Storytelling in Your College and Career Documents

Storytelling in Your College and Career Documents When we were kids, we all loved stories.   Well guess what?   That hasn’t changed!   I recently read the article Storytelling an Effective Training Method! and it sparked me to write this post. The fact is, we all love a good story.   Admissions committees love good stories.   Hiring managers love good stories.   Customers and clients love good stories.   Always remember:   the person you’re writing for is a human being!   How do you get another human being to read your document?   Spin a good yarn! If you’re applying to college, tell a story with a beginning, middle and end.   I had a client who wrote his college application essay about teaching his sister to ride a bike.   His first draft was all rosy about how great the experience was, and it did not have a compelling beginning, middle and end.   He felt lost in the writing, and the essay was boring. What ultimately made the story great was that he started at the beginning, when he was annoyed at his sister for being small and clumsy, then moved through the process of a breakthrough in becoming a teacher, and a better teacher and finally to where he released the seat and the sister took off on her own on the bike.   Victory! A great story. In college applications, many times what makes a great story is to admit to a struggle or fault, and show how you broke through it.   In a cover letter, believe it or not, you can do the same thing. All kinds of people are saying â€Å"No one reads cover letters anymore.†Ã‚   Well, of course no one is reading them – because they are stilted and boring and no one can get through them!   Have you ever considered that if you write a good enough story in your cover letter that it really  will get read! Do you have an example of a time when a project was failing, and you stepped in to fix it?   That makes a great story!   Is there an example of something you achieved that relates to the job you’re applying for?   Don’t be afraid to tell these stories in your cover letters! On your resume, too, tell as much of a story as you can in a bulleted line. What not to write:   â€Å"Assisted scientists with their research.† What to write: â€Å"Conducted genetic, epidemiology, and behavior research on sport fish in Illinois, Canada, and the Bahamas.† Ah, now that sounds kind of interesting! For an example of a professional bio that tells a great story or two, see Senior Investment Analyst Bio on The Essay Expert’s website.   This client reported to me that she loved her bio story so much that she kept reading it to herself after it was done! Whatever the reason, we all love a good story.   Tell one in your college and job applications.   Tell one in your professional bio.   If you do it well, your intended audience will keep reading†¦Ã‚   and reading†¦Ã‚   and reading.

Quotes on Dance and Life from Isadore Duncan

Quotes on Dance and Life from Isadore Duncan Isadora Duncan was an American dancer who rejected classical ballet forms for more natural movements of interpretive dance, which later evolved into modern dance. Isadora Duncan first found fame in Europe which received her more readily. Isadora Duncans personal life was also unconventional and scandalous, including a dramatic death. Selected Isadora Duncan Quotations Adieu, mes amis. Je vais la gloire. reported as her last words.My motto - sans limites.Dance is the movement of the universe concentrated in an individual.I have discovered the dance. I have discovered the art which has been lost for two thousand years.If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.The dancers body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.What I am interested in doing is finding and expressing a new form of life.People do not live nowadays. They get about ten percent out of life.The whole world is absolutely brought up on lies. We are fed nothing but lies. It begins with lies and half our lives we live with lies.I do not teach children, I give them joy.The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet.So long as little children are allowed to suffer, there is no true love in this world.The real American type can never be a ballet dancer. The legs are too long, the body too supple and the spirit too free for this school of affected grace and toe walking. It seems to me monstrous that anyone should believe that the jazz rhythm expresses America. Jazz rhythm expresses the primitive savage.I had learned to have a perfect nausea for the theatre: the continual repetition of the same words and the same gestures, night after night, and the caprices, the way of looking at life, and the entire rigmarole disgusted me.Virtuous people are simply those who have not been tempted sufficiently, because they live in a vegetative state, or because their purposes are so concentrated in one direction that they have not had the leisure to glance around them.We may not all break the Ten Commandments, but we are certainly all capable of it. Within us lurks the breaker of all laws, ready to spring out at the first real opportunity.Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.So that ends my first experience with matrimony, which I always thought a highly overrated performance.It has taken me yea rs of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence. Good-bye, America, I shall never see you again! to reporters on leaving for Europe for the last timeArt is not necessary at all. All that is necessary to make this world a better place to live in is to love to love as Christ loved, as Buddha loved.You were once wild here. Dont let them tame you.