How To Submit


Whoever you are, please consider submitting.

If you were a hotshot writer in high school, consider submitting. If you were one of those people who lacked confidence in your writing but Mr. Harrington or Ms. O or Mr. D’Onofrio kept pushing you, please consider submitting.  If you keep "scribbled secret notebooks and wild typewritten pages for yr own joy" like Jack Kerouac (pictured at left), please consider submitting.  If you are an adult with kids and a mortgage for whom high school is a distant memory, please consider submitting.  If you are a recent high school graduate and are feeling like a prisoner recently released from incarceration, please consider submitting.  If high school was one disaster after another, please consider submitting.  If high school was smooth sailing beginning to end, please consider submitting.  If you are a poet… or a mathematician … or a filmmaker … or a chiropractor … or a professional writer … or a teacher … or an artist …, please consider submitting.

Here are some categories for posts:

-  Letter to my 16-year-old self
-  Do Over:  If I could go through high school again…
-  My Real College Essay (What you would have written if you were being completely honest)
-  Top Ten Lists (high school related; for example, I might create a top ten list about how to survive four years of math class).
-  The book/movie/TV show that changed my life
-  What I know now that I wish I had known then
-  College application advice not found in the guidebooks (e.g., dealing with nervous parents, nosy peers, etc.)

Your idea might not fit into one of these categories -- which is perfectly fine.  As long as your post is geared toward high school in retrospect, it is probably OK.  The idea is for you to communicate directly with teenage readers with an eye toward revealing the truths about surviving high school that most adults (me, included) probably can't or won't tell you.

A few notes:
-  Swearing is OK (though not gratuitous)
-  This is not a Parker-sponsored blog
-  You should be shooting for somewhere around 650 words, the length of a college essay (though it’s OK if it’s under or over)

To submit:  start with an email to me.  650words@gmail.com.  Pitch me your idea and we’ll figure out when to post it.  Looking forward to hearing from you!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The formidable force of change ...

Image
Meghan Babla graduated in 2013. I was lucky enough to have her in two classes, AP Language and Composition and Honors English 12.  I say ‘lucky’ because she was a top-drawer student with a great attitude who got the absolute most out of her Parker education. Still, though, no amount of academic preparation prepares you for how to deal with the changes that will inevitably occur in your young-adult life. There are some people whose lives are defined by change. At a young age, they experience turmoil in their family lives, changes in living conditions, unspeakable tragedies. Their lives are so filled with turbulence that it becomes the expectation. Change barely fazes them. Meghan was just the opposite. Her high school experience was characterized by stability, consistency, sameness, happy routine. She was a top student, but when she trotted off to Berkeley (big change #1) she really hadn’t ventured much beyond what some call the Parker Bubble. After studying political scienc
Read more

My honest college essay...

Image
Emma Moore graduated in 2016. She was a stellar student in two of my classes -- AP Language and Honors English 12-- as well as a champion hiker in my interim class. The photograph below was taken after a long hike in the Laguna Mountains. Like so many students, Emma gave off the impression that everything was just great all of the time. Smiling and solicitous, she was one of our Superkids -- the ones who can stay up half the night doing homework, show up for school the next day with a giant Starbucks and anchor the class discussion with buzzing energy and passion, and then go post a respectable time in the cross country meet after school. And then get up early the next day and do it all again. But as is so often the case, the Superkid exterior was masking struggle and pain. Emma writes about that here, in a post that takes on the form of a "real" college essay -- how she would have used her 650 words if she had been telling the truth. If Emma was a little lost in high
Read more

Escaping the prison of perfection ...

Image
Natalie Schmidt graduated from high school in 2015. I didn’t teach her, but I knew her from her reputation around campus as one of the golden children who did everything right. She earned A’s in all her classes, impressed her teachers and coaches with her endlessly positive attitude, and seemed to have a perpetual smile plastered on her face. I didn’t know Natalie well, but I have known many like her. And she is certainly not the first golden child who experienced some rough waters when she left high school. When the external validations disappear, when quite suddenly there isn’t a test to ace, an award to win, or a teacher to impress, it can leave a golden child drifting and uncertain. When Esther Greenwood, the surrogate character for Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar, found herself in the same situation, she said she felt like “a racehorse without racetracks.” Because when you have placed much of your self-worth on the approval of others, there may be a moment coming w
Read more