<p>I’ll bet mudge’s D’s essays were exquisite. She learned from the master.</p>
<p>I just discovered this thread and laughed so hard I cried. Fortunately I am at home alone. :)</p>
<p>My parents both grew up on farms and we make a point of taking the kids to see “the old home place” now and then. Most kids today have never even been in a barn, let alone milked a cow or hoed a field.</p>
<p>This is my favorite part:</p>
<p>"She’d come down to the cabin and whine when one of the idiots got their head caught in the fence again . (Picture the swept back horns on a goat’s head. They go through the fence easy but like a fish hook get caught on the return trip. Duh. And I’m pretty dang sure it was a goat who first said “the grass is always greener…”.) </p>
<p>Cur painted a great picture in this paragraph. It is a classic example of why I love to read. To me, reading is like panning for gold. One must sift a lot of dirt to find that golden nugget…but is it ever satisfying when the shinny bauble shows itself. Thanks for sharing your love of your animals… and your family… and your life… your voice is real to me…</p>
<p>Thanks again, folks. I do appreciate your comments. </p>
<p>But I can imagine the professional writers on the board cringing at some of the praise. To them and to everybody, I like to write informally. I always have. It comes easy to me. But when I have been tasked to write in a formal manner - not so good. So I am going to come clean -</p>
<p>mpm almost spoiled my fun by outing me earlier when she said something like - “You have a gift for the spoken word…” We have a bingo. What mpm picked up on was that we were “just talking”. Go back and read a section. It’s not “writing”. Then if that wasn’t enough, someone else asked me "have you ever thought about doing an oral story-telling (like an oral history) ? ". Busted. I’ve always said this site has some of the smartest folks I’ve ever been around.</p>
<p>I’ve always figured that there were about 100 lurkers just like me but they were unwilling to embarrass themselves trying to go toe to toe with the intellectual heavyweights we have here. Since I have no misconceptions about who I am and what I bring to our table it doesn’t bother me a whit. And being that I’m not afraid of any man and just a couple of women, I just talk with y’all and you think I’m “writing”. ;)</p>
<p>Turning this back to college admissions (so we can keep our spot in the big forum) , I used this idea to help D with her essays. To the long-timers, you have heard this before . Bear with me. </p>
<p>I had noticed a serious disconnect between her wonderfully expressive spoken words and her woefullly inadequate written words. I’m making this up but you’ll get the point : </p>
<p>D , all they are asking is why you want to go to school X? Do you want to go to school X? </p>
<p>“You know I do.”</p>
<p>Why? </p>
<p>"Because when I’m on campus I feel like I can do anything. I mean I love the fact that the campus is way smaller than the ranch. I can walk side to side in 5-10 minutes. But it’s what happens in those 5-10 minutes that is so exciting. Like I pass that professor we met when I was here over spring break and she remembered me and I got to tell her about the article I saw in Newsweek about research like her’s, only differrent in that she’s using yeast. She seemed real impressed I remembered what she working on. Who wouldn’t have? LOL. Said I could call her anytime to talk about it and if I ended up coming to ___________ maybe I could work in her lab. Wouldn’t that be great? And then that long-haired boy that opened for the Comedy Players skit troupe we saw? Well, he was sitting under a tree singing a pretty song I didn’t know so I stood there a minute after he was done (he wrote the song and it was so good) and asked if he was a music major and he said ‘No. International Studies and Business.’ I think that is so cool that you can’t tell anybody’s major by what they are doing at the time you see them. At ________ you can do anything you want to do. I really feel that and I haven’t felt that everywhere. "</p>
<p>O.K. Kid. Why don’t we get out the tape recorder and …</p>
<p>But Cur, very few people have the ability to “tell a story” as well as you do! So even if it’s just “talking”, it still is HARD to write it down and have the words come to life on a page, just as if you’re “just talking” . I couldn’t do it to save my life!</p>
<p>Sure, if we dissected and analyzed your work we’d find sentence fragments and run-ons…</p>
<p>Reading your prose is like listening to someone tell a story on the radio. Maybe Prairie Home Companion. The best thing would be to be able to <em>hear</em> it, but reading it works very very well.</p>
<p>And some of our greatest writers retained that folksy storytelling humor. Mark Twain, for one.</p>
<p>Y’know, it does help when you have a kid who will answer the “why college x” question with more than a “mumble, groan, whine, because, hmm, mumble, idunno” with eyes darting looking for nearest escape route.</p>
<p>My son currently has a favorite college. Why? Because they serve chocolate chip pancakes every other week. Mercifully, this college does not require an essay.</p>
<p>My oldest has never been strong in “writing” but he is smart…and I actually did spend time with him, at one point in his middle school career, where I had him talk/record his thoughts for his writing assignments. I used to think his mind raced ahead before he could finish his sentences, hence everything ran on and on. Paragraphs were one loooonnnggg sentence!</p>
<p>Ha…talking through an assignment never worked with my taciturn son. Now that he’s in college, he talks just fine. His writing is still only…okay. Brief, but accurate. Concise. Scientific.</p>
<p>Curm,
There was a cowboy poet on NPR for several years (Baxter Black?) who would regale the audience with stories of life on his ranch. There IS a place for your voice. It’s authentic. It needs to be heard. And I’d have no doubt you’d ride herd all over some Yankee editor in a high-rise cubicle who tried gussying up what you have to say! (I used to be an editor.)</p>
<p>Have you ever read some of E.B. White’s essays? They were magical…I love them even more than his children’s books.</p>
<p>P.S. DH had a summer associate job right after law school where the lawyers didn’t have computers (way back in the ancient 1980s…). They all used dictation machines. DH wasn’t too sure about this, and so I reminded him that he was a terrific speaker (more so than a writer at the time) and that this would be a great way to get this thoughts down. Worked like a charm. I’ve done the same thing for DS2, who struggled with writing disabilities when he was younger. He’d dictate then edit.</p>
<p>Sometimes I think that Curmudgeon could rewrite the pages of the local telephone directory with some personal commentary added in and it would be a best seller.</p>
<p>It’s all about the skill of the writer to engage the reader - even someone who has zero knowledge of, or interest in, ranching, goats, things Texan, truck mirrors, whatever, or even for that matter someone else’s daughter being delivered to college - cannot stop reading, eyes are riveted to the screen, and then obsessively checks over and over for a new post for new reading material… that’s a true gift.</p>
<p>ffscout , that’s hilarious. Sorry to laugh but still, that’s funny. I’d work those pancakes in. Edit: I just read it again. I get to “mercifully” and I start chuckling. Even did it when I was typing it just now. </p>
<p>To the rest of y’all - I give up. You whupped me.</p>
<p>CountingDown, I still use a dictaphone for 90% of my correspondence and pleadings. I’m stuck in the 80"s I guess. Staying alive, staying alive.</p>
<p>Actually, Saturday Night Fever was released in either the winter of '77 or the spring of '78, I think. How would I know? That was the year I graduated from college and I remember the TV show Dallas, Jimmy Cliff, and the Bee Gees as the soundtrack to that stage of life.</p>
<p>To bring a little bit of prim, annoying, accuracy to this thread.</p>
<p>And, just so we don’t get thrown into the cafe, the point here is very well taken for college seniors. Please, please, please write something that sounds like a teenager could have written it. A real teenager. And if you never sound like a teenager in real life, then write like the alien or the old lady or the whatever that you really are. Write your own observations. In your own words.</p>
<p>The adcom may not comb the site looking for posts the way we do for Cur but heck, he/she is less apt to toss your app into a pile with the gurgling noise that means I changed my mind I want to be a toll-booth worker…</p>
<p>Curm-</p>
<p>So glad to see D’s move-in day/days went soooooo smoothly! You know if it was cooler than 101 it would have been CHILLY!! And the mirror, what’s that for anyways???</p>
<p>Understand about the missing her part. Have 1 left, a senior in hs. The older 4 are back at their respective schools, as of 2 weeks ago. We went up to PPW at USNA 2 weeks ago and that good-bye was harder than the original drop-off. Kiddos were gone most of the summer, all had classes/internships and practice. Just have to take up the Boy’s stuff in a few days when he can move-in to his permanent dorm room instead of the team dorm.</p>
<p>And I must agree whole-heartedly with the rest of the gang, you bring humor and an obvious love and respect for your daughter to the forum that guided her search for the right college “fit”. It is my hope that anyone reading this thread will understand what a truly wonderful gift the college search and 4 ensuing years really is and what it can be.</p>
<p>So good to hear your voice again.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>
alu, I think we are saying the same thing. I went out partying with Javier and Billy June 4, 1975 and came home the next morning, July 22, 1980. WARNING:The actors portrayed in this post are professionals. Do not try these stunts at home.</p>
<p>counting–It was Baxter Black. I loved him!</p>
<p>And there was a black woman from I think Georgia. Her name will undoubtedly come to me as soon as I click “post.” If not, then sometime in the middle of the night…</p>
<p>And remember Kim Williams from Missoula, Montana? She was wonderful. Unfortunately, her career was cut short by cancer.</p>
<p>And we still have the Romanian poet who lives in New Orleans–or did–I think he left after Katrina. Ionescu or one of those typically Romanian names. Not Ceaucescu!</p>
<p>The above people have caused many a “driveway moment” at my house. Couldn’t get out of the car for listening!</p>
<p>Mommusic, you are perhaps thinking of Bailey White, although she’s … . .well, white, not black. A voice that sounds about 300 years old, although she’s maybe in her 50s.</p>
<p>The Roumanian poet is Andre Codrescu.</p>
<p>Can you tell I’m also an NPR junkie?</p>
<p>mooninmama – NPR junkies unite! You are right on the other commentators. Wasn’t Codrescu teaching at LSU pre-Katrina?</p>
<p>Curm – OK, now that does it. I want to hear you read your pleadings!
No wonder your D has such a unique voice – she has parents who not only have this wonderful gift, but who gave her the freedom to express hers, too.
(And if she goes into orthopedics or pediatrics, all that goat-wrasslin’ experience will sure come in handy…)</p>
<p>Are you going to Parents’ Weekend?! 
We need a sequel!</p>
<p>CountingDown]
Much to my surprise D expects us to be there at Parent’s weekend. </p>
<p>As to the other , I AM reading the pleadings from a set of forms, I just never like how they phrase things. I’m not (usually) dictating pleadings “freehand”. That would be quite spooky. I have two secretaries who work for me part-time. Two sisters in fact. One has been with me maybe 17 years. A lot of what I do is to say “I need a pleading like the Oscar petition but with that section on attorney’s fees that we used in Felix.” The dictaphone is for when the changes are more involved.</p>
<p>Bailey White fans: if you haven’t yet read
Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living
you’ve missed a treat!
(I’m pretty sure that’s the title!)</p>
<p>I love Andre. Another NPR junkie. Saturday night live came out in '77 - to my suprise since dh’s class used it as their reunion theme. (Class of ,79) I rather like Julie Zickefoose too.</p>