
Ghosted - To end a relationship by cutting off communication.Emo - Someone who is emotional or a drama queen.Curve - To reject someone romantically (related to "ghosting").CEO - To be the "CEO of" something is to excel at it.


AF - Stands for "as f**k," used to emphasize a statement (i.e.Get rid of your thesaurus, and let us really get to know you. Just don’t let formality, “overwriting,” or obsessively polishing your essays squeeze them completely dry of your voice, your playfulness, and your identity. (My colleague happens to love the word “azure.” He also points out that azure’s good friend “cerulean” is the name of a city in Pokémon-and you can’t go wrong with Pokémon.) It also doesn’t mean that specific words, including those mentioned in this blog, are off-limits. That doesn’t mean your writing can’t make use of literary techniques, or read lyrically, or show off a good grasp of vocabulary. Natural is the doorway to our understanding of you and our appreciation of your story. My words wouldn’t sound natural.Īnd when you’re trying to communicate something important about who you are with the reader of your application, you want your words to sound natural. If I came up and told you that I had just sauntered homewards beneath an azure sky, you would probably be concerned for me, or think I had just returned from a stint at an archaic school for conversation and manners. I have never once sauntered homewards beneath an azure sky. But the cadence of your words and the perspective you bring to the page should be genuinely you. In essays that you’ve worked hard to write, you might come out sounding funnier, or more curious, or just plain cooler than you do in a typical conversation with your friends. Sure, it can be a voice amplified by self-reflection. When it comes to college essays, we are trying to hear your voice. (Just humor me here and pretend that you do indeed own a print thesaurus that you keep in your desk drawer.) I say all of this so that you’ll take me seriously when I now tell you the following: As you prepare to write or finish writing your college essays, I want you to walk over to your desk, open your drawer, grab your thesaurus, and toss it out the nearest window.

It taught me about the importance of sound and the meaning created by subtle variations in diction. I credit the thesaurus, in part, with my love of writing and my eventual English degree. Who would call the sky “blue” when you could call it “azure”? Blue was boring! I sauntered homewards beneath an azure sky. Watch a new, fancier sentence take shape: Then, hover your cursor above each of those words, right click for “thesaurus,” and a list unfolds. Type a sentence into Word-just any normal sentence, in the way that you would normally speak. But my favorite activity-what brought me back time and time again-was thesaurusing. I used it to write down my angsty thoughts, sure, and to see what sorts of illustrations ClipArt had to offer me. During the brief window of time each day when this clunky desktop computer belonged to me and my whims, I was devoted to Microsoft Word. A funny thing happened when my family got our first computer in the early 2000s.
