george orwell bookshop memories essay

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Bookshop Memories

By george orwell.

When I worked in a second-hand bookshop – so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios – the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookish people. Our shop had an exceptionally interesting stock, yet I doubt whether ten per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one. First edition snobs were much commoner than lovers of literature, but oriental students haggling over cheap textbooks were commoner still, and vague-minded women looking for birthday presents for their nephews were commonest of all.

Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who 'wants a book for an invalid' (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does remember that it had a red cover. But apart from these there are two well-known types of pest by whom every second-hand bookshop is haunted. One is the decayed person smelling of old breadcrusts who comes every day, sometimes several times a day, and tries to sell you worthless books. The other is the person who orders large quantities of books for which he has not the smallest intention of paying. In our shop we sold nothing on credit, but we would put books aside, or order them if necessary, for people who arranged to fetch them away later. Scarcely half the people who ordered books from us ever came back. It used to puzzle me at first. What made them do it? They would come in and demand some rare and expensive book, would make us promise over and over again to keep it for them, and then would vanish never to return. But many of them, of course, were unmistakable paranoiacs. They used to talk in a grandiose manner about themselves and tell the most ingenious stories to explain how they had happened to come out of doors without any money – stories which, in many cases, I am sure they themselves believed. In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money. In the end one gets to know these people almost at a glance. For all their big talk there is something moth-eaten and aimless about them. Very often, when we were dealing with an obvious paranoiac, we would put aside the books he asked for and then put them back on the shelves the moment he had gone. None of them, I noticed, ever attempted to take books away without paying for them; merely to order them was enough – it gave them, I suppose, the illusion that they were spending real money.

Like most second-hand bookshops we had various sidelines. We sold second-hand typewriters, for instance, and also stamps – used stamps, I mean. Stamp-collectors are a strange, silent, fish-like breed, of all ages, but only of the male sex; women, apparently, fail to see the peculiar charm of gumming bits of coloured paper into albums. We also sold sixpenny horoscopes compiled by somebody who claimed to have foretold the Japanese earthquake. They were in sealed envelopes and I never opened one of them myself, but the people who bought them often came back and told us how 'true' their horoscopes had been. (Doubtless any horoscope seems 'true' if it tells you that you are highly attractive to the opposite sex and your worst fault is generosity.) We did a good deal of business in children's books, chiefly 'remainders'. Modern books for children are rather horrible things, especially when you see them in the mass. Personally I would sooner give a child a copy of Petrenius Arbiter than Peter Pan, but even Barrie seems manly and wholesome compared with some of his later imitators. At Christmas time we spent a feverish ten days struggling with Christmas cards and calendars, which are tiresome things to sell but good business while the season lasts. It used to interest me to see the brutal cynicism with which Christian sentiment is exploited. The touts from the Christmas card firms used to come round with their catalogues as early as June. A phrase from one of their invoices sticks in my memory. It was: '2 doz. Infant Jesus with rabbits'.

But our principal sideline was a lending library – the usual 'twopenny no-deposit' library of five or six hundred volumes, all fiction. How the book thieves must love those libraries! It is the easiest crime in the world to borrow a book at one shop for twopence, remove the label and sell it at another shop for a shilling. Nevertheless booksellers generally find that it pays them better to have a certain number of books stolen (we used to lose about a dozen a month) than to frighten customers away by demanding a deposit.

Our shop stood exactly on the frontier between Hampstead and Camden Town, and we were frequented by all types from baronets to bus-conductors. Probably our library subscribers were a fair cross-section of London's reading public. It is therefore worth noting that of all the authors in our library the one who 'went out' the best was – Priestley? Hemingway? Walpole? Wodehouse? No, Ethel M. Dell, with Warwick Deeping a good second and Jeffrey Farnol, I should say, third. Dell's novels, of course, are read solely by women, but by women of all kinds and ages and not, as one might expect, merely by wistful spinsters and the fat wives of tobacconists. It is not true that men don't read novels, but it is true that there are whole branches of fiction that they avoid. Roughly speaking, what one might call the average novel – the ordinary, good-bad, Galsworthy-and-water stuff which is the norm of the English novel – seems to exist only for women. Men read either the novels it is possible to respect, or detective stories. But their consumption of detective stories is terrific. One of our subscribers to my knowledge read four or five detective stories every week for over a year, besides others which he got from another library. What chiefly surprised me was that he never read the same book twice. Apparently the whole of that frightful torrent of trash (the pages read every year would, I calculated, cover nearly three quarters of an acre) was stored for ever in his memory. He took no notice of titles or author's names, but he could tell by merely glancing into a book whether be had 'had it already'.

In a lending library you see people's real tastes, not their pretended ones, and one thing that strikes you is how completely the 'classical' English novelists have dropped out of favour. It is simply useless to put Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, Trollope, etc. into the ordinary lending library; nobody takes them out. At the mere sight of a nineteenth-century novel people say, 'Oh, but that's old!' and shy away immediately. Yet it is always fairly easy to sell Dickens, just as it is always easy to sell Shakespeare. Dickens is one of those authors whom people are 'always meaning to' read, and, like the Bible, he is widely known at second hand. People know by hearsay that Bill Sikes was a burglar and that Mr Micawber had a bald head, just as they know by hearsay that Moses was found in a basket of bulrushes and saw the 'back parts' of the Lord. Another thing that is very noticeable is the growing unpopularity of American books. And another – the publishers get into a stew about this every two or three years – is the unpopularity of short stories. The kind of person who asks the librarian to choose a book for him nearly always starts by saying 'I don't want short stories', or 'I do not desire little stories', as a German customer of ours used to put it. If you ask them why, they sometimes explain that it is too much fag to get used to a new set of characters with every story; they like to 'get into' a novel which demands no further thought after the first chapter. I believe, though, that the writers are more to blame here than the readers. Most modern short stories, English and American, are utterly lifeless and worthless, far more so than most novels. The short stories which are stories are popular enough, vide D. H. Lawrence, whose short stories are as popular as his novels.

Would I like to be a bookseller de métier? On the whole – in spite of my employer's kindness to me, and some happy days I spent in the shop – no.

Given a good pitch and the right amount of capital, any educated person ought to be able to make a small secure living out of a bookshop. Unless one goes in for 'rare' books it is not a difficult trade to learn, and you start at a great advantage if you know anything about the insides of books. (Most booksellers don't. You can get their measure by having a look at the trade papers where they advertise their wants. If you don't see an ad. for Boswell's Decline and Fall you are pretty sure to see one for The Mill on the Floss by T. S. Eliot.) Also it is a humane trade which is not capable of being vulgarized beyond a certain point. The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman. But the hours of work are very long – I was only a part-time employee, but my employer put in a seventy-hour week, apart from constant expeditions out of hours to buy books – and it is an unhealthy life. As a rule a bookshop is horribly cold in winter, because if it is too warm the windows get misted over, and a bookseller lives on his windows. And books give off more and nastier dust than any other class of objects yet invented, and the top of a book is the place where every bluebottle prefers to die.

But the real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them; still worse is the fact that he is constantly dusting them and hauling them to and fro. There was a time when I really did love books – loved the sight and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were fifty or more years old. Nothing pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction. There is a peculiar flavour about the battered unexpected books you pick up in that kind of collection: minor eighteenth-century poets, out-of-date gazeteers, odd volumes of forgotten novels, bound numbers of ladies' magazines of the sixties. For casual reading – in your bath, for instance, or late at night when you are too tired to go to bed, or in the odd quarter of an hour before lunch – there is nothing to touch a back number of the Girl's Own Paper. But as soon as I went to work in the bookshop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening. Nowadays I do buy one occasionally, but only if it is a book that I want to read and can't borrow, and I never buy junk. The sweet smell of decaying paper appeals to me no longer. It is too closely associated in my mind with paranoiac customers and dead bluebottles.

Return to the George Orwell library , or . . . Read the next essay; Can Socialists Be Happy?

Primary Sources: The 1940s: Japanese Internment

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Online Sources: Japanese Internment - WWII

• Bainbridge Review, 1941-1946 more... less... "The Bainbridge Review, a weekly newspaper edited and published by Walt and Milly Woodward, has earned national recognition for its coverage of the forced removal of more than 200 Bainbridge Island residents of Japanese descent. The Woodwards editorialized against the removal and devoted space in the newspaper to reports about their lives in the camps."
• Benji Okubo Collection more... less... "he online collection of artist Benji Okubo (1904-1975) features sixteen paintings dating from Okubo's prolific period of the late 1920s to the mid-1940s, including several works created in Heart Mountain concentration camp, Wyoming. While Okubo's pre-war pieces demonstrate a unique blend of color juxtaposition and surrealism, his works completed in camp are notable for their commentary on militarism, isolation and political upheaval fused with a mythic sensibility. "
• Children of the Camps more... less... "The Children of the Camps documentary captures the experiences of six Americans of Japanese ancestry who were confined as innocent children to internment camps by the U.S. government during World War II. " The website includes access to related historical documents.
• Clara Breed Collection more... less... "The online collection of Clara Breed, or "Miss Breed" as she was known by her young library patrons, includes over 300 letters and cards received by Breed from Japanese American children and young adults during their World War II incarceration." Japanese American National Museum
• Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, digital archive of video oral histories of Japanese-Americans incarcerated or interned during World War II, Japanese-American internment stories more... less... "Densho's mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy and promote equal justice for all."
• Estelle Ishigo Collection more... less... "The online collection of Estelle Peck Ishigo (1899-1990) covers life in the Pomona detention center in California and in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming camp during World War II. Includes 120 drawings, sketches, and watercolors. " Japanese American National Museum
• Evacuation and Internment of San Francisco Japanese - 1942 more... less... "The San Francisco News, for the first six months of 1942, carried almost daily reports of FBI and police sweeps, and the various proclamations, plans - and restrictions to civil liberties - issued by Lieutenant-General John L. DeWitt at the Presidio of San Francisco. "
• Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese (1942) [Our Documents]
• Executive Order 9066: The President Authorizes Japanese Relocation more... less... "In an atmosphere of World War II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in California, Arizona, Washington state, and Oregon. Although it is not well known, the same executive order (and other war-time orders and restrictions) were also applied to smaller numbers of residents of the United States who were of Italian or German descent. For example, 3,200 resident aliens of Italian background were arrested and more than 300 of them were interned. About 11,000 German residents—including some naturalized citizens—were arrested and more than 5000 were interned. Yet while these individuals (and others from those groups) suffered grievous violations of their civil liberties, the war-time measures applied to Japanese Americans were worse and more sweeping, uprooting entire communities and targeting citizens as well as resident aliens." GMU History Matters
• Flaherty Collection - Japanese Internment Records (SJSU) more... less... "The King Library Digital Collections includes all of the 135 photographs in the Flaherty Collection, which document the experience of Japanese-Americans in assembly centers and relocation camps in California, Oregon, and other Western states. For additional information about using images in the collection, contact the SJSU Special Collections Department."
• From Confinement to College: Video Oral Histories of Japanese American Students in World War II more... less... "Video oral histories with Japanese Americans who were students during World War II and their first-hand accounts of being incarcerated and leaving internment camps to attend college. These interviews also document the impact that these students’ wartime experiences had on their later commitments to certain causes and organizations such as the NSRCF (Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund)."
• George Hoshida Collection more... less... "The online collection of George Hoshida (1907-1985) includes 260 drawings and watercolors drawn from his visual diary covering his incarceration for the duration of World War II in the Kilauea Military Camp and Sand Island in Hawai'i, in Justice Department internment camps at Lordsburg and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in WRA camps in Jerome, Arkansas and Gila River, Arizona." Japanese American National Museum
• Helen Valeska Bary: Labor Administration and Social Security: A Woman's Life
• Henry Sugimoto Collection more... less... "The online collection of Henry Sugimoto (1900-1990) includes 137 paintings dating from the 1930s to the 1950s. Sugimoto's works depict Arkansas, California, New York, Mexico, and France. His paintings of Fresno detention center in central California and Jerome and Rohwer concentration camps in Arkansas illustrate clearly his feelings about internment." Japanese American National Museum
• Images of Internment: Dorothea Lange's World War II photos
• Interrupted Lives: Japanese American Students at the University of Washington more... less... Primary source materials used in the digital exhibit "Interrupted Lives: Japanese American Students at the University of Washington"
• Jack Iwata Collection more... less... "he online collection of photographer Jack Iwata includes 166 photographs and copy negatives taken at Manzanar and Tule Lake concentration camps between 1942 and 1945." Japanese American National Museum
• Japanese-American Internment Collections more... less... "From the spring of 1942 through 1946, the United States government relocated over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry from Pacific coast states to War Relocation Centers. These collections document the relocation experience with an emphasis on San Joaquin County evacuees."
• The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement more... less... "In 2011, the Bancroft Library was awarded its first grant by the National Park Service's Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program. What started as a two-year digitization project flourished into a now multi-grant digitization project digitizing nearly 250,000 primary source materials that focuses on Japanese-American experience during WWII. The selections consist of institutional records, personal documents, and formats like moving-image film, audio, maps, and artworks. Access to the digitized content is provided by the Online Archive of California, and Calisphere."
• Japanese American Relocation Collection more... less... Photos and other materials related to relocation of Japanese Americans during WWII.
• Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) more... less... "contains thousands of Japanese American internment primary source materials"
• Japanese American Relocation during World War II more... less... "The collection consists of correspondence, magazines, newspaper and journal articles clippings, and publications from the War Relocation Authority, religious groups, as well as civil liberties organizations. It also has a series of correspondence to and from Occidental President Remsen Bird's office, and meeting minutes and other publications from the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council." Provided by Occidental College Library
• Japanese American World War II Incarceration (Claremont Colleges) more... less... "The collections represent approximately 26.3 linear feet of archival materials and cover an enormous range of subjects central to Japanese-American life before, during, and after World War II, including immigration, the California Alien Land Acts of 1913 and 1920, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), organizations supporting Japanese Americans, redress, sports, and the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Camps represented include Jerome, Gila River, Rohwer, Manzanar, Poston, Amache/Granada, Heart Mountain, and more. Among the archives are letters, photographs, camp publications, papers of camp administrators and counselors, certificates and other documents to prove citizenship, and school yearbooks."
• Japanese Internment Camp Collection (ASU) more... less... "The internment of Japanese-American's during World War II continues to be a painful memory for many of our citizens, but now the stories available in this collection make vivid the daily life of this exiled community and their extraordinary patriotism and sacrifice. This collaboration between the ASU Library Arizona Collection and the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records started in 2005 and we thank them for their assistance in compiling and digitizing over 5,000 pages of bi-lingual camp newsletters, which are now text searchable in monthly cumulations. The collection includes bilingual internment camp newsletters and photographs of the Rivers camps in Arizona."
• Library of Congress: Images: Ansel Adams: Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar more... less... "In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's most well-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II. For the first time, digital scans of both Adams's original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side allowing viewers to see Adams's darkroom technique, in particular, how he cropped his prints."
• Library of Congress Collection: Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers, 1942 to 1946 more... less... "Produced by the Japanese-Americans interned at assembly centers and relocation centers around the country during World War II, these newspapers provide a unique look into the daily lives of the people who were held in these camps. They include articles written in English and Japanese, typed, handwritten and drawn. They advertise community events, provide logistical information about the camps and relocation, report on news from the community, and include editorials."
• Mori Shimada Collection more... less... "This collection, originally in scrapbook form, features 108 photographs of friends, family, and social and sporting events in Heart Mountain concentration camp taken by Mori Shimada between 1942 and 1945. Shimada was twenty-two years old when he and his family were forcibly removed from their home in Santa Clara, California to Heart Mountain." Japanese American National Museum
• Stanley Hayami Diary more... less... "Stanley Hayami (1925-1945) was a student from Los Angeles who attended high school at the Heart Mountain Concentration Camp in Wyoming. Hayami left Heart Mountain in June 1944 to join the U.S. Army and was killed in combat in Northern Italy on April 23, 1945, while trying to help a fellow soldier. He was nineteen years old. "
• Tom Oishi: Rosie The Riveter World War II American Home Front Oral History Project more... less... "Native of Richmond, Oishi grew-up on the southside of town where his family operated a carnation nursery. He was part of the first group of workers to be employed by the Kaiser shipyards. Upon graduation from Richmond High, Oishi received training to become a welder and began work at Kaiser by late 1941. All of Richmond's Japanese families, including the Oishis, were forced to move to the Tanforan Race Track in San Bruno, where they stayed until being relocated to internment camps throughout the west. The Oishi were interned at Topaz, Utah. Oishi found he was able to work in a nursery in Chicago during the war, and was among the first in his family to return to their nursery in Richmond in 1944. In 1945 Oishi was drafted by the army and served at P.O.W. camps in Virginia and California. He continued to work in the nursery Commerce, Industry, and Labor up until the 1990s. Discusses: growing up in Richmond's Japanese community, attending various city schools, the cut flower Commerce, Industry, and Labor, work at the shipyards, the Japanese internment, life after the war."
• Tosh Yasutake and Mitsuye May Yamada Discuss Tosh’s Decision to Join U.S. Army more... less... "Tosh Yasutake is a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American born in 1922 in Seattle. His sister Mitsuye May (Yasutake) Yamada is a Nisei born in Japan in 1923. Their father, Jack Kaichiro Yasutake, was employed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as an interpreter for twenty years. On December 7, 1941, the father was arrested and interned as an enemy alien at a Department of Justice camp, along with other Issei (first generation) community leaders. Tosh attended the University of Washington before being removed from Seattle with his mother, May, and two brothers in spring 1942. The family was held at Puyallup Assembly Center, Washington, and then the Minidoka, Idaho, incarceration camp. Tosh worked as a hospital attendant and laboratory technician in Minidoka. In the first interview excerpt with Tosh, he explains his decision to volunteer for the U.S. Army in March 1943. In the second excerpt, Tosh and May recount how they received permission to travel from Minidoka to visit their father at U.S. Department of Justice internment camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico, before Tosh reports for duty. While serving as a medic with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Tosh was wounded during combat in southern France in 1944. May left Minidoka to attend college in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1944, their mother and younger brother joined their father at the Crystal City, Texas, internment camp."
• University of Utah - Topaz Oral Histories more... less... "The Topaz oral history project collection interviews were conducted by Sandra Taylor, of the University of Utah's Department of History. The interviews were part of her research for Jewel of the desert: Japanese American internment at Topaz (1993). Also included are correspondence, news clippings, published and unpublished articles, and research files.; The Topaz oral history project collection contains transcripts of tapes, and related transcription materials of a collection of 70 oral history interviews which document the lives of Japanese Americans who were interned at the Topaz, Utah, camp. The interviews were conducted by Sandra Taylor of the University of Utah"
• Walter Muramoto Collection more... less... "This collection of 361 black and white photographs taken by Walter Muramoto depict daily life in camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. Muramoto and his family were incarcerated in Rohwer from 1942 to 1945. " Japanese American National Museum
• The War Relocation Authority more... less... "This collection focuses on The War Relocation Authority and The Incarceration of Japanese-Americans During World War II. It includes 14 photographs, 62 documents comprising 911 pages, a chronology of events spanning the years 1941-1998, excerpts from Oral Histories, and Lesson Plans." Harry S. Truman Library & Museum
• Witness: Japanese Internment more... less... "In February 1942 all Japanese Americans were ordered to internment camps. They were viewed as a threat to US security during World War II." From the BBC
• World War II - Documents (Illinois State Library) more... less... "This collection contains United States and Illinois government documents on subjects relating to World War II, including: rationing and conservation, women's work, civil defense, the Japanese interment, the development of the United Nations, and more." Collection provided by: Illinois State Library
• World War II Films more... less... "The World War II Films digital collection consists of short films and news clips, primarily in black and white, documenting Allied operations and activities during WWII. In addition to footage of campaigns in Europe and in the Pacific, the films document activities on the homefront, including the efforts of African American colleges and farmers, the relocation and internment of Japanese civilians, and the victory garden program sponsored by the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense. The films are housed in Ball State University Libraries Educational Resources Collections."
• World War Two - Japanese-American Internment - Old Magazine Articles

Japanese Relocation (ca. 1943)

U.S. government-produced film defending the World War II internment of Japanese American citizens.

Video from Prelinger Archives https://archive.org/details/Japanese1943

Why I Love a Country that Once Betrayed Me

"When he was a child, George Takei and his family were forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, as a “security" measure during World War II. 70 years later, Takei looks back at how the camp shaped his surprising, personal definition of patriotism and democracy."

http://www.ted.com/talks/george_takei_why_i_love_a_country_that_once_betrayed_me

Book Sources: Japanese Internment - WWII

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Book Loves Reviews

Diverse and Life-Changing Reads

Review: The Bookshop Book (Jen Campbell)

Genre: Memoir

Rating:  ★★★★★

From the oldest bookshop in the world, to the smallest you could imagine, The Bookshop Book examines the history of books, talks to authors about their favourite places, and looks at over three hundred weirdly wonderful bookshops across six continents (sadly, we’ve yet to build a bookshop down in the South Pole).

The Bookshop Book is a love letter to bookshops all around the world.

Every bookshop has a story.

We’re not talking about rooms that are just full of books. We’re talking about bookshops in barns, disused factories, converted churches and underground car parks. Bookshops on boats, on buses, and in old run-down train stations. Fold-out bookshops, undercover bookshops, this-is-the-best-place-I’ve-ever-been-to-bookshops.

Meet Sarah and her Book Barge sailing across the sea to France; meet Sebastien, in Mongolia, who sells books to herders of the Altai mountains; meet the bookshop in Canada that’s invented the world’s first antiquarian book vending machine.

And that’s just the beginning.

I truly enjoyed this wonderful compilation of bookstores around the world. Reading this while living in London was such a unique experience because not only did I discover so MANY great bookstores, but I get to bring home a lot of memories (and books!) with me.

Each bookstore is a unique portal into a different part of literature and this book will increase your love for books, and maybe be the push you need to get you out of your comfort zone and visit all of the amazing bookstores mentioned in this book!

Give this a try and you’ll be amazed at the effort booklovers everywhere put into reducing illiteracy and spreading the love of books!

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3 Superb Santa Clara University Essay Examples

What’s covered:, essay example 1 – ethical dilemma (food waste).

• Essay Example 2 – Ethical Dilemma (Healthcare in Latin America)
• Essay Example 3 – Why Santa Clara?
• Where to Get Feedback on Your Essay

Santa Clara University is a private Jesuit university in California. The acceptance rate is around 50%, so it’s important to write strong essays to help your application stand out. In this post, we’ll go over some essays real students have submitted to Santa Clara University and outline their strengths and areas for improvement. (Names and identifying information have been changed, but all other details are preserved).

Alexandra Johnson , an expert advisor on CollegeVine, provided commentary on this post. Advisors offer one-on-one guidance on everything from essays to test prep to financial aid. If you want help writing your essays or feedback on drafts, book a consultation with Alexandra Johnson or another skilled advisor. 

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized. 

Read our SCU essay breakdown for a comprehensive overview of how to write this year’s supplemental essays.

Prompt: At SCU, we push our students to be creative, be challenged, and be the solution. Think about an ethical dilemma that you care about that our society is currently facing. This can be something happening in your local community or more globally. How can an SCU education help you prepare for and address this challenge? (150-300 words) 

When I am not studying or filling out college applications, you can find me in the kitchen trying a new recipe and experimenting with ingredients. Spending so much time cooking made me aware of the massive amount of food waste that I produce. So I changed my behavior; I now plan ahead the recipes I make to ensure that all ingredients will be used, only buy what I need for the week, and freeze leftovers for future use. Making these changes wasn’t easy. It makes me wonder how much harder it must be for larger institutions to scale up these solutions.

In my research of Santa Clara University, I came across the Food Recovery Network at SCU that aims to fight the same concerns I experience while in the kitchen. This community of dedicated students proves that there are possible ways to reduce food waste on large scales. I can contribute to help address this familiar challenge by involving myself with this network and the courses SCU offers in sustainable food systems. Additionally, SCU leads by example; their efforts in attaining food sustainability are inspiring to me as a potential student. They purchase locally grown produce and follow the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program for their dining services. Broadening its impact, SCU has made it a goal to become a zero-waste campus aligning with my values of sustainability to aid our environment. A university that shows this much care to attaining sustainable food options and reducing food waste is the perfect place for me to help be the solution.

What the Essay Did Well

This writer did a great job choosing an ethical dilemma to write about that they care about and that uniquely connects to Santa Clara University, which is exactly how you want to respond to a global issues prompt . Based on the anecdote about cooking at the beginning of the essay, it’s clear that food waste is an important ethical issue in the writer’s personal life. They describe working to change their behavior to address the issue after discovering that it was a problem through something they love, cooking! It was smart of the writer to use this as an opportunity to share a hobby that they may not have had the opportunity to include elsewhere on their application. 

The essay is also clearly written and does a great job of providing details about why the writer wants to go to Santa Clara University. The second half of the essay answers the part of the prompt that asks: “How can an SCU education help you prepare for and address this challenge?” This half is written like a “Why This College?” essay, but narrowly focused on the college’s connection to the ethical dilemma discussed in the essay.

In a “Why This College?” essay, it’s important to use specific details. That’s exactly what the writer does here when they mention the Food Recovery Network and SCU’s adherence to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program. Mentioning these programs shows that the student has done their research on Santa Clara University, which goes a long way in showing that they want to be a student there!

Finally, the ethical dilemma that the writer chose is great. This essay shows that an interesting and unique topic doesn’t have to be so specific that the reader has never heard of it; rather, it’s something specific that the reader has a personal connection to and could connect to their interest in attending Santa Clara. 

What Could Be Improved 

One part of this essay that the writer could improve is the ending. They share an ethical issue they care about, why they care about that issue, and what the school is doing to address the issue. Then they end with, “A university that shows this much care to attaining sustainable food options and reducing food waste is the perfect place for me to help be the solution.” This response answers the prompt; however, the writer could have strengthened the ending by connecting SCU’s work back to the writer’s own future and goals. 

An alternate conclusion sentence could mention how the writer plans to use the knowledge that SCU would give them to address food waste. This would allow the writer to remain the focus of the essay, rather than the focus at the end being on SCU’s programs to tackle food waste. Because while this is an essay about the student’s views and ethics, it’s also a chance for the student to share more about themself with the admissions officers. 

Finally, the writer is currently under the word count. While it is okay to be under the word count, the writer could use this space to improve their conclusion. They could mention any ideas that they have for how SCU could better address the problem of food waste. Currently, what the school does well is included, which is great. However, if the writer chose to share their own ideas at the end, then it would help the reader better imagine a few ways that the writer will be a positive addition to the Santa Clara community. 

Prompt 2 – Ethical Dilemma (Healthcare in Latin America)

“Coca-cola da más vida”, but does it really? In towns like San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico coca-cola can be found easier, at relative cost, and safer to drink than water leading to high levels of consumption. As imagined, such consumption has caused devastating health effects throughout Chiapas. In these under-resourced communities, the diabetes crisis has become a leading cause of death and its treatment has brought upon ethical dilemmas. Clinicians in these areas are forced to make life-saving or fatal decisions with minimal resources or support. With having family members in Mexico, the thought of losing them due to simple issues like dosage amounts is truly heartbreaking. Santa Clara’s fast-paced quarter system will allow me to pursue a major in bioengineering, biomolecular track, and a minor in Spanish and public health. Classes like Evidence-Based Public Health, Engineering World Health, and Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Design I & II, will provide me with a strong foundation for truly understanding the issues behind our world’s leading health problems and effectively advocating and helping to engineer new medicines in the US and Latin America. Also, the university’s strong focus on global engagement will allow me to go on cultural immersions to widen my perspective and engage in international internships to deepen my understanding of healthcare and medical research around the globe. Besides the amount of opportunity available for me overseas, the Santa Clara campus is oozing with its own. I can become involved with on-campus bioengineering research on topics such as protein engineering or utilize Handshake and the Career Center to apply for internships in Silicon Valley. No matter where my experiences at Santa Clara take me, I will apply the knowledge I received to create a world where we are one step closer to eliminating the medical disparities between us.

This “global issues” essay starts off with a strong hook, which immediately draws us in to the student’s topic. The level of detail, such as the specific entry point of San Cristóbal de las Casas and its unique problems, are both effective ways to make this essay shine out of a sea of other responses, right from the very beginning. Additionally, the author’s distinctive approach to answering the question helps present them as a passionate and sophisticated storyteller with deep knowledge and care for this issue.

The student also does a great job of citing highly specific details throughout their response. For example, naming specific classes that will set this applicant up for success is a great touch that shows this student did their homework on what at Santa Clara would aid them in their journey of solving this issue. They also show an understanding of Santa Clara’s bigger picture values, such as global engagement, which demonstrates that the author can think on both a large and small scale.

While this student does a great job of considering everything from particular classes to studying abroad, they also don’t limit themselves to imagining their life on campus. They also think beyond their college career, when they talk about utilizing Santa Clara’s alumni network and connections to position themselves well for internships and postgrad life. Colleges like to know that you have future plans, and will one day be an alum that they can be proud of. This student shows them that they’re prepared to take full advantage of their Santa Clara education not only on campus, but throughout their life.

The flow of this essay could be improved with the help of an editor or peer reviewer. Some of the sentences are awkward, and there are some grammar errors present. For example, “…will allow me to pursue a major in bioengineering, biomolecular track, and a minor in Spanish and public health” should read “…and minors in Spanish and public health.”

Additionally, in the line “Classes like Evidence-Based Public Health, Engineering World Health, and Medicinal Chemistry and Drug Design I & II, will provide me with a strong foundation for truly understanding the issues behind our world’s leading health problems and effectively advocating and helping to engineer…” there should be a “for” after “advocating.”

While these flaws don’t ruin the essay whatsoever, polishing it up would present the student in an even better light, as a student who is not only talented, but also detail-oriented. Finally, also on a structural level, this essay would look cleaner on the page if it were split into at least three paragraphs. Having just one big block of text is a little hard on the eyes, and using multiple paragraphs also makes the presentation of your ideas more organized, as it clearly shows your reader where one point ends and the next one starts.

For example, they could have one paragraph focused on introducing the issue, one on the academic resources at Santa Clara, and one on the university’s value of global engagement. That structure would allow the reader to focus on each point, one at a time, rather than getting all the information dumped on them at once.

Prompt 3 – Why Santa Clara?

When I started my college search, I could only envision myself at a big college 2 hours away from home. Santa Clara University was the school that changed it all. The moment my eyes landed on the site, everything clicked. From the small class sizes that would allow me to engage and form connections with my classmates and professors to the large state of California that is filled with opportunity; it all seemed to attract me. Though it’s a school small in size, the spirit and clubs are large in number. From clubs like Bread Lovers Club to Biomedical Engineering Society, the variety and diversity entices me. There are clubs like Together for Ladies of Color, where I will be an indispensable member who empowers the women around me. Furthermore, weekly Sunday mass will help me strengthen my connection with God and develop a good headspace for the new week so I can work hard and thrive in my classes and outside commitments. Overall, I will be a Bronco that works hard not only for herself but to better the community around her. I am devoted to becoming a Bronco alumnus working to change the world ad majorem dei gloriam.

This prompt is an example of the “Why This College?” prompt, which is best answered by doing some research and providing specific reasons for why the school you’ve chosen is the school for you. This applicant does an excellent job of answering that question, by talking about both academic considerations, like class sizes, and clubs and extracurricular activities, like Bread Lovers Club or attending Mass.

Through the examples provided, we get to know the author a bit more, which is another strength of this essay. Rather than only talking about aspects of Santa Clara that would appeal to anyone, this writer shows her unique interests through her selection of more personal aspects of the school. From this essay, we learn that the student is a woman of color who also attends church, loves bread, and is passionate about improving herself and her community. This means that the admissions committee isn’t just learning about what she loves about their school; they’re also learning what Santa Clara might gain by admitting her.

One thing that would strengthen this essay is being as specific about the academic draw of Santa Clara as the non-academic side, as that would give us an even clearer sense of the student’s personality. The prime location and small class sizes are attractive aspects of Santa Clara, but they don’t give us much information about the applicant. Almost anyone would be excited about these benefits, so they’re too general for this kind of essay.

In the same vein, these facts are self-evident, in the case of the location, or something that can be found at many other colleges, in the case of the small class sizes. This kind of prompt exists so that you can show off your research skills and deep knowledge of that school. Admissions teams read countless essays that talk about the most common compelling attributes of their school, so instead try to choose elements that will make you stand out as an applicant who is both unique and engaged.

Additionally, this essay could benefit from an anecdote to anchor it. While the image of stepping on campus is powerful, it’s one shared by many applicants who have had the opportunity to tour. Even a sentence or two describing a more personal moment that connects the student to Santa Clara would help illustrate that her future plans are rooted in her current life or values.

For example, after the line “From clubs like Bread Lovers Club to Biomedical Engineering Society, the variety and diversity entices me,” she could say something like “During the pandemic, I went a little overboard with the breadmaking trend, so I designed my own bird feeder so I didn’t have to throw out the bits my family couldn’t finish. Santa Clara is just the place for me to continue making these kinds of quirky connections between my interests.”

This addition would put the writer over the word count, so she would have to make cuts elsewhere in the essay. That’s okay, though, as it’s better to include fewer details about the school, but take the time to explain your personal connection to them, then to just pack in as much as possible.

If you don’t have an anecdote that fits with the aspects of Santa Clara that appeal to you, consider imagining what your future on campus would look like and describing that. Solid images or ideas (for example, imagining some of the hymns you might sing in Mass), versus stated commitments, help admissions teams better picture you on campus, and create a more dynamic essay structure, even within the limited space allowed for these short supplements.

Finally, like in the previous essay, the student’s writing would flow more smoothly with a paragraph break or two. For example, starting a new paragraph with “Though it’s a school small in size” would make sense, as here, the writer is pivoting from talking about her initial draw to Santa Clara, to more specific features of the school that are intriguing to her.

Where to Get Feedback on Your Essay 

Do you want feedback on your Columbia University essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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