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STAGE 10: The Final Performance
After nine stages of auditioning, casting, and rehearsing, you are almost ready for the final performance! There are just a few things we need to polish first. In STAGE 10, we will:
Review your dress rehearsal essay draft
Revise transitions, word choice, and sentence structure to reflect your personality and voice
In the Spotlight: Personality and Polish
Just like you’ve done with previous drafts, you’ll read your dress rehearsal essay aloud to your coach. We’ll focus on the feedback you received way back in STAGE 8 and take a close look at how you’ve incorporated these suggestions into your latest draft. At this stage of the writing process, your essay might just need a few small adjustments. Then it will be ready for personality and polish. However, don’t get frustrated if you still have some bigger changes to make. Every essay develops in its own time! Your coach will continue to guide you through revisions
YOUR NEXT IN-MEETING ACTIVITY (WITH A COACH!) - PART I:
After you review your draft with your essay coach, you’ll put personality and polish in the spotlight. In STAGE 9, you learned some strategies to help your authentic voice shine through: relax; close the dictionary; choose your words wisely; and ask questions. Now we’ll put these strategies into action as we complete an ‘In the Spotlight’ activity. Our goal is to highlight words, phrases, and sentences that could use some polishing. Maybe some of your phrases don’t sound like how you would speak, or you notice that you have too many long sentences or weak verbs. These are small details we’ll shine a light on. It might seem like we’re being too ‘picky’ but trust us, a few revisions to your word choice and sentence structure can make all the difference.
During your next meeting, you will work on the “In the Spotlight” worksheet in your STAGE Essay Program Materials Google Drive folder.
Putting Your FInal Performance Together
In previous stages, you wrote your drafts with a “fresh start” approach. That’s because you were still shaping your essay and making big adjustments to content and structure. The final performance is different, though. At this point, you’re making smaller changes that don’t require major rewrites. Therefore, you and your coach will revise your dress rehearsal essay, which you can then copy and paste into a new final draft document. Just be sure that the final draft resolves any comments that were left for you on the dress rehearsal draft and includes ALL of your latest revisions.
Your next in-Meeting activity (with a coach!) - Part II:
Open your STAGE Essay Program Materials Google Drive folder and select the subfolder STAGE Essay Drafts. Click on the “STAGE 10” document to copy and paste your dress rehearsal draft. Make sure your chosen Common AppⓇ essay prompt is written at the top of the page!
Once your essay is complete, you can submit it using the button below, and then go ahead to your Curtain Call!
P.S. You may not reach that 100% polished draft during your first STAGE 10 meeting. That’s okay! If you need another meeting (or two!) to get everything looking just right, go ahead and book using the button below:
The STAGE Program
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