Should You Talk About Orientation or Gender Identities
by Albert L.
In honor of Pride month, I wanted to discuss a little about how identities shape who we are and whether those topics should be chosen for your college essays. With the rights of many groups being attacked and the heated political discourse that often touches these subjects, students and parents often worry about whether stories about orientation or gender identities should be written about.
The answer is complex, as is with identity in general. You should never rule out these topics as most educational institutions are quite open and actually seek a diverse student body. But automatically jumping to write about an identity thinking you can gain diversity points can unintentionally come across shallow or generic if not executed properly. And the college essay shouldn’t be a place where you feel compelled to write about a journey that is still unresolved.
How we define who we are is often multifaceted. Some students will have a very strong sense of who they are, others will have only loose connections that can sometimes even border on indifference.
I worked with a nonbinary student that insisted there was nothing that could be mined from that experience. To them, that part of themselves was almost incidental and boring.
They ended up writing about being a dungeon master (someone who sets up story details and leads the adventure) for their friends in Dungeons & Dragons. Although they indirectly wrote about being able to try on different identities without being constrained by rules, highlighting play for community as a means to discover, while using the backdrop of mysterious taverns and magic, was far more interesting.
Talking with an essay mentor to truly flesh out the importance of your experiences in a safe space without judgment can really help you crystallize if these topics are worth going into. And sometimes those essays absolutely do work because of how personal they are. But they also might flop because what might have been a novel story about the harrowing struggles of coming out a decade ago, might not have the same kick today in a more accepting world.
Here at IvyBoost, we want to emphasize that even if you opt out of writing about these topics in your college essays (for whatever reason), that doesn’t take away or diminish the wonderful diversity of experiences and identities that inform who you are and the acceptance that our students deserve.
After all, a narwhal might seem a little odd being the unicorn of the sea, but that doesn’t make them any less special.