I am a college admissions essay editor on a part-time basis. I tend to do a lot of rewriting and editing when I help students with their college admissions essays because, honestly, some of the students write in vague, self-promoting, cliched ways that don't show strong writing skills and make them come off as self-promoting careerists who have been plotting their Harvard admission since they were 2 years old.

I am working with one girl now, and she is intelligent and energetic, but she is not so intelligent that she develops her ideas in enough depth or provides concrete details. And she repeatedly talks about her "passion" for this and her "passion" for that without explaining why she's passionate, or showing evidence of her passion. So I rewrote a good part of her essay using her facts and her basic ideas but the wording and deeper development and deeper analysis came from me.

So she changed a good part of it back to her original version, which is wordy, repetitive, superficial, self-promoting, undeveloped, etc. I am glad she wants her voice to come through, but at the same time, she is being thin-skinned and should learn from somone who is a better writer and just improive her writing skills. Rejecting legitimate criticism is not a recipe for skill improvement.

Should I stop working with this girl? I need the money, and, honestly, she is creating work for me by creating new writing problems for me to solve. Still, it is annoying having a high school student reject my professional writing advice just because her feelings are hurt.