Marion Crotty English Event

This english event consisted of an author, Marion Crotty, sharing her short story. Her writing and creative process was told through essay prompts on the common application, which is used to apply to college. The character she writes about goes through many traumatic life events that have shaped her life and outlook on life. This story symbolizes the teenage years everyone goes through.

Her choice of the common application to tell this story symbolizes that everyone has to grow up, but some people go through harder experiences than others. Each essay prompt is either connected to her mother attempting suicide, her boyfriend, or her insensitivity. Common application essay questions are usually the institution asking this potential student to positively describe their attributions as a person. But this character uses every essay question to describe life events. Certain prompts are similar and go into more detail about certain aspects of her life, for example she talks about when her mother attempted to commit suicide but failed, leaving herself paralyzed. The daughter is now glued to her mother because she has to take care of her since her mother is paralyzed. She was forced to grow up fast because her mother had a lot of health problems even before that incident. Her disconnect from family translates to her disconnect and insensitivity to her fellow peers and everyone else in her life.

Andy, a boy she works with becomes her boyfriend, but he loves her and she does not love him back. This disconnect causes her relationship to be abnormal. She learns this detachment from her relationship with her mother, because everyday she was worried her mom would either bail on her (like her father did) or kill herself. The translation between the two relationships makes her stick out in the college pool. The key point of writing college essays is to make yourself seem different and special and make the college want to accept you. This character's choice of response to these prompts are not what the average high school student writes about. But that is what makes this character special. The whole point of using the common application as a format to write the short story is to make this character seem like a normal kid, but one who is going through abnormal experiences.