Thursdays are for thinking...

So, a good friend of mine became recently smitten with a German theoretical physicist. I cannot tell you all how stoked I am because...that means now she wants to learn GERMAN! HAHAHA! SOMEONE CARES! I mean, not that I've been suppressing an portion of my being or anything...anyway. In light of getting stoked for more old-worldage on the immediate horizon, it got me thinking a bit about how obnoxious I am to pretty much everyone I know if they get me talking too much about speaking German or whatever. So, instead of talking your ear off next time we meet, I thought I could just share this essay I wrote for my (successful, BOOYA) grad school application. "Write about a multicultural experience that has affected your professional life" OKAY.

They were wearing tight acid wash denim, fluorescent ski jackets, and had strange haircuts. It was nighttime and champagne was squirting everywhere, coating joyous heads and hands with sticky fizz. A celebration. I could not entirely comprehend the reason these people were so elated, but as I watched the artificially lit neon bodies in the inky cold night, embracing warmly and clamoring over a large, graffitied cement structure in the dark, I knew it must be something terribly important. My parents were also glued to the only television in our northwest Portland home. In 1989, I was six years old and the Berlin wall had finally shuddered under the weight of popular dissatisfaction and succumbed to history. It was the first time I ever saw, or thought about, Germans.

German felt familiar to me at first “Hallo!” in a seventh grade language sampler course. It gave me something to grip, a secret string leading me somewhere unknown. I held on, intrigued. My study of German slowly escalated through high school and college until the words were pouring out of my mouth and Berlin became my first adult, post-university home. Somehow, speaking German helped me logically formulate thoughts I could never name in vagabond, gooey English. German is crisp; it is exact. Even now, after two years living in America, a German word will still accidentally escape my lips. It seemingly rearranged my neurons for a more efficient, precise fit to my thought.

Like my language neurons bypassing their convoluted English predecessors, German culture has replaced old habits as well. It offered me rules and a routine for things I had not been taught in our diverse, anything-goes, moving at breakneck speed, workaholic country. It was in Germany that I learned punctuality, social responsibility, to relate quantities with numerical values instead of approximate analogies, to bring small gifts when first invited to a home, to look everyone in the eyes while toasting, the value of leisure time, and most importantly, that there is more than one method for successful, enjoyable human existence in this modern world. Little did I know in 1989, as I watched the wall crumble, that German language and culture would one day fill my own holes of American being.

P.S. Don't even think about using this for your application. No one will ever believe you.
P.P.S. No pun intended with that last sentence! HAHAHA. You know what I'm talking about. Yes, YOU.

How to Write a Decent Essay:

A not entirely comprehensive yet terribly informative guide
by Caitlin

First, consider your topic. I tend to free write first to dump all of the other garbage out of my brain and onto paper to allow myself a decent chance at distillation. Try to stay on topic, but more importantly, write. Just let the pen loop and twirl and scraggle across the paper until you’re exhausted. Now take a break.



Come back to what you’ve written a little later and give it a once over. What is your subconscious telling you? Generally, you will be able to determine your key points during this reading. If you are lucky and/or advanced, your thesis statement will become apparent too. If not, list your most important ideas concisely and look for the common thread. Start organizing.



To arrange your musings in a clear, logical manner easily digested by other human beings, create an outline. The hardest parts for me are a clever introduction and a solid conclusion, so I save those as a potential flesh suit waiting as an undetermined form in imagination land. As soon as the bones are there, you’ll know what type of trappings to design. Now that you’re not freaking out about an ingenious way to start your paper, organize everything else. Start with your thesis and block off a paragraph or two for each supporting statement necessary to illustrate it. As you mentally cut and paste bits of your brain dump into a coherent structure, you will also find it easy to clarify those bits. More pertinent supporting statements might even form! Don’t worry if you wonder “what am I actually trying to say here?” or “Is my thesis even true?” No big deal! You can modify your thesis statement at any time.



When your outline is more or less complete, you are relatively invincible. Now it’s time to write again! Pound it out on the computer. Necessary changes in sequence will reveal themselves as you support your points. Beware! Two hands working together as you type are a different connection to your brain than one hand with a pen, but don’t be afraid. Surprises might occur. They might be awesome! As soon as you have a satisfactory rough draft, make few notes about intros and conclusions, than print that biznass. You better get that thing proofread, yo! I suggest doing it yourself first, revising, and afterward enlisting the help of another.



Discuss your rough draft with an intelligent human being you trust to have good diction and sentence structure. Also keep in mind that this person should not be overly judgmental or a jerk. Why would you know anyone like that anyway? Whatever. Is your essay logical? Do they understand the point you are trying to make? Can they help you clarify or rearrange anything for a better fit? Did you vary your sentence structure and choose your words wisely? If you misspelled anything or made grammatical errors, now is the time to find out.



After your thorough proofread, you are ready to clean up your essay bones and let your genius shine. Get witty wit it. Use puns, shock factors, or anecdotes. Make your introduction and conclusion the stem and the dot of the exclamation point that should follow your thesis statement. Print that biz-nasty one more time and look it up and down. Repeat buddy proofread if desired. Golden? 

Turn that bad boy/girl in. And make sure your name is on it.