The Rise of the "Trauma Essay" in College Applications | Tina Yong | TED

There's a story of mine that I've told about a million different times,

and it goes a little something like this.

When I was 10, my family and I packed up our entire lives into large suitcases

and dragged them across the Pacific to a foreign land called Canada.

I was put in a school where I was the only Asian kid in my grade,

and I got teased for my broken English, Asian features

and funny smelling ethnic lunches.

The racism was a real doozy.

But don't feel bad.

Through the magical healing powers of extracurricular activities

and pure perseverance,

I stand before you today, a new woman:

healthy, healed and extremely employable.

You wouldn't even be able to tell from just looking at me

that I was once the weird little immigrant girl

who begged her mom to pack PB&J sandwiches

so she wouldn't have to eat lunch alone in the bathroom.

This is a story that I’ve told in academic essays, job interviews

and even in the very application that got me into this fine university.

It's also a story that, despite all of its truth,

I've come to hate.

Now this is a story that I don't have copyright claim over.

It's one that continues to be regurgitated by immigrant kids

all across the country

to be served on a silver platter to prestigious universities

who chew these stories and spit out acceptance letters in return.

The contents of the story may change.

Instead of a difficult immigration experience,

it might be the death of a loved one, a chronic illness or a racist encounter.

But what remains constant is the moral:

A bad thing happened to me, but it made me a good person.

This is part of a larger phenomenon that I'm here to talk about today.

The overwhelming pressure being put on high school students

to write about their deepest traumas in their college applications

with the hopes that they seem resilient and interesting enough to be given a spot.

I believe that these are not only bad metrics

by which to evaluate applicants,

but also incredibly harmful to the storyteller themselves

and risks reinforcing existing inequities in higher education.

There's also pressure that's being amplified

by admissions counselors themselves

who play a huge role in influencing what applicants decide to write about.

Take, for example, this tip from the MIT admissions blog,

where the author compares two different introductions for a potential essay.

The first one reads:

"I'm honored to apply for the Master of Library Science program

at the University of Okoboji.

For as long as I can remember, I've had a love affair with books.

Since I was 11, I've wanted to be a librarian."

The second introduction reads:

"When I was 11,

my great aunt Gretchen passed away

and left me something that changed my life:

a library of about 5000 books.

Some of my best days were spent arranging and reading her books.

Since then, I've wanted to become a librarian."

The author notes that the second introduction

is much more striking and leaves a much better impression.

Consider another tip from collegeessayguy.com,

where he advises students to “get personal.”

He says, "Weirdly, including painful memories

and what you learned from them

usually helps a personal statement

meet the goals of a college application essay.

You come off as humble, accessible, likable and mature.”

Confessions from admissions officers themselves can also be telling.

Aya Waller-Bey, a former admissions officer

from Georgetown University,

said in a "Forbes" article that,

"Within months on the job, I saw how the personal statements

of Black and other racially minoritized students

differed from those of white applicants.

Black students highlighted resilience through stories of survival,

while their counterparts wrote casual essays about service abroad

and sporting championships.

Black students shared their pain,

white students shared their passions.”

Now, lastly, and perhaps the least reliable source is my own life.

I remember feeling this way when I was applying to universities.

Like I had no other choice, no other experiences worthy of mentioning

and no other merit beyond the fact

that I had thrived despite what I had gone through.

I even remember worrying that my tale wouldn't be harrowing enough

after hearing from a counselor

that writing about immigration has become a bit of a cliche

because of how overused it is.

So what’s the universities’ role in all of this

and why are these stories even harmful to begin with?

Well, I believe that using your college application essay

to discuss your trauma

actually doesn't help you process it.

And there are a couple different reasons why.

First, writing about a difficult experience is,

as you may have guessed, difficult.

Not only do you have to relive the event itself,

but you also have to actively suppress any negative emotions

that arise during the process.

That kind of emotional labor can be taxing for anybody,

but perhaps especially so

for these young applicants who haven't had enough time on this world

to process the terrible things that have happened to them.

For that space to be one in which they're confessing to a faceless stranger

who gets to make the most consequential decision

of their adolescent life

imposes an incredibly heavy psychological burden.

I mean, imagine if you walked into your therapy appointment

and your therapist tells you

that they're not going to respond to anything you tell them

except with a rejection or acceptance email sent months later.

And also that whatever you tell them

will determine the trajectory of your entire academic and professional career.

Hard to imagine that being therapeutic.

Secondly, the trauma essay makes one assumption

that is extremely problematic.

It's not always the learning opportunity

through which you can gain more confidence or develop better time management skills.

Sometimes it's just a sucky thing that really sucks.

And asking students to prove how they turn their pain into progress

ignores this truth and falls prey to the toxic positivity narrative

that everything happens for a reason,

ignoring the very valid resentment and anger that many victims still feel.

Lastly, the things we write aren't just informed by our experiences,

they shape how we view those experiences as well.

And if we're writing about our trauma to prove to an admissions officer

that we are worthy of a decent education,

then it becomes necessary to sanitize our pain,

to make it marketable and strategic,

to scrub away all the suffering,

so all that's left is what will fit

into the narrow margins of what is palatable.

And this is what I see as being the fundamental contradiction

at the heart of the trauma essay.

It seems to give the writer free reign on vulnerability,

but actually leaves them very little room to be vulnerable.

Your story has to be just sad enough that it gains sympathy,

but not so sad that it makes you seem beyond help.

Just critical enough to inspire change,

but not so much that it actually criticizes systemic structures.

Just honest enough to seem real,

but not so unfiltered that it creates discomfort.

The protagonist also overcomes whatever struggle they're facing

by the end of the 500 word count,

instilling the reader with a sense of optimism

that despite our deeply unequal society,

it is possible to rise through the ranks and overcome all the “-isms.”

This, of course, is not the reality of our world today.

And for me, this looked like settling

for the familiar story of the stinky lunch,

one that's been told so many times that it's devoid of any real meaning,

instead of talking

about the ongoing social and political disenfranchisement of immigrants,

the permanent loss of cultural identity that I suffered,

or the sense of disbelonging that still haunts me

every time I make a grammar mistake or someone mispronounces my name.

These are all struggles that never really go away,

but are carefully tucked away in my essay

because they don't fit the linear narrative

that is being constructed.

But how are universities to blame for all of this?

I mean, they never explicitly asked students

to trauma-dump in their essays,

and many admissions experts have actually come out

and discouraged discussing explicit trauma in essays.

However, I still don't think that universities are blameless.

The reason why the trauma essay is so ubiquitous

is because it seems to be working.

Anne Trubek, who helped low-income high school students at Oberlin College

write their essays,

expresses the ethical dilemma that she faces.

"By pushing students to reveal their horror stories,

I risk taking away their dignity,

but by not pushing, I could be hindering their chances

of getting into their dream school."

Whether trauma essays and acceptance letters

are actually causally correlated

is impossible to tell from the outside.

So this could all just be speculation and myth.

But in failing to resolutely clear up these speculations and myths

about whether trauma essays are rewarded or discouraged,

universities are indirectly enabling the rise of the trauma essay

and all of its harmful implications.

So what are they to do about all of this?

Well, first of all, I think that this is a problem that goes much deeper

than individual universities,

and even perhaps the institution of higher education itself.

It's rooted in the cultural obsession with appropriating trauma

and making it consumable,

as well as the systemic tendency

to tokenize oppressed people and their experiences.

But there are still things

that universities can do to make things better.

First, they can be more transparent about their admissions guidelines.

If it's really true that they don't want to reward trauma storytelling

just for the sake of it,

then they should be more forthcoming about this expectation.

They could also restructure their prompts

to avoid putting pressure on students

to talk about past hardships and adversities

and instead refocus prompts

to ask students about their goals for the future

and their academic interests.

Secondly, admissions counselors should be trauma-informed

and trained in working with BIPOC folk.

As the unofficial gatekeepers

to the secrets of getting into your dream college,

they should wield their power responsibly

and not pressure students to talk about traumatic experiences

that they're not yet ready to talk about.

Lastly -- and this one's for anyone who's actually applying

to a postsecondary institution sometime soon --

remember that you are more than the bad things that happened to you.

I know that when it seems like every other classmate of yours

is writing an essay that could be adapted for an HBO original drama,

that you may feel like your experiences are not worth talking about.

But I promise that they are.

You just have to find your voice and use it.

Now as much as I don't want to live

that nail-bitingly stressful time of my life ever again,

I can't help but wonder:

what would I have written about

if I got the chance to apply to UBC again?

This time absent the pressure

to strategically use my immigrant background

to gain sympathy points.

Maybe I would have written about how I overcame my fear of public speaking

and became comfortable with being the loudest voice in the room.

Or I could have written about watching trashy reality television

is what first sparked my interest in political science.

Or maybe I still would have written about my immigrant story

because that was a big part of my life journey

and still impacts me to this day.

But I would have done it on my own terms.

Instead of being written as a one-dimensional,

trauma-turned-triumph trauma drama,

I would have been able to tell a story that actually reflects who I am today

and acknowledge the fact that my journey is ongoing

and it doesn't begin or end with my racial identity.

This is the kind of ownership

that I wish for everyone to one day have over their story.

And now it's up for universities to decide whether they get to tell it.

Thank you.