Some Like it Long

or "Like. Long"

I submitted an application last week for a work summer internship. I checked the requirements online and saw that an essay was required. Sounds fun, I thought. I looked further and noticed that the essay had a limit of 2000 words. I can usually pound out 1500 words easily on a topic so I wasn’t stressed out. The only problem was that there was only twenty four hours left to submit in online. I sat down and two hours later I had something that I was proud of. It hit all of the required topics and I had bundled it neatly in a story.

I went back online and filled out the application and pasted my essay in the required area. A red warning started to flash on the screen. “YOU ARE OVER BY 6256” it blared at me. What? There was no way I was over by that much. I had word checked my paper before I submitted it. It was 1736 words. I tried to resubmit it by hitting enter again. The same red warning appeared, “YOU ARE OVER BY 6256”.

“What the cupcake?” I said out loud giving my screen a dirty look. (Okay, maybe cupcake wasn’t the exact word I used, but you get the idea.) What was the problem! I decided to look over the essay guidelines again. It did indeed say 2000. However, it did not say 2000 words. It said 2000 characters. That included punctuation.

“Cupcake!” I said again, but this time with much more force.

Well, no big deal, I thought. I am sure there are plenty of extra words hiding throughout the paper. I went through and took out any words that I didn’t think were necessary. I ran the paper through word check again. 1632 words. This wasn't going to be easy. I spent the next forty minutes cutting and slashing sentences that weren’t directly related to the topic. 1200 words.

How many more words would I have to cut? A friend of mine did the math. The essay had to be approximately 500 words. And that was if I was using mostly four letter words. At this point I had plenty of four letter words to use, just not ones that would help me. I cut out any descriptive words or adverbs. 900 words.

I know it is suppose to be this great challenge for a writer to cut out any extra information in a paper and just deliver the true meat of a story. I could rise to that challenge, I could make it happen. I went through again and started to substitute short words for long ones. 700 words. “Oh, a cupcake to your mother!” I said aloud. I spent another hour refining the paper cutting everything to the barest minimum I could imagine. 500 words.

Perfect! I filled out the online application again and pasted my newly trimmed and edited essay. “YOU ARE OVER BY 500” the computer screen replied back at me. What! I started to suspect the computer had it in for me. There was no way I could cut any more sentences, but I had worked so long on this project and I didn’t want to give up or start over. I looked over the essay again, my eyes squinting while my hand hovered over the delete button. There wasn’t a sentence that wasn’t needed. Then I realized what I had to do. I started cutting out any “The” that I saw. I was only over by 300 characters now.

What other words weren’t needed? Did I really need all of the “a” or “of” in a paper? They were sort of unnecessary, and plenty of other languages never used articles. I cut them all out. Soon I found myself cutting out verbs, punctuation, capitol letters. (I don’t think the capitol letters helped at all, but it made me feel productive). Finally, after all the alphabet carnage laid in my computer trash file, I once again tried to submit my application.

“Thank you for your submission! We hope you enjoyed completing this application and we will contact you soon!”

“Go eat a cupcake!” I yelled. I read over what I had finally submitted. It wasn’t so much an essay anymore. It was this coarse, carnal drumbeat poem. I felt like I should read it loudly by a fire. All of the ideas that I wanted to include were there, but that was pretty much it. I imagine when they read it, they will picture me in a loincloth , huddled with a crayon, scratching out my first words on a piece of animal leather.

“Me. Costa Rica. Coffee grows. Man Lives.”