Worried About Writing a College Admissions Essay? DR C Can Help!

How important is a college entrance essay?

Is it more important or just as important as grades and test scores? 

College admission officials look at a number of factors, including grades, the schools you attended, and a student’s background, when deciding who gets admitted. An essay can be one of the deciding factors. 

Admissions officials are not looking for Pulitzer Prize-winning essays or a dramatic four-act play that can earn you a Tony Award nomination. What they are looking for are well-crafted essays that show your true personality. 

Some colleges may ask you:

• Why are you interested in this particular college?

• What are your life goals?

• What are your passions, your interests, your experiences?

• How do you react when you’re faced with a challenge?

• What makes you stand out?

In other words, colleges want to know: Who are you?

MANA Author Bessie Helen Lambert Straham Discovers People's Perception Of Her

Bessie Helen Lambert Straham was having a conversation one day with a friend who was a professor at a community college. Straham's friend was telling her about the different topics she assigned for composition courses. And, there was one particular topic in which she received some very interesting responses from her students: "How do you want to be remembered after you die?"

Straham also found it interesting because she had been pondering that same question: “What would people remember about me when I passed?”  

Straham felt she had a pretty good sense of herself. After all, she spent years as an educator, a church member, a political activist, and a 50-year-member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Yet, Straham wondered if the perception she had of herself was the same one that other people had of her. 

So, she set out to explore this issue in her memoir, People’s Perception of Bessie Helen Lambert Straham: A Miracle on Barrington Drive.

Contribute to MANA's 2021 Blog Continuous Short Story For Young Writers To Help Forgotten Harvest

Writing Prompt

MarketingNewAuthors.com (MANA) has a great creative opportunity for young writers. If you are 17 years old or younger or if you are a parent wanting to help your child develop his or her creative writing skills, then look no further than MANA's Continuous Short Story for Young Writers.

Besides making a written contribution, young writers will be helping Forgotten Harvest, a non-profit food rescue organization that distributes 138,000 pounds of surplus food to local charities, providing needy individuals and families with fresh and nutritious food free of charge. 

The COVID-19 pandemic fueled an economic crisis that has jeopardized the health, safety, and employment of people who now find themselves in dire circumstances. Forgotten Harvest has helped many people through these trying times. 

Through this short story project, MANA will donate to Forgotten Harvest, BUT AT NO COST to those who contribute to the short story. 

MANA IS NOT ASKING FOR MONETARY CONTRIBUTIONS ONLY LITERARY CONTRIBUTIONS. 

YOUR LITERARY CONTRIBUTIONS WILL BE MATCHED WITH A MONETARY CONTRIBUTION TO FORGOTTEN HARVEST! 

This is how MANA's Blog Continuous Short Story works: 

Contribute to MANA's Blog Continuous Short Story For 2021 To Help Forgotten Harvest

Writing Prompt

 

MarketingNewAuthors.com (MANA) and its parent company, Robbie Dean Press (RDP), have supported charitable projects through posts on "MANA's Blog Continuous Short Story."  In this latest short story project, MANA will donate to Forgotten Harvest, BUT AT NO COST to writers who contribute to the short story. 

Forgotten Harvest, a nonprofit food rescue organization, has worked with government, nonprofit, and community organizations to deliver food to individuals and families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people have lost jobs, fallen ill, and having financial difficulties due to the crisis caused by the pandemic. And Forgotten Harvest has come to the rescue for those in need of food. 

MANA IS NOT ASKING FOR MONETARY CONTRIBUTIONS FROM WRITERS ONLY LITERARY CONTRIBUTIONS. 

YOUR LITERARY CONTRIBUTIONS WILL BE MATCHED WITH A MONETARY CONTRIBUTION TO FORGOTTEN HARVEST! 

This is how "MANA's Blog Continuous Short Story" works: 

MANA's DR C Offers Services For College-Bound Students

Are you the parent of a high school senior who’s preparing for college? Or are you an adult preparing for college? 

If so, is the college entrance written essay on your list of concerns? Maybe I (DR C) can help. (Visit my website to learn more about me.)

 As a parent of college-educated children, I can understand parents’ concerns about their children’s success in college. However, I always believed my children would not develop independence at college if I or my hubby were hovering over them. 

Yes, our children could call and share with us their apprehensions and concerns, but my hubby and I did our best to let our son and daughter discover the answers and use the resources the college offered—mainly the professors.  

MANA's BLACK LIT ALIVE!: Segment #10: Excerpts from "Iola Leroy"

MANA's BLACK LIT ALIVE! podcast is a special segment of MANA on literature produced by African American writers in the 18th century and beyond. 

Through literature, the writers, whether free or slaves, realized their identity and expressed their individuality at a time when African Americans were only viewed as mere property. 

In this segment, MANA's DR C read excerpts from and discusses Iola Leroy, a novel written by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and published in 1892. 

Iola Leroy, one of the first novels published by an African American woman, deals with racism, slavery, abolition, class, politics, reconstruction, women's rights, and other serious social issues in pre- and post-Civil War America.

Iola Leroy tells the story of the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter who traveled to the North to attend school, only to be sold into slavery in the South. She is later freed by the Union army. She works to reunify her family and embraces her half-white, half-African American heritage, and devotes herself to improving the conditions of black people in America. 

Listen to DR C's latest podcast below:

Listen to other podcasts on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper on our MANA's BLACK LIT ALIVE! posts Segment #6, Segment #7, and Segment #9.

The Long Goodbye by Gregory Shafer

     Dad lay in the same position day after day. The drugs had taken away his personality, and those final days—which ran into more days and weeks of silence and darkness—became a time for reflection. I could talk to him, but he wouldn’t talk back. Occasionally though, he would surface from beneath the pain. 

     He would grimace in agony or smile at a comment I made. He had been my dad through all of the tears and victories. He had made me feel secure. He had talked to me about girls and the Detroit Lions. And now, he was dying—slowly.

Image by Sharon McCutcheon
from Pixabay

     “I’m sorry,” I said as the tears rolled down my face. “I’m sorry for not being there after the divorce. You were the best dad a guy could ever have—all of the baseball games and root beer floats. And when you needed me I was ignoring you just to please Mom. Please, please forgive me.”

     People speak of the dying in a mainly perfunctory way. They roll out all of the platitudes about a better world and the magic of God and faith. But I didn’t have any of that. I didn’t feel any of it. 

     In the quiet shadows of twilight, the diminishing sun escaping from his bedroom window, it was just the two of us and the morphine. The smell of death came and went, but it was replaced with medicine and tubes and bags of stuff that would keep him from pain—at least any that I could see. But what was he feeling or thinking? 

MANA's Call For Short Stories

Attention short story writers! 

MarketingNewAuthors.com (MANA) is putting out a call for short stories to add to the MANA Sunriser Blog. MANA's Short Story Series is a throwback to the days when print newspapers and magazines published short stories that appear as a series.

MANA has brought serials back to public life! The stories run the gamut, from suspense to comedy, from twists and turns to straightforward fare, the stories have it all! To read the short stories that are currently posted, go to the right side of this blog to view the story list. 

The stories are written in five installments, with one segment posted each week, just like the serials of bygone days.

Do you have a short story that you would like to have featured in MANA's Short Story Series? If so, submit a five-segment short story that totals 500 words, 100 words or so per segment). If the submission is accepted, MANA will post it on the MANA Sunriser Blog for a wide audience to view. 

If you want to answer the call, then submit your work to MANA today. We will review your story and notify you if we accept your story for publication. You will maintain full copyright. 

To submit a short story, attach a Word file, and send it via email to info@marketingnewauthors.com.

MANA's BLACK LIT ALIVE! Podcast Featuring Poems by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper—Segment #9

MANA's BLACK LIT ALIVE! podcast is a special segment of MANA on literature produced by African American writers in the 18th century and beyond. 

Through literature, the writers, whether free or slaves, realized their identity and expressed their individuality at a time when African Americans were only viewed as mere property. 

In this podcast, MANA's DR C reads poems by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 - February 22, 1911), one of the first African American women to be published in the United States. Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, she became an abolitionist, suffragist, teacher, public speaker, poet, and writer. Harper's short story, "Two Offers" was published in the Anglo-African in 1859, making literary history as the first short story published by a black woman. 

(DR C reads Harper's poem, "The Slave Mother," in another post. Click here to listen.)

Listen to DR C's podcast below where she reads the poems, "The Dying Bondman," "A Double Standard," and "Learning to Read."

Follow along with DR C as she recites Harper's poems: