dirt to simulate a garden.

One way people try to plant carrots is by using someone else’s words of wisdom. Don’t open your essay with a famous quote. If it’s famous, your reader has probably already heard it, and it won’t impress them. The thing we love about pithy sayings is their depth and ability to encapsulate a complex thought. But a famous quote speaks to you, or resonates for you, because it sums up something complex you have lived through or felt. It says something you wish you could put words on. It isn’t actually able to convey wisdom in a short space—it can only remind you of wisdom you’ve already won. In the college essay, you need to show the reader your own grappling with your experiences. You need to put your own words on it, even if they aren’t as beautiful or clever or clear as the words of the famous poet. You need to prove that you own your experiences—that you really were there.

Another way students try to plant whole carrots is with the techniques that got them through AP exams. Constructing your essay out of cliches and lots of formal-sounding transition phrases that feel profound seems like a shortcut, but to what end? You will find, if you read this type of essay critically, that very little original thought gets through. If you write a rough draft that is honest—that really is rough and not well-written, but expresses your ideas—you won’t have something that looks like a garden, but you will have a lot more seeds of original ideas. Then you have to be patient, do the weeding, and spend the time to allow the seeds to grow.

If you’re planning a garden for this summer, now is the time to plant seeds in Dixie cups and tenderly care for them until the ground outside is ready. If you’re applying to college this summer, now is the time to plant some seeds in a journal or blank document and give them time to grow.

(Photos by Markus Spiske on Unsplash)