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The Rise of the “Trauma Essay” in College Applications | Tina Yong | TED
As if college applications aren’t stressful enough, disadvantaged youth are often encouraged to write about their darkest traumas in their admissions essays, creating a marketable story of resilience that turns “pain into progress,” says politics student Tina Yong. She brings this harrowing norm to light, exploring its harms and offering a more equitable process for…
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Brian Miller
May 2, 2023 at 9:04 am
I love this so much. As a TED-style speaking coach who has helped dozens of speakers write and rehearse their TEDx talks, I also feel this pull. If I encourage them to stay away from telling their traumatic stories, I hinder the potential power of their talk. If I encourage them to tell their traumatic stories, I risk pushing them into territory they haven’t fully worked through. I’ve landed on the rule of thumb: “We only tell stories that are scars. No open wounds.” This talk is such a fair examination of an increasing problem.
AKIRA
May 2, 2023 at 9:25 am
Free Ted Kaczynski
Shloomy Shloms
May 2, 2023 at 9:33 am
strange, I never immigrated, but my school experiences were exactly the same.
VideoVoid TV
May 2, 2023 at 9:57 am
Id like to add that writing about trauma to gain acceptance causes someone to exaggerate and dwell in what can be minor insults and everyday pain. It makes victims out of regular people. In fact this entire TED talk is just her saying “Im actually a bigger victim than you even know and its the university’s fault”. Listen close. This is what shes saying loud and clear.
Bryan bkk
May 2, 2023 at 10:02 am
The grass is always greener on the other side.
Beach Life
May 2, 2023 at 10:07 am
See, this is why I like TEDTalks. I try to watch things that I feel I have no interest in. In many of these cases, I end up absolutely loving and appreciating the subject matter and the presenter. This is that case with Tina Yong. She nailed this presentation. So good, so insightful, and so very much needed. It was a TEDTalk that I didn’t know I needed but so glad that I came across.
Beach Life
May 2, 2023 at 10:11 am
Another thing I want to point out that Tina Yong brought to mind: these types of essays seem to force the implication that by the age of 17, 18, 19, you’ve A) Been through something tragic or challenging, and B) Have found a resolution to it….by the end of high school. Some things we go through in life take decades and sometimes our entire lives, to “get over”. This application process (for those schools that use this screening method) puts you on the clock by saying, “OK, in the four years you have in high school, you need to fix the problems in your life and then write down how you did it, so that we can critique YOU and decide if you are worthy.”
Ramadhan
May 2, 2023 at 10:56 am
Well the universities keep prioritizing accepting student who wrote trauma essay, don’t surprise with the rise of it.
fooling around at the speed of sound
May 2, 2023 at 10:57 am
for real though, what adult came up with the idea of burdening children like this
Brittany Gilstrap
May 2, 2023 at 11:24 am
This is one of the best Ted talks I’ve seen in a long time.
Silver Coral
May 2, 2023 at 11:37 am
I don’t care about trauma. Raise some taxes for public mental healthcare and public physical healthcare.
Joyce Lee
May 2, 2023 at 11:40 am
This is excellent and needed to be said. I hope this increases the discussion and awareness not just among students and their college advisors but also college admissions.
cescabhi
May 2, 2023 at 11:51 am
thank you for doing this
exactly how i felt. i needed someone to articulate this better than i can. having heard all this i feel happy? that im not alone in feeling this way and that there are people out there who are able to call this out.
Linh Nguyễn
May 2, 2023 at 11:58 am
❤ a good ted talk
Arpeggi Lee
May 2, 2023 at 12:25 pm
Humans respond to authenticity. Unfortunately, sharing your trauma story does this as Tina points out in a shortsighted way.
Cyfriniol
May 2, 2023 at 12:27 pm
I’ve had this experience in a different darkness; Workman’s Comp. I’ve had three traumatic injuries working with psychiatric patients in a locked-down admissions unit. For the past 11 years I’ve been in the Workman’s Comp industrial accident medical care. During this time (still going on) I’ve had repeat the same story to a minimum of 25 doctors in orthopedics and psychiatric.
At time these doctors were antagonists due to the nature of the business of Workman’s Comp. I ended up having nightmares so bad I had to have back surgery due to twisting and turning so rapidly in my sleep that I herniated a lumbar disk in my back.
Now I take the time prior to these types of MD appointments to write out the history and fax it to the MD prior to the appointment or bring it with me to the appointment. Each time it increases the trauma surfacing during sleep and during daily activities. She’s correct an I find my anxiety raised, inability to sleep, and hostility increase each time I have one of these appointments even if I know it’s a good MD or PhD. Workman’s Comp is Brutal! If you think HMO’s are difficult, multiply that by 1000 and you have Workman’s Comp.
It’s taken three years and counting of Counseling to extinguish the nightmares but it did work. I’m confident as this part of my life diminishes over time, so will my trauma reactions. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to needlessly write about their trauma but instead focus on their accomplishments even though getting through horrible trauma is an accomplishment in itself.
Antibreeder
May 2, 2023 at 12:36 pm
It’s happening because too many parents treat their kids as some sort of sub humans 😢
Jack Xu
May 2, 2023 at 1:33 pm
“Sometimes a sucky thing just really sucks. And asking students to prove how they turn their pain into progress ignores this truth and falls prey to the toxic positivity narrative that everything happens for a reason, ignoring the very valid resentment and anger that many victims still feel.”
Jack Xu
May 2, 2023 at 2:06 pm
I think this is part of a more general tension between treating people as complex human beings versus the need to compare, evaluate, and funnel people into our modern capitalist machine, especially when we have to do this at scale.
Home Wall
May 2, 2023 at 3:36 pm
The way to win today isn’t to compete and be better, it’s to claim as much victimhood as possible. America, land of the victim, fearful and submissive.
Lala Lionheart
May 2, 2023 at 3:37 pm
Thank you for covering this subject. As someone with c PTSD it has been a maze to navigate college and hold onto self dignity. I wish people understood how this type of trauma changes the whole brain.
Home Wall
May 2, 2023 at 3:39 pm
Failure is a better measure as it at least presume an attempt to succeed. Any loser can be a victim, and losers focus on their victimization, not solutions, not actions, not attempts to improve the world without relying on submissiveness or authoritarianism.
nobodys baby
May 2, 2023 at 5:20 pm
You’re applying to a college to obtain an education that you pay them for. They should be applying to you.
The rest is naval gazing.
Really.
Without a client there would be no college. These discussions amaze me, how that fact gets obscured in these topics.
Hi it's me
May 2, 2023 at 6:27 pm
It’s difficult to understand that you can be proud of overcoming something but that it also looks bad in a college aplication essay. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be proud. This can be triggering.
Ripper Jones
May 2, 2023 at 8:06 pm
instead of teaching kids how to be manipulative, we should have free college education available for anyone who wants to attend.
Cindy Halpern
May 2, 2023 at 9:46 pm
It is a subjective decision that the committee makes. Don’t pretend it isn’t. To limit what is discussed is wrong. Not every story gets an admission.
This is just her opinion. Don’t accept it as fact. She should be grateful she got in, regardless. She ought to stop complaining. Because the stories she mentions are lesser ones.
Watching a Soap Opera is a silly reason for motivation. If I were an admissions officer, I would consider that an inmature essay.
Grow up, lady. Many different stories are read! Who are you to say those who have had life changing experiences didn’t grow from them?
HyperPony
May 3, 2023 at 9:05 am
Funny, If I were an ammission officer I would find it pathetic and immature to try to beg for empathy with a sad little story instead. It is indeed true that we are all different
Tessia Griffith
May 2, 2023 at 10:11 pm
I am currently writing an essay for Grad School and the hardest part of the essay was, “Please explain anything that affected your college GPA and what would make you successful in this program.” Because the things that affected my GPA were deeply personal and painful. On the other hand I am glad my prefered institution doesn’t select on GPA alone and is asking for more context. It’s a pretty ambivalent feeling.
Alaska seid
May 2, 2023 at 10:18 pm
I refused to write about my trauma and wrote a regular essay and applied to EA to a few schools, got rejected. Rewrote my essay about a particular trauma and reapplied to different schools.. got accepted into all of them. Also, my counselor kept encouraging me to write about “traumatic” things that hadn’t impacted me at all. For example, I was encouraged to write about my dad’s cancer. But my dad is okay? Overall, college applications was one of the weirdest experiences of my life.
Abby Abroad
May 2, 2023 at 10:23 pm
Wow, thanks for sharing.
Abby Abroad
May 2, 2023 at 10:22 pm
I teach Chinese students in China who aim for such schools, and their attempts to imitate this structure is accidentally humorous since the particular students I teach have often not been through such trauma and have been raised in relative wealth and ease. Instead, they have turned to richly expressing aspects of their own culture or other experiences, which is what I recommend.
Having taught outside the US since 2017, I find this fascinating. I strongly agree with her recommendations. Simply removing the Common App topic related to hardship would fix a lot of these issues.
The Last Hair Bender
May 2, 2023 at 10:53 pm
WALK AROUND.
Don’t just stand there. Use the space.
dope chicken
May 2, 2023 at 11:09 pm
nice lil asian mamas tho
Noorie Lyset
May 2, 2023 at 11:49 pm
Well done. Powerful words. ❤
Jerald Baxter
May 3, 2023 at 12:09 am
For the last 70 years, trauma has become glamorized, suffering has become the one dimensional persona of more and more people. Do you doubt this? Keep a notebook and write down during each day all of the negative sstories you encounter. From conversations with friends, overheard things at a shop or on a bus; i watch a great deal of art and craft how to videos, and have noticed a growing number of presenters including some unpleasant occurance that happend to them. Hardly appropriete for a video about painting a landscape. Also, take note of the abundant gossip “news” posts that give stories about celebrities and notice how often the words “sad,” and “tragic” are used in the titles. We all need to vent, but we have gone way to far; for generations people were taugh to always be gung-ho, resiliant, “can do” types. While this attitude may have helped “make America great,” the stoicism of the pioneers and their children exacted a price in repression; but then the ’60’s hit and the pendulum began to swing the other way. What we need is somewhere in the middle, were traumas are not repressed but nor are they viewed as some badge earned ina bid for attention. Our lives, the struggles and the triumphs, properly dealt with so that we can live to our real potentials.
555Trout
May 3, 2023 at 1:37 am
Try that with me and you don’t get admission or employment.
Chuckie Campbell
May 3, 2023 at 1:41 am
Nah
Francesco S
May 3, 2023 at 5:02 am
Thanks violet comrade
Amirxan Qayipnazarov
May 3, 2023 at 5:13 am
I partially disagree with her point.
There are students, who lack simple resources in their lives, such as clean water, electricity and even shelter (a good example can be “Homeless to Harvard”) Some of them have to work after school, earn money, take care of their siblings or diseased parents, and have little time for stellar Extracurriculars. And in such cases, talking about what they have overcome is the best thing, is it not?
We cannot just simply get rid of essays and instead put entrance exams. Why? Well, students who only care about studying will get in, people what all they do is studying will get in.
Samuel Zev
May 3, 2023 at 6:31 am
Im not so sure if what she is telling in this talk applies to every minorities in every academic institution. From my personal experience as an Asian in an Australian College and university, things were mostly okay, there wasn’t any racism but perhaps maybe because Australians tend to be more open to asians
JustAnotherIdiot
May 3, 2023 at 9:20 am
it’s that college students are more open to people who are different than children. She’s talking about immigrating at a young age, and how she had those negative experiences with other children (and possibly a few adults), and then she had to write about that for her college admissions essay
서동휘
May 3, 2023 at 6:33 am
It’s true that it’s energy consuming, but you never get to know the enemies of your life and whom and what to fight against if you don’t diagnosis your hard days. Once you know them, you become more complete human being.
Amber Stiefel
May 3, 2023 at 7:13 am
My advisor wanted me to explain why I was going for a master’s at the age of 35. The more I disclosed, the more my sense of self began to morph into something more palatable to anyone that “did things right”. I felt I was being encouraged to rewrite a script and shame myself in front of strangers so that they may consider me worthy of funding.
I hope this fad dies. I’m not going through that advisor again until I have a clear picture of what I want.
The state of higher education admissions and employment is in shambles. Being voyeuristic about the slow death of the middle class (or the value of intelligence in the lower class) is not something I want to partake in. There are better ways to do this
Bidyo
May 3, 2023 at 8:20 am
👍👍👍👌🙂🙂
SKY659
May 3, 2023 at 8:30 am
Stopped watching 4 minutes. She claims many students are “regurgitating” trauma-filled narratives like hers. “Regurgitating” is extremely offensive here and clearly is not appropriate to use in this context. Don’t tell people how to tell their stories. Also, even an essay about one’s passions can be a powerful one. People just need to know how to write better
Mark Belanger
May 3, 2023 at 9:44 am
Toxic positivity narrative? Really?
MikeDaV
May 3, 2023 at 10:24 am
I am surprised that ignorance about psychological issues prevails in these areas in a western country as much as in other countries like north korea
Jared St. Martin Brown
May 3, 2023 at 11:48 am
Amazing insight! Well said!
Wicked.
May 3, 2023 at 1:20 pm
Do what you gotta do, but this is why college is stupid. Point of reference: this is why I dropped out.
Wicked.
May 3, 2023 at 1:20 pm
Do what you gotta do, but this is why college is stupid. Point of reference: this is why I dropped out. You are essentially paying to have trauma & illness induced into you. It’s not worth sacrificing the entirety of your physiological health over, especially when the degree itself doesn’t necessarily guarantee you landing a spot in your desired career field. There are people with PhD’s in mathematics that are homeless because of one simple mistake that was outside of their control.
Huyen Nguyen
May 4, 2023 at 12:31 am
I’m glad that I have a chance to hear this talk. Hear the second time and read all the transcripts. So well-delivered and rich in words and contexts. Interesting topic. Thank you for pointing out this frustration in academic admission standards
DeeWeber
May 4, 2023 at 5:26 am
Authenticity still trumps all. If you’ve got an authentic struggle you want to relate, you should be able to!! There are other authentic essay choices you can make instead of faking it. Being authentic would be better advice than completely doing away with this essay choice.
chris
May 4, 2023 at 6:12 am
I literally only wrote about trauma in college essays because it would net me more financial aid and scholarships from guilty rich people. And like my life is fine. It’s not even sad. But if I have to turn my life into a didactic tale of perseverance for money, then I’ll do it 😭
Repent and believe in Jesus Christ
May 4, 2023 at 6:26 am
Repent to Jesus Christ “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.”
Colossians 4:2 NIV
ht
Ngan-Wai Cheung
May 4, 2023 at 6:28 am
I am one of those immigrant kids and wrote an essay about my real hunting trauma. As she said in the speech, I actively got the same thought: maybe genuinely acknowledge that I haven’t been fully recovered from trauma but strong enough to tell the whole thing will show that I am honest, preserverent, mature human being. And guess what, I got rejected!
Colin
May 4, 2023 at 11:42 am
As an immigrant, I felt like I missed the opportunity…
卵卵
May 4, 2023 at 12:37 pm
8:33
MrJeffrey938
May 4, 2023 at 1:45 pm
That therapist analogy is perfect.
Lee Milby
May 4, 2023 at 3:12 pm
I feel this way in the job market too. As a film director, it’s become popular for us to be expected to differentiate ourselves by our unique identities, often linked to adversity. I’ve often been told that my life story would make an amazing movie due to the struggles I’ve been through, but I feel conflicted by feeling this pressure to share deeply personal things for, essentially, entertainment purposes, and to also share it in a way that others can feel safe capitalizing on…
Ahsan Mohammed
May 4, 2023 at 4:57 pm
Who is Tina Wong?
TED
Please mention credentials of speakers in about section!
This is Youtube! We don’t know who the speakers are!
Minimum curtesy!
Ahsan Mohammed
May 4, 2023 at 4:58 pm
I know kids in Toronto who threw their stinky lunch in the garbage on their way to school.