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

TL;DR

Immigrant students and others are feeling pressured to write trauma essays in their college applications, which can be harmful both psychologically and in reinforcing inequities in higher education.

Transcript

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 m... Read More

Key Insights

• 🧳 It is common for immigrant students to feel pressured to write about their traumas and difficult experiences in college applications.
• 🎭 Writing about trauma in college essays may not be therapeutic and can be emotionally taxing for young applicants.
• 💔 The trauma essay assumes that all traumas can be turned into learning experiences and may overlook valid feelings of anger and resentment.
• 📚 Admissions counselors often encourage personal and painful stories in college essays, favoring them over less dramatic narratives.
• 🖊️ The pressure to write about trauma leads applicants to sanitize their pain and fit it into a narrow, marketable narrative.
• 🎓 Universities indirectly enable the rise of trauma essays by not clearly addressing whether they are rewarded or discouraged.
• 🔍 Universities should be more transparent about admissions guidelines and restructure prompts to focus on students' goals and academic interests.
• 💪 Admissions counselors should be trauma-informed and not pressure students to discuss traumatic experiences prematurely.
• 🗣️ Applicants should remember that they are more than their traumas and have unique experiences and stories worth sharing.

Questions & Answers

Q: How do trauma essays in college applications impose a heavy psychological burden on students?

Writing about difficult experiences requires students to relive painful events and actively suppress negative emotions. This emotional labor is particularly challenging for young applicants who may not have fully processed their traumas. The added pressure of confessing to a faceless stranger, who holds the power to shape their future, can be overwhelming and burdensome.

Q: What is the problematic assumption made by trauma essays?

Trauma essays often assume that difficult experiences always lead to personal growth and resilience. This perpetuates the toxic positivity narrative and ignores the valid resentment and anger that victims may still feel. It disregards the fact that some things simply suck and cannot be turned into a learning opportunity or positive outcome.

Q: How do trauma essays shape how the writer views their own experiences?

The act of writing about trauma for college applications often requires students to sanitize their pain and make it marketable and strategic. In order to fit within the narrow margins of what is considered palatable, students must scrub away the suffering and present a story that is sympathetic but not too bleak. This leads to a contradiction where vulnerability is encouraged, but only within certain limits and constraints.

Q: Who bears responsibility for the prevalence of trauma essays in college applications?

While universities may not explicitly ask students to trauma-dump in their essays, they are not entirely blameless. The prevalence of trauma essays suggests that it has become an effective strategy for gaining acceptance. Universities should be more transparent about their expectations and restructure their prompts to focus on students' goals and interests instead of past hardships. Admissions counselors should also be trained in trauma-informed practices to avoid pressuring students into discussing traumatic experiences prematurely.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• The speaker shares their personal experience of being pressured to write a trauma essay about their immigration story for college applications.

• They argue that trauma essays do not help students process their difficult experiences and instead impose a heavy psychological burden.

• The speaker criticizes the narrow narrative expectations of trauma essays and urges universities to be more transparent and considerate in their admissions guidelines.