My Overnight College Essay Service

Examiner column for December 24.

   

    It may not be a parent’s worst nightmare, but it was a bad moment. My son was applying to colleges and not consulting his English-teacher mother before mailing off his essays.

    When he did show me one just before it was due—too late for any revisions--I was horrified. It had typos and was spindled and mutilated in ways I was sure destined him for rejection.

    “What’s a mother to do?” crossed my mind, but he snatched the forms away from me and hurried out to make the postmark deadline. I only saw the typos; in my mind the fact that his idiosyncratic, irrepressible spirit shone through, despite errors, was secondary.

    College admission committees must have children of their own. How else to explain that he was admitted to most of the schools that received his far-from-perfect applications? Then and there I vowed that, as a teacher, I would try to give students an impartial, quick, editorial glance before they lick the stamp and mail their essays.

    And so my 24-hour folder was born. It sits on my desk, and whatever students put in the folder is returned, edited, within 24 hours. Students can put in an essay January 14 that needs to be postmarked the 15th and be certain no typos or other errors will remain.

    I never rewrite the essays; it’s important that a student’s own voice shines through—whether boring or scintillating. All I guarantee is that they won’t embarrass themselves by mailing off something sloppy.

    Thousands of essays have passed through the 24-hour folder. Some students submit 6 essays three times each, and others agonize over seven versions of a single essay. My vow is to give them my honest opinion and a few editorial suggestions.

    When parents hear about this service, they are so grateful their child has someone competent to proofread those important applications. They know for certain—just as I did—that few children want to share these essays with their parents.

    Students always tell other students about the 24-hour folder and strangers sometimes poke their heads into my class to ask if I can look at their essays. All English teachers are happy to read student essays, but no one else guarantees “Overnight Delivery.” It’s just FedEx and me.

    The only casualty is that during the fall I rarely get papers corrected during the day. Every time I look, five or ten new college essays appear.

    Mostly I am happy to be useful, but occasionally I am rewarded with a transcendent submission. Katie Goins’ essay appeared last week and begins:

    “I have always loved words. I love the ways they can be arranged in a poem, stacked tight or spread out. They can be spoken, or sung, or simply sit silently on a page.”

    She concludes: “I sit behind my computer screen, praying that the words I have long depended on don’t fail me now. I hope they find favor with some far away reader who loves words as much as I do. I hit spell check one last time, and imagine what my future will bring. After all, words can do anything.”

    I didn’t change a thing.