By The Way...: From the CTA Essay Mentor: There's Always More I Could Do...

...but I'm doing the best I can!

So can you!

Greetings!

School has started and there is a chill in the air, at least at night. Our daily temperatures in Utah are no longer pushing 100, and everyone that worked with me until they earned Final Approval on their Common Application Essay and Short Answer are breathing a huge sigh of relief right now...

But some of you have not even started yet. What's with that?

Essay Season has begun in earnest. With that in mind, I would like to tell you a few things:

I still work on Monday and Thursday. If I don't finish my Monday work, I work again on Tuesday. Likewise, if I don't finish my Thursday work, I work again on Friday. I try not to work on Wednesday or Saturday, but sometimes I have to. I never work on Sunday.

Missed My Deadlines? Please keep working in the order I recommend:

Common Application Long & Short
Non-common-app Long
Common app supplements.

From experience, I have concluded that starting with the common application essay and short answer lays a fabulous foundation for the other essays you will be required to write. Your essay writing skills will improve as you continue.
There will never need to be as many revisions on the 3rd essay you write as there were on the first or second.

You may expect a prompt response from me on all your essays. If you send an essay over the weekend and you haven't heard from me by Wednesday, please follow up. If you expect to hear from me by Friday and haven't heard, please follow up. Never wait more than a week to follow up if you haven't heard back from me.

Sometimes Cyberspace Eats Essays!

Covered In Red Ink may seem discouraging, but it is not a Bad Thing! I know some of you have been frustrated by my bold editing and comments. It is simply part of the Do Again until we have Quality Work and earn Final Approval system.

It is part of the writing process; if the Red Ink weren't there, I would not be doing my job, nor would you be getting your money's worth.

It is extremely frustrating to spend time writing comments and giving valuable advice to receive an essay revision that seemingly ignores them. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I assume that you simply can't see my comments.

If you receive an essay from me without visible comments, then you need to adjust the settings in your MS Word program. There will always be at least one comment! Comments are not just editing - insertions and deletions - in the text of the essay. They are happy little letters I write to you, and I put a lot of time into them!
I can't tell you what they'll look like on your version of Word (sometimes they're in the margin, sometimes they pop up in little bubbles when you hover your mouse, and sometimes they are in a separate split window below), but they are always there! Please read them and do as I ask, even if it's hard! You Can Do Hard Things!
Here is one way to check your computer for Comments Compatibility: On the downloads page, I have added a PDF file of the test document. There is a comment, an insertion, and a deletion in this document. If you download both the DOC and the PDF, you will see how it looks in your version of MS Word, and you will also see a PDF of what it looks like for me!