Essay Madness(ness)

So everything is coming to a close very very very very very quickly.  I’m writing this blog post as I sit on the bus coming home from work.  I know that I said I wouldn’t write a long post until after I hit submit, but what I really should have said was that I am not going to write another blog post AT home, until after I hit submit.  Today was probably the fastest work day I’ve experienced.  

On the bus trip into the city, I was working on my 2nd consortium essay.  I’m not going to lie, I was procrastinating on this one because I find this one to be the most difficult.  So the question is 

“The mission of The Consortium is to enhance diversity in business education and leadership by helping to reduce the serious underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in both our member schools' enrollments and the ranks of management. What have you done in your business, academic or personal life to demonstrate commitment to this mission? Please provide specific example of your involvement, actions and results.“ 

...which as you can tell is much different from all of the other school specific essays that I’m accustomed to writing.  I knew that once I actually started writing this one, the ideas would come to me.  True to form, it occured while I was in Starbucks with my computer.  I will say that I was slightly disctracted because there was a cute guy sitting across from me and I kept staring, but I think he caught on and him and his friend left.  ::shrugs::  It was for the better anyway, because I was able to get three long paragraphs done.  Then EUREEKA, I got an idea.

So one of the things I was writing about was a Diversity focus group I was asked to participate in at work.  So I used that as one of my examples.  When I got back to my desk after getting a great draft of the essay accomplished, I decided to email this person in HR to just talk to her about the outcome of the focus group from her perspective.  I emailed her with background on the Consortium and a list of the schools I was applying too.  This is a benefit I guess of people at work being behind you in your endeavors.  She, like my VP and Manager and the rest of my team, knows that I am applying to business school.  I feel fortunate enough to have a team supporting me in my place of work.  I guess when I was stressing out about “breaking the news” back in May was beneficial.  FOR ME!  Unfortunately, I know that it’s not like that for others.  In any event, we spoke for about 10 minutes and I took a page and a half of notes on a legal pad...then I stuffed my notes into my bag immediately so I wouldn’t forget them. 

Later that day I was talking to my friend and we were going down our checklists of things that we need to do before Wednesday.  I decided to send my resume to my consultant at Veritas one last time with a couple of questions.  I wanted to know if I should have removed a bullet point from one section in order to add it to another section.  I also wanted to know what an admissions committee will think when looking at my resume and I was very very pleased with her feedback.  I definitely feel confident about my resume now.  

I’ll be honest  - that I was beginning to get nervous about my essays, because I have been doing so much work on them that I know that my grammar is not the best.  If you couldn’t tell... I write the way I think.  Hence the reason for ellipses...that’s where I “pause” in my head during my inner monologue.  I would not feel comfortable submitting all of my essays without a final read through.  The veritas consulting package that I won in February of last year, only covers the three Core Consortium questions, so I was left to my own devices for the other 12 essays I need to write.  

I didn't want to constantly ask my friends going through the same process as I am.  They have their own essays to worry about and I was worried about the turn around.  So I emailed a friend who has helped me out with my diversity conference essays.  I asked her if she would like to make some money.  Who wouldn’t like to make money right?  I told her that as I finish my essays I would send them to her for review and to help me fix grammar mistakes.  She obliged and I began flooding her inbox with my essays!  ;-)  I feel bad but that’s why I’m willing to pay.  I mean it would be pointless at this point to go through a year of all of this work to only have the admissions committee look at my essays and say “Um.. what is this nonsense?”  Anything I have to do right?  

Almost done almost done....  Now I’m home and have to finish that 2nd Consortium essay to send off.  Thankfully my Veritas consultant is on the West coast!