Questioning My Love of Writing...Especially in the Context of a Job

The American college application is quite unique. Whereas one would expect that a "good" student is defined by good grades, both over years of classwork and one-off exams, the American system demands a student to be much more. So students spend years building up a list of activities outside the classroom. From excelling in the competitive world of music, sports, and academia to the more idiosyncratic leadership initiatives to show that one can change the world, one small impact at a time, high school students should be occupied even when they are not buried in books.

However, just doing these activities outside the classroom is not enough. After all, for universities looking for future leaders of tomorrow, spending time and energy on certain initiatives should not simply be about the personal glory of winning competitions, acquiring new talents, and ultimately getting into top universities. The activities should have an underlying rationale often not self-evident in the descriptions of actions taken and results achieved. So the universities ask for plenty of writing assignments to explain the person, motivations, and goals behind the glittering list of accomplishments.

Piecing these facts into a coherent narrative is a headache for the student, and even more so for the admissions advisors hired to help. Many students are so inundated with expectations of their parents, end up simply executing activities that are demanding for the sake of being demanding. In the process, they stopped thinking about the activities' purpose other than being something "good for college applications." Advisors, needing the stories to help craft narratives, simply cannot work with such a "goal-oriented" way of thinking.

The result is a daily overconsumption of brainpower for creativity that sometimes, to be blunt, can deviate a bit from the truth. Yes, many students can rattle off a list of stories about resolving conflicts in teamwork, being flexible in the face of difficulties, and contributing to communities, all worthy skills to have in college and life. But many struggle to define their own thinking, philosophy, and even personalities concerning the insights and learnings from those little stories. Advisors sometimes need to plug in the gap, in crisp and concise writing.

A good writer is a reflective one, but one can only do so much reflecting in one day. Hearing stories of other people all day and trying to turn them into the mental and emotional foundation of a real person means that there is little time for the writer to reflect on who they are themselves. After hours of crafting other people's personal stories, even the best writers would face fatigue and writer's block when sitting down to craft their own stories. A professional ghostwriter, at the end of the working day, cannot get to be anything more than a ghostwriter.

That is the sentiment that I am currently feeling as I struggle to type up these words. The past few weeks have been brutal ones at work. With US application deadlines coming up in a few days, masses of essays, many rushed and requiring thorough polishing, have arrived in my inbox. Sometimes the essay reading does not stop from 6am to past 10pm, with many requiring deep thoughts on how to fundamentally rethink the person behind the words, rather than a perfunctory grammar check. Even while sitting in one place, almost stationary, for all these hours, I sometimes feel utterly exhausted.

That exhaustion is not for the lack of physical energy, but the sheer stoppage of brainwaves. Words no longer flow smoothly even though I pride myself in being able to immediately turn thoughts into words on paper once the fingers hit the keyboard. The congruence of what is thought and written in the morning gives way to a mental jumble by the end of the day. It is not a great condition for those who find joy in putting thoughts on paper. When reflective writing for others becomes a full-time job, then writing in reflection is too painful to be a hobby.

As it often does in my varied career across my jobs and countries, the situation calls into question exactly how much I can separate what I love from what I do for a living. If critical thinking in itself is a skill that can help pay bills, then thinking, no matter how normally enjoyable, becomes a chore outside work. It is no wonder that many end up losing their initial professional passion in the career self-implosions that we term the midlife crisis. The professional writer in me is certainly being disgusted by the suboptimal writing that is being thrown on this page.