The Foreign Service Journal, June 2020

60 JUNE 2020 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT Rachel’s sense of humor is her signa- ture; like her favorite character Yossar- ian, she sees absurdity in everything. Could she tweak some of her Catch-22 essay to write about humor under pres- sure? She’d have to use examples that show this trait, rather than simply insist she’s funny, which isn’t effective. She casts her mind back to 2016, After returning from vacation, Rachel plans to write each morning and see her friends in the afternoon only if she has made real progress on her essays that day. when her family ran out of toilet paper in a country with continual shortages, and how she and her sister giggled while gathering gingko leaves as a pos- sible substitute. She laughs about state- side cousins freaking out over bathtub centipedes, when she has experienced a botfly larva growing under her skin. Soon she has enough to construct an essay that shows a completely differ- ent side of her. She may even send this essay to any of her colleges that accept additional materials. In the end, Rachel doesn’t finish all her essays by the start of school. Remember that her list was ambitious, with quite a few supplementals, and her momentum was disrupted by vacation. As her schedule grows heavier, she ends up taking Michigan off her list. But here’s the main thing: she finishes most of her drafts by the end of September, then spends the next few weekends polishing them up. By mid-October, she’s ready to submit her college applications—and get on with her life. n