Thanks, Ms. H. I've gone through and made just about all the revisions you suggested, and then found a bunch more things that should be taken out based on RL and John's comments. I think i've gotten the beginning part down to reasonable length now, so that it doesn't become the whole focus of the essay. (I think I'm going to leave in the part about women in science, because just about every math department web page has a huge "WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE APPLICATIONS FROM WOMEN AND MINORITIES" message, and a few of my professors have said that being female will give me an edge. One of the people I'm sending the next draft of this to is a friend of the family who's a professor at UVA, so I'll ask him what he thinks I should do with that.)

Y'know what? I think I can get the whole opening thing down to about four sentences, which would make it more of an "opening" and less of a "thing that's taking over the entire essay," and then I'll have a bunch of room to get in more specific stuff about what I've done and why I like Berkeley.

That sounds excellent to me.

I think Rebecca and I agree. But we always agree, right?

Except about schools and trannies, yes.

Except about schools and trannies, yes.

That's it. We disagree only about groups of fish and radios.

Want to launch AIM?

Wouldn't you rather call? I just sent you an email. Let me know and I'll get offline.

Oh the archness. Do people hate us for doing this?

I wasn't smart enough to understand your email, with the harry potter and the timezones and the too-much-coffee, not-enough-sleep.

I have to go to the shops. Give me 20 minutes.

Thanks for the help, everyone. I'm really terrible at these application essays. College was easy, because most of them were just "describe a significant event in your life" or something, and I could just revise things I'd already written for writing classes, but these are much harder. I'm working on rewriting now.

I don't think you're terrible at all, Hil. It read well, but it needs revision, that's all, and a fresh eye.

It's not being able to write that makes great writers, it's being able to re-write.

It's not being able to write that makes great writers, it's being able to re-write.

Worth repeating here, and I'm going to put it in COMM too. My non-casual writing took a great leap forward when I learned how to do this, the most valuable thing I learned from workshopping other people's work.

Glad you agree, 'Dosia.

I suppose it is just possible that somewhere there's a writer who doesn't revise much, who produces a book where the first draft and the published draft are only a few words different, but that's either not a very careful writer or a freak of nature.

People will also tell you to let a piece of writing "cool off" in a drawer for a period of time before you go back to it. The longer the piece, the more cooling off it needs.

And there's an Australian author who writes like this: she does the first draft on computer, then she prints it out, then she deletes the files from the computer and forces herself to re-write from the printout, because that way she forces the discipline of reconsidering every sentence, every word, on herself.