Extolling the virtues of victim mentality in order to get into college.

In lie of an interesting Ted Talk video on "Trauma Essays" on college applications.

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You never really know what the algorithm will gift you sometimes. As an example, a few weeks ago a Ted Talk video showed up on my YouTube feed, with a rather interesting title:

There was a time when I used to binge a ton of Ted Talks, thinking I was actually learning something from these videos, although over time I realized that many of these presentations may require additional investigations, as a few of these talks such as the one about the “superman/power pose” increasing confidence did not seem substantiated by the literature. There’s likely to be a few additional examples, but that’s besides the point.

In any given case, I was a bit apprehensive as to what this talk would be about.

However, I found Tina Young’s talk to be rather pertinent in today’s climate. The video discusses her misgivings of being an Asian immigrant and having to conform in some ways to the new culture here in the West, while also facing several adversities and racist incidents, all of which she used in her college and job applications.

As such, Young has essentially “commodified her trauma” in these applications, or put another way has used her trauma as an entry point into various educational and professional positions. In doing so, it appears that she has come to detest this method of trauma-dumping that is come to be expected at universities via a “trauma essay”, or what was known as the “overcoming adversity” essay when I was applying to college. Young and I differ on these interpretations, which I will explain later on, but she’s not wrong in arguing that there’s been an greater emphasis on using weaponizing one’s trauma (in my words).

Commodification of trauma was something I mentioned in a prior post, and it’s an all-too real phenomenon occurring in all facets of life now.