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I’m a teenager; I don’t want to talk about myself Catherine Artist on helping students to gain confidence and celebrate their achievements Teenagers are often described by the media as narcissistic and self-obsessed. They post their likes and dislikes umpteen times a day, moan about how adults just don’t understand them, and think that life is just so unfair to them. If this perception is accurate, why is it such a challenge to get these teenagers to write their personal statements or college essays for university applications? After all, the subject of the writing is … well … themselves! As is so often the case with stereotypes, this generalised view about teenagers does not reflect the reality. Some of my students refuse to rave about their achievements – culturally for them, it is considered conceited to heap praises upon oneself. Others humbly confess that they cannot think of anything worthy to write about. It seems that even if our students constantly enthuse over their new hairdo, or share their teenage angst on Facebook or Twitter, that does not mean that writing about their amazing work ethic, lifelong fascination with a specific field Winter
Summer |
| 2018
or tenacity in overcoming obstacles comes easily. In fact, for my International Baccalaureate Diploma English B class, this has proved to be almost impossible. Legally Blonde The idea struck me while I was watching a re-run of Legally Blonde and shaking my head in disbelief over Reese Witherspoon’s videotaped application essay to Harvard Law School. Some may argue that the movie is inappropriate as a classroom resource, but I thought it was perfect – for both good and bad. When I showed the segment of the video résumé to my class, the responses were more than I could have hoped for. Some were livid with the way in which women were objectified, while others roared with laughter at the tongue-in-cheek application. The video prompted an intellectual discussion of gender stereotypes and media misrepresentation. Not a single student remained unaffected. Next I asked the class, if they were the deans of Harvard,
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