Christine Gacharná

BA English, MA, journalism

Certified College & Career Counselor

Certified Professional Photographer

Certified Maxwell Method DISC Trainer & Consultant

College Admissions and Career Planning Consultant

Author: “RIGHT My College Application Essay”

“The 10-Step Guide to Navigating College Applications”

COMMUNICATE.

What are you trying to say? If you can't succinctly summarize your essay in 25 words or less, how can you expect to communicate those ideas to others?

NAVIGATE.

What we call “invisible writing.” The catch-22 is that most students don't learn this until college but first, you have to get in!

PUNCTUATE.^®

The polish that gives a writer credibility with a reader.

[Photo: 2016 Commencement Exercises, Baton Rouge Campus. All faculty were required to attend.]

My ah-ha moment happened as I was working with a dozen or so high school students on their college application essays.

WELL, WAIT. LET'S BACK UP A BIT.

At the time, I was an associate faculty member at the University of Phoenix teaching undergraduate COMM and English courses. [Photo: 2016 Commencement Exercises, Baton Rouge Campus. All faculty were required to attend.]

What I saw was students white-knuckling their way through a rough draft, concentrating most of their efforts on the mechanics of writing (grammar, spelling, and punctuation) without understanding the academics of academic writing.

Falling back onto the familiar muscle memory of “writing a rough draft” that got them through high school was not working for them at the undergraduate level—especially not at the UPOX. See, the thing about UOPX is that there are no Scantrons for exams; almost every assessment in every class is an academic essay.

When I would pull students aside, they could give me the answers to the questions I asked based on course readings and instruction, and this frustrated me, as I could see they were learning and I knew they were completing the readings and assignments and yet their knowledge wasn’t being properly measured in their grades.

As I paid more attention, I noticed that “testing” students via an academic essay brought up the muscle memory of frustration (in the self-proclaimed “bad writers”) and bad habits (in the self-proclaimed “good writers.”) I began to notice that students identified with these labels that had likely been assigned and affirmed long before high school.

My students could learn the material presented to undergraduates. They knew how to write. They simply didn’t have a solid foundation in academic writing.

Academic writing is any writing that fulfills a requirement for an assignment to convey ideas in ways that are descriptive, analytical, persuasive, or critical.

Its purpose is to:

(1) demonstrate the writer’s understanding and synthesis of material and

(2) aid the reader while communicating complex concepts and ideas.

Academic writing needn’t be intimidating. Students are grateful and super relieved to learn that academic writing is not a draw-from-the-depths-of-your-soul effort.

Academic writing follows formulas.

Like learning how to drive, fly an airplane, or use a camera in manual mode, academic writing is a technical skill. Like all technical skills, academic writing can be learned and, with practice, eventually mastered. Expert instruction helps, and that’s where I come in.

It worked.

There’s no better way to master an art than to teach it, and that’s what happened to me as I was untangling this dilemma in my teaching job. I retraced my own learning of written English, Spanish, and journalism. I audited courses, and I poured over student essays from business, criminal justice, and nursing disciplines to identify patterns and common mistakes.

Then I rolled up my sleeves and got to work developing an effective way to teach the fundamentals of academic writing to help my dedicated students. I wanted to arm students with the tools for the job so they could get out of their own way and focus instead on the complex concepts and ideas they were learning in all of their classes. I wanted undergraduates campuswide to be able to demonstrate understanding and synthesis of learning in the essays they wrote, and to earn good grades.

I showed my students the steps in the writing process and how to let that tool do the work for them.
I created the Steps in the RIGHTING Process to guide students as they worked their way through a process that had seemed nebulous and arbitrary before.
I introduced the Pareto Principle (that’s how I got students to buy-in) and I showed them the 80/20 Rule of RIGHTING that I created to help them measure their work.

I watched as faces lit up with relief when I’d tell them they didn’t have to draw from the depths of their soul to write the great American novel. I noticed the discomfort in faces who were now being challenged to abandon a system of innate talent that has worked quite well for them up to this point — these students were and remain my most challenging students, as the ones I’ve been able to reach demonstrate tremendous growth, promise, and polish of truly the great writers and communicators our world needs.

I do not believe writing is a “soft skill.” I believe writing is a technical skill that serves as an essential component in an interconnected and global economy.

Academic writing follows formulas. The steps in the writing process are the foundation for applying those formulas and, when used with the Steps in the RIGHTING Process and the 80/20 Rule of RIGHTING, the writing becomes the easy part.

My students were successful—so successful, in fact, that it wasn’t long before my leadership recognized their progress. I was promoted to Lead Faculty for Communications and was responsible for spearheading policy and efforts to streamline the evaluation and assessment of student writing across campus. With all instructors using this method for grading student writing, our campus began to model as a team the cross-curriculum writing instruction that produces successful communicators.

Interestingly and surprisingly, I found it quite easy to get my campus peers on board with this instruction and evaluation. I attribute this largely to relief, as many instructors, especially STEM instructors, had very little patience with complicated rubrics for grading student work. My 80/20 Rule of RIGHTING freed them from the resentment of having to double as “English teachers” and go going back to being the content expert teaching their students new and complex concepts and ideas.

Voilà.

MEANWHILE, I HAD TWO HIGH SCHOOLERS AT HOME, A SENIOR AND A JUNIOR ON TRACK TO GRADUATE A YEAR EARLY, PLUS MY KIDS’ FRIENDS AND MY FRIENDS‘ KIDS.

Eventually, it dawned on all of them that they had a college writing instructor in their midst, and before I knew it, I was knee-deep in reading college application essays.

Just like with my university students, I immediately saw the patterns, students clearly not using the steps in the writing process and unable to guide or measure their own progress. How could I tell? Well, the essays would begin and end at “rough draft,” for starters, gave no consideration to the reader, showed limited to no organization, and most were written using the wrong rhetorical mode and organizational method, both tenets of academic writing at the undergraduate level.

And that’s when I had my ah-ha moment.

In 2017, I created essaypalooza! to share my time and talents as a successful college writing instructor with high school students looking to land acceptance letters from colleges and universities. I wanted to be sure that once they got in, they were armed with the knowledge of how to succeed in academic writing at the undergraduate writing—because college.

In 2019, I started approaching high school administrators to get in front of high school juniors before they started writing their college application essays. What I was told time and again was wow, this is great, and it’s great what you’re doing for high school seniors and all, but what you’re talking about here is higher-level curriculum development and what we’d really like is to get you in front of our sixth graders before they take their SOLs.

Then 2020 happened and during lockdown, I expanded as ESSAY CURE to help students of all grade levels from all backgrounds to understand the framework for academic writing that grows and develops with the student from elementary to middle to high school to undergraduate courses and into their adult lives. My goal is to create a solid foundation for effective communication, because while not all undergraduates are English majors, all college graduates write. Students do not need to be innately “good writers” to learn how to effectively communicate within their discipline — they simply need the instruction for confidence and encouragement to continue the practice. When students receive this consistently, across the board, their skills as an educated communicator improve and polish.

Communicate. Navigate. Punctuate.^® is the trademark of my writing instruction. I used the highly technical skill of teaching student pilots how to fly as my inspiration and model to transform the vague and nebulous idea of writing into the practice of a technical skill.

I’m Christine.

First, I started an online course. Then COVID happened and high school students burned out on online courses.

So I wrote a book and became a writing consultant, but there's so much more to the college application process than just the essay.

So I wrote a workbook to help parents and students navigate the college application process. I discovered the Student/Career Report from Maxwell DISC and did a deep dive into how it could help my students, and then earned my certification as a Maxwell DISC Trainer & Consultant so that all of my students receive this benefit.

Now I'm finishing my coursework in College Admissions & Career Planning Consultant and anticipate certification in 2024 by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC.)

Back when reading news on paper was still a thing, I was the editor-in-chief of my campus newspaper and an award-winning writer and photographer. I hold a BA in English, an MA in journalism, I'm a Certified Professional Photographer, and my work has appeared everywhere from local newspapers to Time magazine (twice!)

I taught English in Tokyo for three years and for six years, I taught undergraduate COMM & English courses. I was promoted to Lead Faculty for Communication and responsible for streamlining the teaching and evaluation of student writing. I know this stuff backward, forward, inside-out, and upside down.

Looking for help with the college application process? Our programs cover college and career counseling as well as professional academic writing instruction to help with Common App and supplemental essay writing. We work with students looking to deliver an exceptional valedictorian address for their professional portfolio. We help undergraduates who have lost their way with transfer options, applications, and essays, and we serve graduate and professional school applicants by showcasing their achievements in a personal statement that encompasses the many facets of their accomplishments.

Schedule a Parent/Student Discovery Call to learn more!

Carlos

Christine's husband, Carlos Gacharná loves his day job — which is a good thing, because we need him to continue working it as he’s our primary source of intel for all of the flying analogies we use to teach students about the technical properties of writing.

Communicate. Navigate. Punctuate.^® was born from one of his flights where his wife was goofing off, amusing herself in taking photos from the Right Seat in crazy-cool light of a wicked thunderstorm. It's kind of a funny story in hindsight. Maybe one day we'll tell the story on video so you can see it.

Carlos pays crazy attention to detail and is our Copy Chief Editor and CFO.

Carlos holds a BS in history from the United States Air Force Academy and an MBA from Touro University. After completing Undergraduate Pilot Training in 1996, he served 20+ years in the U.S. Air Force, flying the C-9 Nightingale, the C-141 Starlifter, the C-17 Globemaster III (secretly his favorite airplane) as well as the obligatory “flying a desk” staff tour at the Pentagon. As a private pilot, he flew FAA Part 91 as a Citation 550 Captain and FAA Parts 91 and 135 in a variety of King Airs. These days, he’s been an A320 and now a 787 First Officer for “one of the big three” commercial airlines.

Beth

With a voice dripping with Southern belle, Beth McLees is our resident expert on all things etiquette — she has the pedigree, Charm School credentials, and college experience to warrant our complete trust.

Beth holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Sociology (double major) from the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), a master's degree in counseling with an emphasis in career counseling, an English as a Second Language (ESL) Certification, an EC-4 Texas Teaching Certificate with experience teaching English to 4th-12th grades, AND a Lindamood-Bell Certification. That last certification enables Beth to use a specific skill set with students who have auditory, visual, or sensory processing disorders such as dyslexia, ADHD, and autism and she serves as our Student Support Liaison.

In her free time, she helps organize and train individuals and teams to run marathons. She has completed one marathon, three halves, the Army 10-Miler, and has personally raised tens of thousands of dollars for children born with disabilities. A former Ole Miss Rebelette, she’s an she is an unabashed Rebels fan in all circumstances — well, that is, unless Ole Miss is playing Georgia. Her baby girl is a Georgia Bulldog graduate, so Beth softens a bit around Georgia, but never for any other reason, nor for any other SEC team. She and Carlos are fierce rivals when Ole Miss plays LSU.

Monty

Monty Phan was a full-time newspaper reporter and editor back when reading news on paper was still a thing. He worked in the Wildcat newsroom with Christine, and, as Christine remembers it, his favorite time of day was the on-deadline crunch when one of the flunky news desk reporters returned with takeout (Monty was a sucker for Boston Market chicken and mashed potatoes.) He graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arizona, where, for his first 3½ years, he studied engineering but switched majors because anyone could see that mid-1990s technology jobs were a dead end and that the world obviously needed more writers. (SWIDT?) He ascended to editor-in-chief, met the woman he would soon marry, and has been writing ever since.

After nearly a decade at the Arizona Republic and [New York] Newsday covering entertainment, video games, technology, and business, he quit to be an at-home Dad. He freelances from their home in San Diego, writing about technology and regularly contributing to a fantasy football website.

Monty is both an ESSAY CURE Coach and Editor.