The Dying Art of Storytelling
These are some of my favorite weeks of the year for roadside foraging. I have a few local spots where I know daffodils bloom, the seeds likely having strayed from gardens and finding themselves elsewhere. With the honorable harvest in mind (a lesson I learned in Braiding Sweetgrass), I pick a small handful and leave the rest. For the week that follows, I find joy in the ephemeral yellow bouquet in a vase on my table.
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself,” is the infamous and bold first line of Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf. I read the novel for the first time in my AP English class during my senior year of high school, and completely fell in love with Woolf’s stream of consciousness prose. Two years later, I received a grant from Colorado College to fly to England to follow Virginia Woolf’s “hauntings” around London, and to visit her countryside home in the South Downs, where I stayed in a shephard’s hut to do some writing of my own. This is something I always try to implore to my students: college is full of opportunities. Apply for the grant! Go to the event. Take the class. You may find yourself waking up to a horse outside your window in a country across the Atlantic ocean.
Just this past week, I had the opportunity to go to the special collections library at Williams College to look at the first editions of several of Woolf’s works. Imagine my delight! To hold and behold the very same books that Virginia herself painstakingly set into a letterpress and bound, each one unique, ink smudged, gently wrapped in a dust jacket made by her sister, Vanessa, hours of labor and creative energy poured into a rectangle and within that, her story itself, now in my hands one hundred years later.
I started Uncommon Futures first and foremost as a storyteller. Although it seems like a dying practice, there is unequivocal power in the act of sharing who you are through words, song, or art. It is—beyond a doubt—my favorite part of working with our students. Every year, I witness the arc of self-reflection and translation onto page, the vulnerable, hilarious, profound, sage, whimsical, and illuminating depictions of self. It’s gritty work. Sometimes it feels like a means to an end (yes—our goal is to get you into college), but other times, it can feel more sacred. I have helped bring hundreds of college essays into the world at this point, not as the writer, but as the guide holding the lantern. We all need someone to see us so we can learn to see ourselves.
In the age of AI, I know our days of college essays are fleeting. They’re not gone yet, but they will be soon. When I can quiet my fear about our future, I have faith that we will just learn to tell stories in new ways.
To celebrate our seniors accepting their offers today and choosing where they’ll spend the next four years (you did it! you made it! unless you’re still on a waitlist!), you’ll find some of my favorite lines from their essays below. Consider it a bouquet, meant to bring a small moment of joy to your day.
A Bouquet of Favorite Essay Lines
“Before I knew it, I lived inside movies in Spanish, dreaming about dreaming in my father’s language.”
“I would walk out of the house greeted with a “Grüezi” by passersby, get on the SBB bus that was everyone’s mode of transit, and often run into people that had immigrated from all over the world.”
“I’ve always been around creativity and existential conversations, spending time with different kinds of people: architects, musicians, and Peruvian high priestesses.”
“I’d pictured myself as a teenage girl version of Bear Grylls: building palm-frond shelters, spearing fish, maybe taming a seagull.”
“The sun pounded on our sweltering faces as we trekked together, through pain and laughter, across mesas and wading through water.”
“I found belonging in ordinary exchanges: ordering scallion pancakes from the shopkeeper without the normal double-take, or chatting with a fruit seller about Indian versus Chinese mangos.”
“I’m now someone who digs one layer deeper and is willing to sit with a feeling of discomfort, like venturing through the mine shafts of the infamous Cerro Rico silver operation, to better understand the voices left out from history books.”
“In my religion, Zoroastrianism, there is a word Ushta; it’s the idea that true happiness comes from aligning with truth and goodness, not from seeking external approval.”
“Thoughts about how to combat food waste, how to end world hunger, and the immensity of my comparative privilege run through me as I work hours at the pantry until I’m sweating through my clothes.”
“Uniformity, in structures and one’s life, can be helpful, but what makes something (and someone) unique is finding a balance between this rigidity and these abnormalities.”
“From the one sustained blast of the Tekiah, to the three wailing cries of the Shevarim, to the nine alarm-like staccato notes of the Teruah, I find both a numerical and spiritually reflective element in each call.”
“Wherever my own steel-tracked journey takes me, I’ll be riding, hands up, smiling with the same ten-year-old joy that started it all.”
Thank you to all of our seniors and their beautiful writing. We truly honor the stories you’ve shared with us this year!
