1229. This week, we talk with Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy, about AI and college admissions essays. We look at why admissions officers told him “don’t” when it comes to AI, what he calls the “disembodied voice” of AI writing, and why he rewrote the new editions of his books by hand. Then we look at two pieces of classic essay advice he says to skip, how “finish your ribs” became a standout essay, and how a 10-minute timer can get a stuck writer started.
1229. This week, we talk with Ethan Sawyer, the College Essay Guy, about AI and college admissions essays. We look at why admissions officers told him “don’t” when it comes to AI, what he calls the “disembodied voice” of AI writing, and why he rewrote the new editions of his books by hand. Then we look at two pieces of classic essay advice he says to skip, how “finish your ribs” became a standout essay, and how a 10-minute timer can get a stuck writer started.
Find Ethan at CollegeEssayGuy.com.
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[Computer-generated transcript]
Mignon Fogarty: Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, and today I am here with Ethan Sawyer, better known as the College Essay Guy. Hi, Ethan. Welcome to the Grammar Girl podcast.
Ethan Sawyer: Hi, I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, it's been quite a while since I've had you on, but I love your work. I think you give fabulous writing advice. And also, you know, as the College Essay Guy, I imagine you were sort of at ground zero for some of the things going on with AI. So I would love to hear how that is affecting your business and your interaction with students, and just what you're seeing out in the world. So first, let's help the listeners, like, set the table and explain who actually are you?
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, who is the College Essay Guy? Nobody says, "I want to be the College Essay Guy when I grow up." LIke, how did this even happen? So the short version is I got a job out of college, 2003, helping students write their college essays. And I was at the same time wanting to be a screenwriter. I was in Los Angeles, still in Los Angeles. And I found that what I was learning from screenwriting was so useful in terms of story structure and the ways that we operate as humans. And so I was bringing in this stuff to my sessions with students on their college essays, and they were writing better essays. And so over the next few years, I just started to get more and more into it and realize how much I didn't want to just sit and write movies that nobody would ever see. I wanted to be supporting students in this process. And there was this sort of uplevel moment that I had when I realized—I was in a counseling program, and I realized how much of this work was about self-authorship and about not just getting into college, but about how do we make sense of our lives, how do we make meaning? And 20 years later, I'm still in love with that process of helping 16- to 18-year-olds figure out who the heck they are and what they have to bring to the communities that they're going to be in.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, every time I talk to you or re-review your book, I come away thinking, "Gosh, it might be kind of fun to write an essay!"
Ethan Sawyer: I'm totally excited to do that with you in the bonus section later. So I'm totally going to try to draw you in and try to do some of that work with you if you'll let me.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, and as a complete aside, isn't it fascinating that people can make a living writing screenplays that no one will—that will never get turned into movies? Like that actually happens, it's so strange.
Ethan Sawyer: That is some not small percentage of my friends who have tried to do that. And it's not just now, I think it's not just like writing screenplays, but it's also like producing movies and doing effects and editing. Like all of these things, people can make a small living, or in some cases, see AI, it's getting harder and harder to do that. So yeah, totally.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. So you work primarily with high school students, is that right, as they're getting ready to write their college essays?
Ethan Sawyer: Totally, yeah. And, you know, more and more folks are coming to us because they see that this process is about much more than just writing an essay. They see this as being much more about student development, figuring out, "Okay, well, who am I?" And that starts—I think that process is best when it starts earlier in high school when students are thinking about, "How am I going to spend my summer?" and, "What am I going to do in terms of my extracurricular activities?" And so it all sort of leads up to this process of writing the essay, which to me is like—I think we've talked about this maybe before, but to me is like a big rite of passage. But I see those years leading up to it as being preparation for that crucible of the college admissions process.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah
Ethan Sawyer: And it's about so much more than writing an essay. It's really about figuring out who are you becoming in some ways.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, and you're not just one guy, you have a whole business and you have people you work with. So do you consider that early work that you do, is that more like college counseling then or?
Ethan Sawyer: Totally, yeah. College counseling, from like ninth through 12th grade. And then students sort of will go into this process of writing their stories, figuring out what their story is and how it makes sense in terms of what their goals are. And some students come in and they've been really thinking about this since they were in the sixth grade, and others are like, "What? What even—what are my options? What's available?" And so part of it is like guiding them through this process of really like—I kind of think of it as "spelunking," where you're sort of going into the different caves of your experiences and kind of shining lights in there and being like, "What is this part of who I am?" and making meaning out of what we find in those different parts of our psyche. So...
Mignon Fogarty: And one of the things I like about the way you offer your work is you have this high-touch part of your business, but you also give a lot of free information on your website, and you have your books, which are fabulous books, that will help students if they want to sort of dip their toe in before they actually full-on hire you.
Ethan Sawyer: Totally, and that's a huge core to our mission. We became a B Corp last year—year before last, actually. And part of our mission is really to increase access to higher education. So even though we do work with folks who pay for support, a big part of our mission is we've got a big cohort of hundreds of volunteers who work with students for free through this process. So all of our courses are pay-what-you-can, which means someone can pay $5 or $0, just according to what they've got in their pockets, and to take the courses online. And then in terms of our one-on-one support, we worked with more than 700 students last year through our amazing volunteer community for free, just supporting them through the process. So that's a big part of our mission and who we are as an organization.
Mignon Fogarty: I love that. And so how have you seen, how has your business changed over the last say three-ish years since AI has come onto the scene? Like, you know, I hear students both love it and hate it, and maybe the same student loves it and hates it! But what are you—because you work with so many students, I'm just really curious, like what you're seeing and how it has changed your business, if it even has.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, it's interesting. There's like the organizational and then there's on the individual level. So on the organizational level, I think I expected things to change more. And what I mean by that is like I think when ChatGPT came out, whenever it was, end of 2022, I was like, "Okay, I should probably find a new job. I should probably find something else to do with my time. All the 20 years I've spent are like gone now. What should I do?" And so there was a moment of sort of going, "Okay, do people still—are they still going to write essays?" And I talked to a bunch of college admission officers, and they were like, "Oh, essays aren't going anywhere." And I think part of that is that colleges, it's still a very human process. Colleges are still—this is more art than science. This isn't something that you can kind of punch into an algorithm and suddenly it's like, "Boom, you get into these colleges." There's still humans on the other side of this. Even those colleges and universities that have moved to using AI in some parts of the process still have some human in the loop that is helping to make the decisions. And so I think for that reason, I think a lot of folks still, I'm finding, want essay support. And so as far as an organization, we've actually been growing over the last few years.
Mignon Fogarty: That’s amazing.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, people still see the value in having another human along the way. And because it's such a complex process, this isn't something that you can just sort of ask ChatGPT, "Give me all the things I need to do to apply to college." Like there's still so much that's happening both on a sort of external level about the things to be done, which in some ways is ChatGPT-able, but you really can't—I was talking to a friend recently and he's like, "You can't ChatGPT your identity."
I was like, "Yes, and that feels like a big part of what we do." So... I think I've sort of answered your question. I think the other piece of it is like on the individual level, in terms of students, I want to say something about that. Yeah, it seems like some students will come in and they have a real aversion to it. And we're definitely not pushing it. We're not saying, "You should use AI," and certainly not for writing. Because there are so many colleges—speaking of college admission officers, I did a YouTube video, I want to say like a couple months ago I went to a counselor conference where I was speaking, and I asked 20 admission officers, "What do you think about AI in the college admission process?" And the word that came up most often was "don't."
Mignon Fogarty: Right
Ethan Sawyer: Like, "Do not use it," you know? And it's sort of like they really—colleges still want the homemade version of you. They'd rather have the messy version than the sort of super polished version. And I see students—I met with a student like a week and a half ago who actually said, "Hey, I used ChatGPT to help me with this outline for this thing based on some ideas that I punched in." And I said to him, "Are you planning to use that text?" And he was like, "Oh no, of course not." And I was like, "Okay, cool." I was like, "Yeah, don't copy and paste." And he's like, "No, no, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't." So I imagine that there are many students who are like that. And I'm sure there are students who are using it on my courses, and I just don't know and won't know. So shrug emoji, I guess?
Mignon Fogarty: Well, that's really interesting. Has it created any new problems for you? It doesn't really sound like it.
Ethan Sawyer: Not really. I mean, I think in some ways like the process is still the process, and I think that a thing that I think is important for students to attune to if they are using AI for writing is like to what extent is the thing that's produced—because I think there's this tricky thing, and I've noticed this with my own writing like when I'll play with ChatGPT or something. Like I had this idea for a blog recently, and it was about helping my friends who try to create events, like why people aren't showing up to your event. And I had some ideas on it, and it was literally called like "Why People Aren't Showing Up to Your Event." And I spit it into ChatGPT and I kind of used Whisper Flow to talk about the outline, and then it wrote it, and I was like, "Ooh, this is pretty good." And I spent some time tweaking it. And I shared it with a couple friends, and they enjoyed it, but I couldn't help but feeling that it was sort of like this—I want to call it like this disembodied voice where like the logic made sense, but it just wasn't me, it didn't feel like me, and I felt this gap. And so I was careful to tell my friends, "Hey, this is something that mostly ChatGPT wrote, and I like the ideas, and I sort of did an hour or so curating and changing some stuff." But I think that when students are coming into this process, I'm sort of on the conservative side of like, hey, colleges say don't use it, the Common App says don't use it, let's do it the old-school way. Because we could talk about this, but I think there are so many valuable nutrients that students get from going through the difficult process of writing. But it's like this—to what extent are students, and really just adults even, comfortable with that sort of gap between what I actually am thinking and what the machine has—what I'm agreeing with the machine has produced? And that's an interesting gap that we're facing, I think, right now culturally where we're sort of reckoning with that little gap as writers and thinkers, and it's—I got to tell you, it's confusing, and it's uncomfortable. And I have figured out some thoughts on it, but I feel like we'll know more or something in a year or two.
Mignon Fogarty: When we do the longitudinal studies like in medicine!
Ethan Sawyer: So one more thing about this disembodied voice I got to say. So I spent the last—well, part of last year, I spent several months writing second editions of both my books, the ones that you mentioned, “College Essay Essentials and College Admission Essentials.” And, you know, I would have these moments while I was writing that I was tempted to use AI because I knew it would be faster and I knew it would like do the thing of like cleaning up the thing or clarifying the thing. And I would try it and I'd be like, "Hey, help me say this better." And I would just be like [laughs], there was just like—it was like recalcitrant to my soul somehow. There was something that would come up in me where I was like, "That's—it's clear, but it's just not me." So I'd end up rewriting it. And I had to sort of reckon with that, right? I had to have that moment where I'm like, "Oh, this is going to be harder, it's going to take a little bit longer, but ultimately I feel really proud on the other side of it," you know? And I know there are a lot of folks who are using AI to write books, and it just, yeah, it wasn't wasn't for me. And and part of that I think is about trust, like I really want people to trust that if I say it's my voice, it's my voice, because I think of writing, you know, especially like the books that I work on, even though they are sort of how-to guides, they're also kind of letters to the reader. And that's the way that I think about that relationship and I want people to be able to trust that it's my voice.
Mignon Fogarty: One thing I particularly worry about with students is, you know, they haven't found their voice yet.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah.
Mignon Fogarty: You know, so will they look at something that ChatGPT produced and say, "This isn't me," or would they look at it and go, "Sounds good, must be me!" you know?
Ethan Sawyer: Totally. Totally.
Mignon Fogarty: And I would love to hear what advice you have for parents and teachers who are listening, how they can convince their students that it is still worth going through the process of writing things themselves this way.
Ethan Sawyer: Oof, yeah. It's not easy. And I think like an orientation that I have that I don't think is like literally the thing to say to students, but I think there's an orientation that I have to this process where there's a way to look at this as a sort of transactional process where if you do X, Y, Z, and Q, you, you know, have a better chance of getting into a certain college. And I think there's another possibility here where I think this process, rather than be transactional, can actually be transformational if you treat it in a certain way. And what I mean by this is like I think there are certain opportunities to go through certain brainstorming exercises, for instance, and ask yourself certain questions, and like sit with the challenge of the wrestling with the "it's not quite what I meant, and how do I find the right word?" Because the finding of that right word and the ownership that that can create, I think in a student, the confidence that that can build is like amazing. And I think that for—if I were like trying to convince my daughter, for instance, who's 11 right now, that she should do it the old-school way and not use ChatGPT—I hope I'm not having that conversation with her, but I might be—I think part of it would be pointing to certain things. For instance, like she's getting into rock climbing. I think I would probably be in the position of being like, "Hey, you could watch somebody else rock climb and ostensibly learn how to 'rock climb,' but if you don't skin your knees, and if you don't fall a few times, like when you get to the top, as it were, it's just going to be such a big difference than if you sort of—" I mean, the metaphor doesn't quite work here, but I think there's like a there's some like half-rhyme here about finding those situations in a student's life where actually doing the hard thing had a payoff that's hard to—it's hard to math, you know? It's hard to like really, really, really—it's hard to quantify, I guess, you know? And it's just like—I'm thinking also about the confidence that comes from finding the almost right word, and then finding the word that's like, "Oh, yes! Now it's actually this." There's like a reification that's happening, which I'm sure your listeners will, you know, appreciate that reification, that moment where something like locks in and you just have that like "ah." And so here I am, you know, banging the drum, of course I would be as College Essay Guy, for doing things the slow-cooked way. But I know that there are going to be students who just go, "You know what, I just want to get this thing done," and, you know, they might miss out on some opportunities. I hope they'll find other opportunities to like get some of those nutrients that you get from giving yourself the gift of the writing process, but we'll see.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Even in the leading up to the process, you know, you talk a lot about how essay writing is a form of self-discovery, and it just takes some work, you know? It takes some time and some work. Do you have any stories of students you've worked with who struggled for a while and then did have, you know, a wonderful breakthrough?
Ethan Sawyer: Oh, my gosh, yeah, tons. You know, I'm thinking of like there was a student who really wanted to write about food, food was kind of his thing. And his initial ideas, because it was kind of all over, like he'd been, you know, doing like food recovery, food waste recovery, rather, work. And, you know, early on his drafts were like, you know, fine. They were about like, "Hey, I'm going through the kitchen and I'm like trying to do this and trying to do that." And then after like eight drafts or so, he started to really get into the depths of just how much his relationship to food had meant in his family, and how much it had meant in terms of the ways that he even like—like lessons that were passed down to him. So for instance, one of the early lines is about how his grandfather taught him to finish his ribs.
And in conversation, I was like, "Oh, finish your ribs, like say more about that." He's like, "Yeah, it was just about, you know, finish what you start." And I was like, of course, asked the leading question, the College Essay Guy question of like, "How else do you finish your ribs, you know, in life?" And he found all these moments of like when I'm, you know, in calculus and I'm trying to figure out this, or when I'm like, you know, working on district issues, district problems, I've learned to, quote-unquote, "finish my ribs." And those moments of finding like, for instance, the double meaning are so satisfying. And a lot of times students will come to me like years later and be like, "Boy, that's still one of the best pieces I've ever written." That essay in particular, the food one, is one that I love to talk about and I've like done YouTube videos on it because it's an example of taking something common that other people can write about and finding the uncommon connections, you know, the surprise connections to values and insights. And in this case, you know, he gave another example of sitting around the table with his family, and they used to have this tablecloth that they would write on every year.
Mignon Fogarty: Oh.
Ethan Sawyer: And he talks about how on the tablecloth, you know, there's, you know, quotes from his dad, but only until a certain year, and quotes from his great-grandmother, but only until a certain year. And you can just see the changes in his life. And he doesn't get into like, "And that's when my parents got divorced," or "That's when my great-grandmother died." But you can feel the sort of, you know, the texture—you can feel it's like a really subtle way of just showing the passage of time, you know, visually. And that's something that I think a student wouldn't find if they just wrote, you know, a first draft or a second draft. So that's the kind of stuff that you find when you're sort of doing that—I said spelunking, but now I'm thinking of it more of like excavating over time and finding those deeper moments and those deeper stories that I think really can help a student's story stand out. And yeah, he got into great colleges and universities, but it was really I think, you know, he wrote me later and he's like, "I really felt proud that I felt like I did my best." And that's my hope in this process is that students feel at the end that they really gave it their best. And so, yeah.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. Well, one of the interesting things you mentioned is students who, you know, maybe they come up with a story, but they feel like that isn't what college admissions people are actually looking for?
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah.
Mignon Fogarty: Like how do you work with a student who is maybe drawn to something, but they feel like it might not be the right thing, but it's what they are drawn to?
Ethan Sawyer: Okay, so there are, yeah, there are two genres of this for me. So there's like one that's related to what I call bad college essay writing advice. So one I think bad college essay writing advice is like choose a particular moment. And that sounds good from a writerly perspective. It's like, okay, find the moment when, I don't know, there's some little nuance of a thing happened and you have this insight. And it just puts so much pressure on that insight to be mind-blowing. And I find that that really sets up students for a bad time because they're trying to like, again, excavate, but they've just got this tiny little canvas of this moment when they were eating cereal or when they were like, you know, tying their shoes or some tiny moment. In like 0.5% of cases, it works out beautifully and it's like, "OMG, this essay is amazing." And the second genre of like I think where students go astray is when they try and find the story that's sort of like the most difficult thing that's happened to them. And they try to go—they read an essay probably once that they're like, "This is an amazing essay because it was about challenges and about overcoming and showing growth," and they're told, "You should show growth." But they just don't have, one, either the story, the thing that happened that's these what I would call like compelling challenges, or two, in many cases they haven't quite processed the thing, and so they're still very much in process even as the deadline is coming up. So I just want students to know that there are so many different ways to do this thing, and part of it is like, for instance, finding I call it a montage, finding a theme, a thing that you, for instance, love or know a lot about, that can allow you to express your different identities, your different values. And there are so many different ways to do that that don't involve either choosing a particular moment or, you know, finding the most difficult thing you've ever been through. Now, not to say like I think it's something like 20% to 30% of students end up writing about challenges according to how many choose the prompt for "tell us about a challenge you faced." But there are so many beautiful stories that students can tell. I think I used to give bad advice. I used to say something like, "Tell your deepest story." And I no longer say that. I now am like, "There's so many stories that you can tell, you know? Find some lens, something that's elastic, that's going to be stretchy enough to talk about lots of different sides of you. And that's what colleges are interested in. They want to know what is your range of skills, qualities, values that you're going to bring to our community? So there are lots of ways to do that, which I could nerd out on, but...
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. I'm curious, what do you tell the student who feels like, "Okay, I had average extracurricular activities. I played like the normal sports. I didn't go, you know, build a hospital in a third-world country for my summer project, and like I know everyone else is going to have done those things, and I'm just normal." Like what do you tell those kids?
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah. So first of all, I'll say like you've got what you've got, and, you know, you can't suddenly do some of those things. And oftentimes they're stressed about that for their activities list. So the first thing I'll say is like, even if you've done those awesome, amazing things, I wouldn't encourage you to make those your main personal statement topic. Like those are the things that are going to go in your activities list. What I'm interested in seeing is, for instance, and this is part of like the brainstorming, is like what are those things that you are a nerd for? What are those niche things that, one, are, like I said, elastic, stretchy enough to talk about lots of different sides of you; two, that either are uncommon in some way, or that you could find a way to make uncommon; and then a third thing I think to consider is like connecting and having in mind your audience. And there are certain qualities that colleges are looking for. You know, we did a big study last year looking at like 300 college websites and mission statements and strategic plans, and we found that there are certain qualities like intellectual curiosity and initiative or leadership and service to others. So having these in the back of your mind, what are those qualities and what are ways to weave those in?
But I think students sometimes just don't have great brainstorming exercises, and they'll be kind of going from like, "Well, what are five adjectives, you know, that describe you?" which is like the worst question. I can imagine even as an adult, if I were to ask you, Mignon, like, "Give me five adjectives to describe you," it's just sort of like it's so overwhelming.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Ethan Sawyer: So, you know, the way that I orient is more around like, okay, simple stuff: What do you love and know a lot about? What are some of your superpowers, probably related to your values? What are some roles and identities that you feel like you've manifested in your life? And in some cases, like what's a thing that you're interested in studying or doing in the future? And like those are four or five simple things that when we start to have a conversation about those, suddenly the student starts to open up and find that, "Oh, I actually do have some things that I am into." And it gets them out of the fear thinking of like, "What do they want out there?" and more like, "Yeah, what are those things that I have to offer?" And that's to me like the important orientation is like that excavation and finding those things.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. There's like such an important discovery element of what you do, and then you can't even begin the writing until you get to that point. And then the writing packages it up in a way that, you know...
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, that's and that's the thing about writing. And I would just if we can just for a second, like…
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Ethan Sawyer: I think that students sometimes think about writing as being like the writing itself, but a friend of mine once said like, "You have to strengthen your writing muscles, but you also kind of have to like work on your ideas muscles." And I say this to you because I know like you as a writer, like we don't, you know, it's not like we just sit down without ideas. Sometimes maybe if we're doing like our morning pages or something, but there's all this stuff that's happening, that isn't the writing.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah.
Ethan Sawyer: You know? That feels like the important thing. It's the time when we're going on the walk, you know, and where we're, you know, doing the dishes, where the stuff is happening internally. And I think students will sometimes want to rush to that, or they'll be afraid of that moment where they're actually having to like, you know, put pen to paper, as it were. But I feel like there's just so much richness in the ideating, you know, the ideating and the figuring out, you know, what's to come through me, what wants to emerge?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. And sometimes it needs to percolate for a while.
Ethan Sawyer: Totally. Yeah, it makes me want to like, I don't know if you're like Like, maybe we can both answer this for a second, I'm flipping it for just a second.
Mignon Fogarty: Okay
Ethan Sawyer: But like when you are trying to come up with ideas, maybe this will help students, too, like, and I want to ask myself this question, too, so that it's not just me flipping the script on you, but like how do you come up with ideas? Like how do you know what to write next? Like how does that process go for you?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. I mean, a lot of it for me is driven by listener questions. But often, when I'm researching something, I'll come across something else really interesting, and it'll pique my interest, and I'll jot it down. And I was writing something like that last night for an upcoming show, and it was just something that I came across while I—actually I did have an old listener question about it, too, but I had not answered it because I don't answer them all. And yeah, and I just started going down this rabbit hole, and I'm like, "Wow, this is really interesting, so much more interesting than I realized." And then I am largely driven by research and curiosity, and so I just, you know, and then I was thinking like so I did all this background work and research, and then I was really struggling with it last night, and I realized I was writing things in the wrong order. And like when I changed the order of some of the paragraphs and then it like all snapped into place, and I was like, "There it is!"
Ethan Sawyer: So good.
Mignon Fogarty: you know? And it was such a great feeling. Yeah.
Ethan Sawyer: So good. Yeah, yeah, and as you hear that, like what I'm hearing two things that I really resonate with. One is like I think you've probably cultivated over time what I would call like this artist membrane, like the semipermeable membrane where you like let stuff in, you know what I mean? And you go out and like experience the world, but it's through this particular way of this lens of like, "Okay, I'm going to let things impact me, and then see what my version is that comes out." And I think I have that, too, where I'm sort of like, it's not that I'm never not writing, but there is some way that I'm like, you know, ready for the next thing. And then the second thing that I'm hearing is like imagine that you've cultivated the time to actually be able to follow your curiosity and like build and do the things. And that's something that I as a writer find to be extremely important, and I think is like useful for students, is like you have to carve out that deep work time, you know, those three-hour chunks that you can get into that maker mode so you're not just like, you know...
Mignon Fogarty: Yes.
Ethan Sawyer: Right?
Mignon Fogarty: You need the big chunks. I don't get enough of that as I would like, but like last night I was like, "I am going to write this tonight, and I'm going to do it until I go to bed," and yeah.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah. I have in my calendar I have "deep work" marked off from 9:00 to 12:00 every day, and I mostly keep it. Did I keep it? I kept it today. So most days I'm able to block that time and like really keep it sacred. But I think that for students who are going through a writing process, I think sometimes they're used to working in these like short spurts of like 30 minutes, or "I'm going to work on my math for an hour." And I think that when it comes to writing, like it sometimes takes time to just come off whatever moving walkway that you've come off of, and to settle, settle into your system, and to allow that space for, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this, for the muse to visit you, you know? And so I think not just that sort of permeability, but also that like yeah, how do I give time for the thing to emerge, you know, whatever that thing is?
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah. I'm not sure I believe that there's such a thing as writer's block. I think like I mean I'm I don't want to…
Ethan Sawyer: Go on, just keep going.
Mignon Fogarty: I don't want to like tell people their experiences aren't valid.
Ethan Sawyer: Keep going.
Mignon Fogarty: But for me at least, like there's no for me there's not so much writer's block as there is just like I have to force myself to start. There's that like problem of starting, and then if you, if I make myself start…
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah.
Mignon Fogarty: Then it goes. But I can feel that resistance to starting for a very long time, and I can clean my bathroom, and weed my yard, and you know, but I have to stop doing those things and actually go write. And if I do go write, like it goes, it works.
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, totally. I used, and this is for students who maybe have ADHD like me, I used something called the Tomato One timer, which is like working in Pomodoros. Have you heard of that?
Mignon Fogarty: I've heard of that, I haven't used it, but I've heard of it, yeah.
Ethan Sawyer: Oh, it’s awesome.
Mignon Fogarty: Well, tell the audience what it is?
Ethan Sawyer: Yeah, it's basically a timer that you set and it, you know, a lot of people work in 25-minute chunks. But I'll sometimes do this with students who are like blocked, I'll be like, "All right..." They're like, "I just can't get started." I'm like, "Okay, can you give me 10 minutes?" And usually people are like, "Yeah, I can give you 10 minutes." And so I'll just be like, "Download this timer, it's free, and you can find a bunch of different versions of it, but you set a timer for 10 minutes and just write for 10 minutes." And oftentimes, like you're saying, just getting the thing going, you're like, "Okay, I could do another 10 minutes," and then the thing starts to kick. But I think it sometimes feels really overwhelming to be like, "Oh, my gosh, I have to like write my essay," or "I have to like finish the project." And if you can kind of chunk it down into not just time-wise, but also go like, "Okay, rather than be like, 'I'm going to write the essay,' go, 'Okay, what is the small chunk of this?' For instance, I'm going to spend 10 minutes like working on the outline." And you can get really specific with the part of it that you're like a yes to. That's what I, and I think it's just like shrinking the size of the task that really helps.
Mignon Fogarty: Yeah, and having deadlines.
Ethan Sawyer: And having deadlines.
Mignon Fogarty: I imagine when kids work with you, they have the deadline of meeting with you, and that's probably a big help just there.
Ethan Sawyer: I mean, the best part of my job is that there's this deadline, and there's this incentive to do personal growth work. You know, I think if I asked a 16-year-old, be like, "Hey, would you be down to sit with me and like tell me about your core values?" they'd be like, "Um, no!" But if I'm like, "Yo, this is going to actually help you figure out more about who you are so that you might have a better chance of expressing yourself to colleges and universities, and it might raise your chances," then it's like, "Okay." And so it sort of presents in this particular way, but suddenly they're having realizations, was like, "Oh, maybe I guess I am a leader." And that to me is like, you know, why I do this work.
Mignon Fogarty: That sounds wonderful. Ethan Sawyer, well, thank you so much. How do you want people to find you?
Ethan Sawyer: I mean, collegeessayguy.com. Basically, if you Google, if anybody's still Googling these days, anything related to college admissions and then type in College Essay Guy, you'll find a YouTube video, a podcast, a blog, or a whole bunch of other things.
Mignon Fogarty: Wonderful. Well, I think you have just fabulous advice. And in the bonus segment for our Grammarpaloozians, we're going to go through a writing exercise that Ethan does with students, so you can really get a sense of like the nitty-gritty of what it is. So if you're a Patreon subscriber, one of our Grammarpaloozians, look for that in your feed. For everyone else, that's it. Thanks for listening, and Ethan, thank you so much for being here.
Ethan Sawyer: Thank you so much. It's so good to see you, Mignon. I really appreciate you.