20 Mar Embrace the Fall: Why Perfectionism Is Killing Your College Essay
By Mary Pagones
When twenty-one-year-old figure skater Ilia Malinin slid onto the ice for the men’s long program during the 2026 Winter Olympics, he was minutes away from gold medal glory. Given his lead after the short program, the self-proclaimed “quad god” had a comfortable enough margin to make several major errors and still win. But when Malin opened with a single axel, rather than a quadruple jump as expected, things quickly began to unravel. Error after error followed until the impossible occurred: Malin lost his seemingly unshakable self-confidence, his lead, and eventually even a place on the podium. Sports psychologists were quick to weigh in about the tremendous pressure he was under, and the weight of expectations not simply to perform to a high standard, but to be flawless.
Now imagine putting yourself under Olympic-level pressure, not just for a final performance but simply to perform during training. In some ways, that’s even more psychologically devastating. A skater can’t even learn how to nail a single jump if he’s not willing to fall in practice.
Unfortunately, I see this same perfectionist mindset again and again as an editor who works with high school students on their college admissions essays. The problem isn’t failing to stick the landing in the final draft. It’s that students aren’t willing to fail in practice on that first draft to begin with.
Last year, I worked with a student applying to a fiercely competitive list of schools. His test scores were nearly perfect, and he had a long list of impressive extracurriculars and awards. But when it came to writing his essays, well, he just…couldn’t…
Time and time again, I’d schedule sessions with him, and he hadn’t produced the required drafts. He would explain to me his vision for the essays, but when I (gently at first, then gradually more and more insistently) explained he needed to produce something on the page, however imperfectly, for me to provide a critique, the expression in his eyes looked more blank than the Google Doc in front of us. In-session, he’d write a sentence, then delete it. Write another, then edit it, then delete that.
Eventually, we made it through his supplements. But the process doesn’t have to be so painful. In some ways, this student was a victim of his own previous success. He’d been told he was his high school’s equivalent of the “quad god” academically, but he’d never written deeply personal essays before. He had something to say, but wasn’t quite sure how to say it, and knew that his first attempt wasn’t going to be Olympic-worthy. The only emotionally safe response was just to procrastinate until it was nearly too late.
Admittedly, high schools don’t always encourage student experimentation in writing. Even when teachers ask students to submit drafts as part of a longer project, the drafts are often graded, which just ramps up the pressure again to “stick the landing” the first time.
But great college essays aren’t crafted by being safe. They require taking risks, a sense of fun, and a sense of drama, just as much as a great skating long program. If students don’t have a training ground to explore new ideas, they’ll never write essays that achieve the objectives of a great personal statement: an essay which shows the student’s ability to think and grow.
The takeaway for students? Experiment. Find joy in the writing process, especially early on. Embrace your messy first drafts. There are no gold medals or A+s for having the best first draft. All that matters is the final performance. There’s plenty of time for perfectionism and constant self-editing later, before pressing submit. First draft quirks and mistakes, after some development and refinement, can evolve into the heart of great essays.
And be grateful that any errors made in the writing process are easier to edit out than a fall on the ice with Tara and Johnny providing color commentary!