Past and Present Tense in College Essays
by Kathleen M.
You are working away on your college application essays and suddenly wonder – wait should I be using the past or present tense? Can I switch back and forth? What is correct?
Relax. The main goal in writing your personal essays is to communicate with your audience. You want the reader to get a sense of who you are. So the main decision when you are writing is whether or not your story is clear!
The rules are fairly simple. Use present tense of verbs
- If something is happening now
- If something happens regularly
Present tense:
I dip the brush into the bucket teal paint and lift it up, eyeballing the sketched lines I was meant to follow for the mural.
Every Wednesday afternoon, we meet near the local creek, our gloves and plastic bags at the ready to clean up litter and measure water salinity.
Use past tense for actions and events that happened in the past.
Past tense:
I remembered how the group danced across the stage, their movements blazing with energy and life.
But the confusion sets in once to you start to tell a story, and you realize that it may mean that you have to flip between present and past in order to be clear about what you used to think or how you used to behave as opposed to how you behave/think now.
Keep in mind that your main goal is clarity and communication with your reader. So if you need to work between present and past tense verbs, go ahead. But make sure you are using the correct verb forms and that the switching does not make your narrative more confusing.
Often the present tense is valued because it is the simplest form in which to say something. But some of the ideas and stories you are trying to tell may require more complication.
