CAS Juniors Explore Essays at Retreat

Earlzzy Thursday morning on May 6, 23 Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) juniors boarded a school bus to the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). The juniors were on their way to a two–day retreat centered on writing admissions essays for college.

The retreat turned out to be both relaxing and informative as students participated in various activities around the college campus. These included a tour of the UCSC campus, a panel discussion about campus life with several CAS alumni currently attending UCSC, two writing workshops and an editing session where the CAS students were able to discuss their essay rough drafts with UCSC journalism and literature students.

In one of the workshops, students were asked to picture a scene or important moment in their life and describe it in detail. For some of the students, this experience was very emotional and moving. For others, this exercise was great practice for coming up with an idea to center their personal statements around.

Amy Crawford, CAS co–leader and coordinator of the UCSC retreat, said about the exercises, “Everyone has a story, even if it’s not a ‘sob’ story... It’s great for the students to have the experience of writing these essays; to take a moment out of their busy student lives, stop and reflect on their life and accomplishments.”

CAS teachers have been taking college bound juniors to the UCSC campus for these writing retreats since 1999, but took a break for a few years due to conflicting events. The tradition started up again in 2009 and last year’s success led to this most recent trip.

The main goal of the writing retreat was to assist the students in preparing to write an exceptional personal statement. Crawford explained to students, “Writing a college essay is stressful, so our goal in having you all write, or at least start, your essays now is so that you won’t be stressed, so you can be prepared and focused so you can write a good essay.”
CAS junior Giuliano Berna–Hicks said that he found the trip to be fun and informative. “Not only did I get to check out the [UCSC] campus, I also got to start working on my college essay and now it doesn’t feel as daunting because I have a foundation and a topic to build on,” he explained.

In addition to having the chance to begin writing college admissions essays, the CAS juniors were able to meet and interact with college professors and students, as well as experience campus life. The students stayed in lounges in the dorm complexes and feasted on buffet style breakfasts, lunches, dinners and bottomless coffees with college students. They also got a feel for the campus from the tours given by two UCSC students, one a CAS alumnus. During this tour, they visited many of the notable offices and facilities located on campus.

Callie Lapidus, also a CAS junior, said about the retreat, “the Santa Cruz campus is beautiful and having a literature student from [UCSC] help us with our statements and talk to us about college was a great opportunity.”

As the juniors gathered in a circle on one of the campus greens in the last few minutes of the trip, many thank–yous and appreciations were expressed to the teachers that helped to make this trip possible and for the opportunity to experience college campus life as well as begin their college essays.