The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2020 59 Time is now running short before vacation. Rachel crafts a rough draft in a couple days’ time, then hones it over two more days. Finally, she gets some feedback from a trusted family member. (Having too many editors can get con- fusing and dilute the writer’s voice.) In about 10 days, Rachel is done with her main essay. Because she was enthusiastic about the topic and created a structure before starting to write, it wasn’t as difficult as she’d anticipated. Back from R&R with Two Weeks to Go After returning from vacation, Rachel finds herself jet-lagged, distracted by friends and uninspired. Finally, she checks the Common App to make sure supplemental essay prompts have not changed, then gets to work. She plans to write each morning and see her friends in the afternoon only if she has made real progress on her essays that day. This is easier said than done. By three days before the start of school, she’s still behind. She might save Michi- gan’s application for later … She now has a short draft of the “Why This College?” essay for Barnard and a Community essay for UVA; if she has time, she’ll tweak them later for Michigan. She doesn’t even start the basketball essay for Michigan now. But she does complete very rough drafts of the Catch-22 essays for UVA and George Mason. Now school is starting, and she hasn’t even begun the unique essay for William & Mary or the conversation with a historical woman for Barnard. She considers dropping her application to Barnard but has a flash of inspiration during a study hall, envisioning herself sitting at a Jerusalem café asking Golda Meir questions about the call of leader- ship. Rachel hates the William & Mary prompt about what makes her unique, but the college is one of her top choices. She procrastinates for another week, knowing the application isn’t really due until January. But she’s mighty tired of the college application process and realizes she wants it to be over. Reread- ing the prompt, she notices W&M’s encouragement to “make us laugh.”