The Burning

What are you burning to tell the world?



The professor writes this on the board and turns to us, eyes alight. He’s encouraging the people who’ve volunteered today to remind students of this as they work on their college application essays. I’m one of those volunteers, a little nervous, worried that I won’t be able to really help the group of seniors from Cristo Rey Brooklyn High School that I’ve committed to tutoring for the next two days. It’s not that I don’t think these kids have stories—I know they do. My husband, a teacher at this school, comes home and tells them to me. These are kids who live in the inner city, who’ve had struggles and seen more than their fair share of challenges. They have some of the best raw material for a story that you could imagine. But I was worried I wouldn’t know how to draw out the story that would make a college admissions panel say yes, we want this kid? I can barely remember my college essay, just the fact that I started it with a quote from Hamlet. I’m not qualified to do this: I’m a novelist, not a memoirist or college guidance counselor. How was I going to help these kids craft the most important essay of their lives? I didn’t want to be the one who let them down. But my husband reminded me that these essays are personal stories, which, last time he checked are still stories.…