 Our first speaker is Aya Waller-Bae. She hails from Detroit, Michigan. And she's a PhD. There you go. In sociology. There you go. She will be giving her talk entitled, No Pain and No Gain, Sharing Trauma to Get In. Please welcome to the stage Aya Waller-Bae. I walked down the street slowly hoping that the black van will maneuver its way out of the driveway before I reached home. It did. I sauntered onto my front porch steps knowing that something was wrong. As I entered the doorway I could see broken glass on the steps and my fears were confirmed. I entered up the stairwell each step more hesitant than the last. The broken glass crackled underneath my boots. I just knew that the living room would reveal a horrid scene. I began my college personal statement with these words. I revealed to Georgetown admissions committee aspects of my life that few people knew, a story that I would not retell here for reasons that would become clear later. Although my attention was to share the way my background shaped my interest and thirst for knowledge, I had not realized that by divulging such personal information that I would spend nearly the next four years tethered to my past repeating elements of my stories to donors and scholarship committees. After graduation I worked as an admissions officer. I read the applications of thousands of students searching for both the highest achieving students and the most compelling that would demonstrate our commitment to diversity. With the new lens I saw how I too reinforced the consumption of trauma. I experienced how compelling narratives, stories about homelessness, abuse, deportation, gang violence, influence decisions, frightened by this realization I applied to graduate school. Now, this experience isn't specific to me. A fact that quick search of the words trauma and essay on the worldwide web's most trusted bastion of information, Twitter, reveals that black students and other students from historically underrepresented groups share a similar revelation. Let's look at a few tweets. So imagine this, okay? So it's 2017, you're super excited about the college admissions process. You are a 4.0 student, a member of the National Honor Society, and a two sport athlete. So you stroll into your guidance counselor office excited about navigating the college admissions process. You asked about advice about how to write an essay and you get this. Now imagine it's 2019. You are again interested in the admissions process. So you start doing your research like what we do. You look on various websites and you start to see certain types of narratives profiled online. And you wonder, is this what I need to do to get in? All right. So finally, say maybe you are hanging out with a friend, I don't know, hanging out in Starbucks, which is where I like to hang out sometimes. And you're telling your story. You're just telling your friends something that you've endured or overcome. And they say, dang, that would make one hell of an essay. Now these tweets represent three out of thousands of tweets online. You can find them again online on Twitter, where students are sharing how they felt compelled or even coerced to share a trauma narrative to gain interest into college. This is something I noticed during my time professionally as an admissions officer and through some of my preliminary data collection. It's also something noticed by this tweeter who served on graduate admissions committees. Now, before I continue, I want to do an activity, okay? I want you all to close your eyes. Close your eyes. Raise your hand if you've ever written about pain or trauma to gain interest into college or for an admissions essay, scholarship essay, or educational opportunity. Just raise your hand. Please lower your hand and open your eyes. So nearly 85% of the hands in this room were raised, and those were the hands of the folks willing to share. So why? Why do we feel compelled to share trauma and pain to gain interest into college or for scholarship opportunities? And why do universities love these types of stories so much? Here are a few possible explanations. So first, these stories explicitly demonstrate how we've overcome an identified obstacle. These stories highlight our grit, our resilience, all revered qualities, especially in the eyes of scholarship and admissions committees. Secondly, these stories help us stand out in a crowded applicant pool. They set us apart from our peers. These stories actually may reflect true and important pieces of our lives. In fact, they are our stories and consequently our stories to tell. And finally, we're giving the people what they want. For universities, these stories help them project their values and commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion, also known as DI. Also, for other types of institutions, say non-profits or community-based efforts, these stories help them raise money for important causes, programs, and initiatives. So with all that, you might be wondering, what is the problem then? Why shouldn't we tell our stories? Again, they are our stories. They're your stories. Well, for starters, these stories may reinforce stereotypes about underrepresented groups or racialized minorities. Second, you may feel compelled to exaggerate your story or embellish. Again, you want to stand out. Third, what happens when you choose not to share your story and others do? Is your story about growing to love a language or broad or growing to love your natural hair considered as compelling? In fact, you may be punished for not sharing. You may be considered less deserving because you haven't struggled. And finally, universities may exploit your narrative. You may be profiled online, forced to talk to donors, board members, or even faculty in your department. An image of you at a very specific moment in your life may follow you. And are you the same person you were when you were 18 or 22? I'm not. Now, this may not be your exact admissions experience. In fact, your last application may have been submitted, I don't know, five or 10 years ago. However, many of us in this room are often in positions to review applications that may be on admissions committees, working groups, community-based efforts, nonprofits, boards, and the like. And if we're not now, we may very well be in the future. So, given that, I have two recommendations. The first recommendation is when you sit down to write an essay or a grant or a scholarship, I want you to think twice about what you write, with whom you're sharing, what you hope to gain, and what you may lose in the process. Now, second, when you are on the admissions side, I really want you to practice holistic admissions. Now, holistic admissions is a buzzword in higher education and college admissions. For most, it means consider applicants' background, their test scores, their GPA, their essays, extracurricular activities. That's the typical understanding of holistic admissions. For me, however, holistic admissions means checking yourself, checking your own biases, your own subjectivities, your own positionality. When an application comes across your desk, think about what you're rewarding and why. Is this applicant fulfilling a stereotype you already maintain about an underrepresented group? Are you rewarding struggle or are you rewarding success? This year marks 10 years since I submitted my undergraduate application. I was 17, hoping to demonstrate the ways my identities as a low-income first-generation college student from Detroit served as fuel, not as an impediment. You may be wondering, do you regret telling your story? I don't. In fact, the purpose of today's talk is not to discourage you from sharing yours either. Tell your story in your own words and on your own terms. Contrary our narrative is a radical act countering institutional practices of reframing, retelling, and commodifying our stories for their own gain. When I say I often meet young people, high school students, undergrads, even graduate students who've just grown so frustrated about admissions practices, they feel that they have to pimp their trauma to get into universities or to win scholarships. So for those students and perhaps anyone else in the room struggling to tell their story in a meaningful way, I want you to remember, you are more than your trauma. You have so much more to offer than your pain. And there are hundreds. And that means hundreds of reasons why you deserve to get in.