In this week’s bonus, Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy, walks Mignon through the Roles and Identities Exercise he uses with students, and Mignon plays the student. We look at the three roles she chose — experimenter, researcher, and writer — and why they fit her. Then we look at how a list of roles can turn into a college essay in different ways, and a role Mignon would like to lean into more.
In this week’s bonus, Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy, walks Mignon through the Roles and Identities Exercise he uses with students, and Mignon plays the student. We look at the three roles she chose — experimenter, researcher, and writer — and why they fit her. Then we look at how a list of roles can turn into a college essay in different ways, and a role Mignon would like to lean into more.
Find Ethan at CollegeEssayGuy.com.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Greetings Grammarpaloozians! I'm Mignon Fogarty. I am here today with Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy. We just talked to him in the main episode about his philosophies of writing, how he works with students, how AI is affecting his work now and what students are thinking about it, and that was really interesting. Look for that in your main feed. But now I'm going to pretend to be a student, and he's going to walk me through one of the exercises that he does so you can really get a sense of how he helps students, like, come up with their college essays.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, thanks. I feel so honored to be doing this with you. So, just to give a side note to folks listening, I sent Mignon a little exercise called the Roles and Identities Exercise, and maybe we can link to it in the show notes. But essentially it's a list of a whole bunch of roles, and what I asked you to do is to pick, you know, 10 or so of these that you identify with, and then to kind of whittle those down to three roles and identities that you connect with. And let me just, to give folks context—what the kinds of things that are on this, because you listening probably won't have this in front of you—so there are things like adventurer and advocate and facilitator and seeker and self-starter. So these are the kinds of words on this list. It's really just a menu of, in some ways, archetypes, you know, these different ways that we show up in life. And before we get into the exercise, I'll just say, like, I think this one is such a profound one for both students going through this process, and also parents who are thinking about supporting their students through this process and, like, who they want to be, you know, and the different roles or archetypes that they want to embody. And I've found it to be useful for educators, for, you know, for folks who are in leadership positions. So there are a lot of applications. But I'd love to hear, if you would, I'd love to just hear what your experience was maybe on a meta level of just doing this exercise, and then I'd love to just hear, "Okay, what are some of these roles and identities that you landed on as being ones that you vibed with," as the kids would say?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Well, when I first saw the list, I thought, "Oh, this is going to be hard." And then what surprised me is it wasn't, because there were so many, I'm like, "That's not me. I'm not an energizer, you know? I'm not an engine. I am not, you know, an executor." So I thought it'd be hard, and it actually wasn't. There were definitely things that jumped out at once, like, "Oh, yeah. Okay, this is me." I mean, there were some in-between ones, but even though it's a long list of, I don't know, 70, 100 words, which initially felt like, "Ooh, how am I ever going to do this?" it wasn't so hard.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah. Okay, so first question, what are some of the ones that you resonated with, and maybe just tell us a little bit about why you resonated with each one?
Mignon Fogarty: Do you want my, like, top three?
Ethan Sawyer: Let's do top three.
Mignon Fogarty: Okay. So number one is experimenter. So, you know, my background is in science. I worked in a research lab, and I did experiments. And I feel like I've taken that with me through my whole life. So even though I'm not doing lab work anymore, I haven't for, you know, 20, 25 years, I still feel like I approach the world in that way that I was trained for four very intense years in that way, and I view the world as an experimenter. And I demand data. You know, I don't like gut feelings, I like the data. And I like to make my decisions based on facts.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, first of all, I love knowing this about you because I think that sometimes as, you know, as writers, we sort of have that sort of like, "Just follow your intuition," and, like, bringing that sort of rigor to your work just feels really important and a part of what makes your, you know, you—your you-ness. Great. What else you got?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Let's see, the next one was actually researcher, which might be similar to experimenter, but in that researcher is—I just—I will gather all the information I can about something. I will stay far too long in the research mode of a project because I love that part, because it's learning. One of my—it was one of my top 10, but not my top three, was a learner, because I just—there's so much joy for me in learning new things. If I could just learn new things all day and that was the only thing I could do, I would be very happy if I—you know, even if I never got to share them with people or, you know, just learning and learning—I just can't get enough of learning things. So research is my happy place, doing research.
Ethan Sawyer: And what difference do you see between the researcher, Mignon, and the experimenter? Like, how are those different for you?
Mignon Fogarty: So the researcher is learning about what other people have discovered, and the experimenter is discovering things on your own. You know, so the experimenter would be, you know, running an actual little test on something, setting up, you know, even if it's, like, putting out a survey and saying, I don't know, for some random reason, like, "Which of these 10 sentences do you think is the most beautiful?" or, you know, just if I could gather information like that, I love doing things like that. And then being a researcher is looking at what knowledge already exists. And then the experimenter is also I just like to try new things. So, you know, in the main episode, we both talked about how we use Whisper Flow to do voice to text. And, you know, if I see some tool like that, I'm going to try it, because I love to experiment with things and see what they can do.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm hearing this quality of, like, the researcher kind of goes out and, like, absorbs in that semipermeable way that we were talking about and, like, being impacted by it, and then there's like this quality of initiative that I see in you, which, you know, has built Grammar Girl, of like—and I'm also, like, feeling into courage or, like, the willingness to try stuff and to, like, potentially fail?
Mignon Fogarty: I'm not afraid at all to fail. In fact, I love doing things that are really hard that I very well might fail at. I like to be on that edge pushing myself all the time.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I imagine the experimenter in you is like, yeah, has, like, cultivated that—like, has practiced, like, failing or potentially failing a lot.
Mignon Fogarty: Right. Like, I mean, I failed a lot in grad school! But, you know, it's just data, you know? I mean, it doesn't feel great, but if something doesn't work, well, that's data, and then you can rethink how you're going to do it next time.
Ethan Sawyer: Oof, yeah. That feels deep. There's something there. Yeah. Okay, third one, what else?
Mignon Fogarty: Okay, and then the third one is, you know, not—maybe not surprising—is writer. I mean, I also love to write. You know, learning I would learn before I would write, but, you know, writing is also very just enjoyable for me, and I love that—even—I like writing, I love having written and having that final thing that fell into place. That's such a great sense of accomplishment when you've written something that you're happy with.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah. I'm curious if there was a moment when you, like, kind of knew you were a writer?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. I mean, I don't know, always. You know, when I was—I was an only child, and my mom would take me to the library in the summers a lot for their, you know, development little classes, and so I was going to writing classes at the library, you know, as far back as I can remember, and I always loved it.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, yeah. I'm hearing that learner identity early on. So I'd love to just for a second, like, hear what some of the other—what the other 10, or of the other 10, like, what are some of those other parts?
Mignon Fogarty: Sure, yeah. Creator, you know, because I'm much more happy making things than managing things, you know? I, you know, I do, like, identify as an online creator, I guess, you know, I'm making videos and posts and all the things, so I do see myself also as a creator. A curator, you know, I love finding cool things that other people have done and raising them up, whether that's sharing something on, you know, to my Instagram story that's a gorgeous library or, you know, having someone who's written a book on my show so I can introduce them to my audience. You know, that, you know, I just—I also really love—you know, I guess that goes with being a researcher, and then the things I find that I think are good, I like to share, and that in curation. I'm actually very much a details person, which I think probably wouldn't surprise people as also having worked for many years as an editor. I'm the person who's going to be like, "Oh, there's this one line missing from the show description," you know, like I'm the one who's going to find those things. I mean, I miss things, too. Not that I don't miss things, but I am very detail-oriented, but it's not like a core part of my identity. What else? Founder. You know, I founded the Quick and Dirty Tips network, a podcast network, and I think of myself very much as a founder, but also that was a long time ago now, and, you know, I haven't really founded anything since, so maybe not my top three anymore.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, yeah. I want you to keep going because I'm like—what's happening in my brain right now is there's this collage that's happening, and I just want to be, like, more explicit about kind of where I'm going with this. So there are lots of different ways that this could lead to a college essay. So let me give you a few options. So let's say, for instance, that you decided that these were roles and identities that you were like, "Yes, I'm connected to these things." One of the things that if we were to, like—right now, folks who are just listening don't know that behind you on your shelf is like a bunch of books. So it could be, for instance, that you choose what I call essence objects, and each object—and it could be a book, it could be like a set of books—that represents—each one represents some different aspect, some different role or identity that somehow has led you to, in this case, we would say, you know, to develop my work persona of Grammar Girl, right? Behind me on the shelf is like board games. So I could, for instance, tell you about my curator identity or my—I'm almost—I'm a synthesizer, I'm also a catalyst, and I could definitely connect each of these to an essence object, you know, one of the objects that could sort of ground the piece in like an object. So that's one way that we could go with it. Another way is that it could be that there's something in your life that you love or know a lot about that through the process of talking, it could be cooking or it could be something that's just not writerly, that is like something that you just know a lot about that somehow allows you to talk about these different identities of the curator in you, the experimenter in you. And one of the things that can be interesting is when students write about something that is seemingly not about the future career that they're interested in, they're writing, for instance, about their love of plants, and they write about these different parts of themselves that somehow connect to plants, and then lo and behold, it's like, "Oh, I've developed all of these roles and identities that have led me to an interest in business," or something like that, and it can create this really surprise, interesting flow. There's also another version of this where you could just, like, talk about different roles and identities in your life, just sort of jumping around, or talk about sort of like the different phases of—and we could become more chronological—of development of how you—when you developed each of these sides of yourselves. So that's like four different structures. There are like 17 more in the back of my mind! But normally what I would do in a session with students is I would, like, be like, "All right, let me take a look at some example essays," which we're not going to do today, and we go, "Okay, which of these structures appeal to you?" and, "Which of these seem like it might be an interesting pathway for thinking about how you express these different selves?" And I don't hold that you have to necessarily be super explicit about "Here is my curator role, here is my experimenter role," but these parts of you, I think, are—I used the word "archetypes" earlier—for, like, certain urges and certain really, like, superpowers. Like, I think a lot of these point to your superpowers. Like, as I'm hearing them, I'm like, I already kind of knew you were good at some of these things, but something about thinking about them in terms of roles, I think really helps a student, in the case of, like, the college essay, to show themselves as an active agent in their own lives, like doing stuff and trying stuff. And that's to me what's exciting about this as opposed to, like, learning about your core values—great, but I want to see what they look like in action, and a lot of what you shared in the last few minutes show me you experimenting, like in action. Like, I can see you testing the things and taking the questions and trying all the things. So a next step would be like, "Okay, I want you to just, like, write about how these roles and identities manifest in your life," and then we would probably overlay it with some other exercises and see if there's something that we could find, usually over the course of an hour, that would be like a sort of way in to reveal these roles and identities in different ways.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. How do kids take to this process? Do they just love it?
Ethan Sawyer: I think—well, I mean, I think I'm in like a bubble. So the students that I work with oftentimes have sat down for an hour and a half and they've done a bunch of brainstorming exercises, and so the conversation that we're having, I mean, they've sort of, like, laid their life out, and we're getting into the nooks and crannies of their experiences, and I think for the most part, yeah, they're coming out of these sessions going, "Wow, I've never thought about these things." And they're often having that moment even in the pre-work, where they're like, "I've never really thought about what my core values are," or, "I've never really thought about, like, the different ways that I identify." And so there's this sort of like claiming moment oftentimes, especially with the roles and identities, where they will sort of go, "Oh, this is an identity that maybe I'm not necessarily ready to claim yet, but I checked the box, so if Ethan asks me about it, I sort of have to maybe step into it." So the last thing I wanted to ask you is like, is there a role or an identity from that list that you look at and you go, "I don't know if I'm, like, fully ready to claim that, but it is one that I'd like to lean into a little bit more"? Does anything jump out for you?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Yeah. Well... You know, I actually did not find a word that fit, but I would like to do more, like, volunteer work. I would like to have a cause that I did more around, and that's something I've been thinking about for a few years. And so, you know...
Ethan Sawyer: What does that look like? I'm curious. Like, let's tug on that thread for a minute. Like, what is the image of you, like, doing that in the world? How does that manifest?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I feel like I have a large social media platform, and right now I just use it for, you know, Grammar Girl. But I think, well, what else could I use it for? And one of the problematic things is that there are things that would be obvious for me to do that would be a really good fit for Grammar Girl, and those aren't necessarily the things that I'm drawn to. And so, you know, how far afield can I go that would feel acceptable to other people? Maybe I shouldn't care what other people think, but I have other interests that, I mean, they're not weird. I mean, I just—like, I care about homelessness, you know, for example, or I care about feeding people who are hungry. And it's like, but that isn't, like, really a Grammar Girl fit. And so, you know, I think a lot about how I could make that sort of extension into other areas of my life.
Ethan Sawyer: I really, as somebody who has a particular niche presence online, I have this same struggle. So it's something that I wrestle with, too. And I think what I want to say is like—what I'm hearing is, like, it's something like the advocate, you know, identity. You know, like, what you're willing to, like, put your name behind or something, I mean, you might call it something else. But I think that in this—as we're talking about it, there's like a way that I'm like, I feel excited to, like, you know, stretch my sense of, like, the sub-identities of Grammar Girl, and I'm like, I don't know, I'm feeling, like, really for you right now in this, and, you know, so I guess I'm sort of advocating for your advocacy or something.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. No, it'd be great. I'm sure I'd enjoy it and would feel really good about it. You know, I don't know, maybe I should—but maybe I should do, like, reading advocacy because it's such a better fit, you know? But for whatever reason, that doesn't necessarily—it's not that I don't care about it, but it doesn't, like, touch my heart in the same way that thinking about people being hungry does, for example.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm, like, now brainstorming ideas with you, but I'm like, "Ooh, I bet you there's a way to link those up. I bet you there's a way..."
Mignon Fogarty: I can get Pizza Hut to give people pizzas for reading again! You know, I don't know!
Ethan Sawyer: Well, I mean, maybe in that super direct way, but I'm just like, sorry, this is not where I expected this to go, but I'm imagining that there's some way that there is the fundraiser or something that is related to something, but that actually the funds go to support, you know, a really good cause that you really care about. And that seems like, I don't know, like really exciting to me. So part of the meta of what I'm doing is I'm going like, you know, "What is this..." I've been thinking a lot about this for myself, like, "Who am I becoming, you know? And what am I on the edge of discovering about myself, and what are those parts of my identity that I'm excited to, like, step into?" And I think that's just a really exciting question actually for, like, whoever's listening, parents, you know, other writers, like, "Who am I becoming? Like, who am I on the edge of discovering myself to be?" And then just asking yourself the simple question of like, "Okay, well, what does that look like in the world?" And that to me is a really exciting question. And an exciting version of it, too, is like, "What is the identity that I'm resisting?" You know, and that's a slightly different question that I'm not going to, you know, spring on you right now, but is there an identity that I'm resisting becoming? Because that to me is like the, you know, the really ripe work of, like—of development. And that's to me what I see writing as being the opportunity for is, like, how do we story our lives and figure out what's going on and who we're becoming. So...
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think this has been a really good example. I mean, you're just incredible at drawing people out into the things that matter and that would be good to write about for a college essay, but also are, you know, important and valuable self-discovery journeys that, you know, I think people are getting a double dose when they come to you. They're getting, you know, not just college essay writing advice, but some good life advice, too.
Ethan Sawyer: I hope so. I mean, that's why getting into a great college is great and important and it opens up opportunities, but, like, I had a coach once that said to me, like, "How you do one thing is how you do everything." And I kind of think about this process in that way. Like, there is a real opportunity to lean into it and to use it as an opportunity to just, yeah, figure out what the heck you think about your life. And that's the invitation, I think, and that's—it's hard, I think, as parents to convince students to do that, and that's where I think, like, porting over—sort of copy-pasting, being like, "Oh, you're good at this other thing," you know, but it can be hard to convince students to do it, but it's worth it. It feels so worth it.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Well, people can find more about you at collegeessayguy.com. And now, Ethan Sawyer, we are going to get your book recommendations because we always do that, and I am eager to hear what you recommend.
Ethan Sawyer: Let's do it, yeah. So the first one, the one that I recommend probably the most, is "Nonviolent Communication" by Marshall Rosenberg, and it's "A Language of Life." It's changed the way that I think about communication. I mean, about my relationships. The simple concept here is, like, if we can get in touch with our feelings and our needs, it can be transformational. And he's got some really cool—there's some live sessions you can hear on Spotify and stuff of him, like, talking about this. That would be my first one. I'm kind of a self-help nonfiction—you know, I have just—most of my bookshelves are those.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Ethan Sawyer: So that's the first one.
Mignon Fogarty: Okay.
Ethan Sawyer: The second one, I would say, is, like, I've been getting back into books by—like, the writing of Raymond Carver. He was big for me in college, and people know Raymond Carver for his short stories, and there was a way that his writing was, in some cases, so spare, and so—he said once in an interview that, like, you know, a period set in the right place can strike with the force of iron. And I read sometimes his stories and I feel like—maybe he said this or Chekhov—that my heart is sort of off its peg a little bit and it sort of takes a minute for it to come back. But I'll say that, like, the book that I would recommend is actually not a short story book, but it's a book of poetry that he wrote called "All of Us," and it's a collection of his... It's his collected poems. And gosh, I just go back to those again and again, and it... There's just so much richness there. And it's not something that he's actually really, really known for as much.
Mignon Fogarty: Is there a typical—like, is he known—like, does he make you—I mean, I'm sure there's a variety, but do they in general make you feel a certain way or think about a—
Ethan Sawyer: Oof. I think he has a way of taking, like, a moment where he's just, like, you know, sitting by the window with coffee and, you know, there's a line of, like, sitting with the usual stuff that passes for thought, and he has a way of elevating it where I'm sitting at the kitchen table with him with the coffee, looking out at whatever, the two boys walking home, and then there are these moments that'll surprise me where he'll just be like, "Happiness, it comes on slowly and goes beyond really any early morning talk about it."
And there are these just moments where I feel hugely, and, just like in his short stories, they just sort of—like, the emotions will sort of, like, dive-bomb me, whether it's happiness or nostalgia or longing. And so I'm just... When I met somebody recently and I said, "I really like talking to you because I don't know what you're gonna say next, and I like it," you know?
And this is what I experience with his work, is that I don't know what he's gonna say next, but when it comes, I'm just like, "Oh, I liked it."
Mignon Fogarty: Waterfall.
Ethan Sawyer: And then if I had to pick a third one, I think I'm gonna go back to, like, my self-help nonfiction, 'cause this one has been the most, you know, meaningful to me over the last, like, I would say, like, year or so.
And I've been reading... There's—Amir Levin wrote this book, co-wrote this book a few years ago called "Attached" about secure attachment, and he wrote another one that came out recently called "Secure," and he has this model of secure attachment that's called the CARP model. And the idea in this book is that—I'll do the really short version—but there's this CARP, C-A-R-P, that in order for us to have secure attachments in our relationships in our life, we need connections that are consistent, that are available, that are responsive, that are...
Let me see if I can remember the other one. Responsible, responsive. Am I gonna remember it? Reliable, that's the other R, and that are predictable. And if we can have these things, and it's not that we need to have them all from, like, our primary partner, our spouse for instance, but if we can put ourselves in community where we're actually getting those needs met, you know, through these seemingly, you know, everyday interactions, that that's a way to create, you know, safety, you know, psychological safety.
And that little concept has been really meaningful to me, and I've sort of started to recognize where in my life I do get that deep sense of attachment. Can I do a bonus one? Yeah. Okay. My daughter's 11, and I'm still reading to her at night, and if I had to do, like, a fiction one, we're looking...
I'm rereading "Lord of the Rings." So for me, and it still holds up. There's so much richness in it, and yes, it puts her to sleep sometimes, but I love those books, and I get so nostalgic when I dip back into that time of reading those books for the first time and being in that immense world that Tolkien created.
So if I had to throw one on, like a nostalgia one, that's the one that I'm literally reading right now.
Mignon Fogarty: Great, and what a treasure to be able to read that with your daughter.
Ethan Sawyer: Oh, it's the best.
Mignon Fogarty: Well, how wonderful. Ethan Sawyer, where can people find you?
Ethan Sawyer: Sure. Collegeessayguy.com, that's our website, but we're also on YouTube and we've got a blog and a podcast and basically if you just kinda ask the question related to college admissions and then put College Essay Guy after it, you'll find a thing.
Mignon Fogarty: Wonderful. And everyone should do that because it’s great information. Thank you so much for being here.
Ethan Sawyer: Thanks so much for having me.