By A. J. Henry
In 2016 the Chief Executive, Mary Curnock Cook of the UK based Universities and Colleges Admission Service released a profile of opening lines by applicants for college admission. The candidates were asked to write the reasons for continuing further education; what interests spurred them to make the decision. The opening lines revealed an overuse of time-worn platitudes and a general lack of originality.
The challenge is in taking hackneyed phrases and adding novelty following the Edward George Bulwer-Lytton influence.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (for those who have never heard of him) is somewhat infamously remembered for the opening lines to his novel ‘Paul Clifford’ published in 1830: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is an annual competition for writers to submit their best, miserable opening lines.
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/index.html
Here are the top five college admission statements written in the Bulwer-Lytton style.
1. From a young age I have been fascinated by…bones, especially the ones in a museum because even though they look dry and stink a bit, they can tell us what happened in the old world of humans before printer inks came in cartridges, and I have observed in films about archaeological sites such as Jurassic Park where women’s shorts look sexier than ones found in shopping centres, and this must tell us a lot as to how they managed to get those big stones up so high.
2. For as long as I can remember I have… wanted a degree in Hospitality Management. I believe it will give people skills as a team leader and motivate the waiting staff you see in restaurants waiting round doing nothing, as well as filling the bowl next to the register with packets of mints while the golden cat with swinging paw is trashed because only a person with a degree would know to do that.
3. I am applying for this course because… Art History is significant in understanding visual communication, especially in discerning tattoos on women’s legs, which are highly influenced by the Renaissance period, and although tattoo art is understood to enhance attractive individuals, an overweight tyre technician smelling of body odour and Yeeros wanting a mandala on his corpulent hairy butt may be modernism, but I think it is disgusting.
4. I have always been interested in… drama because it has been around for 2000 years and I want to be a Drama major because I’m sick of being a Dram queen, and this course will be challenging, especially as actors scare me and I can’t find a word for it so I made one up: artifex scaenicusphobia.
5. Throughout my life I have always enjoyed… wondering what all those strange things are on the ground until I discovered coprolites, it was then I wanted to be Paleontologist to recognize the spirals and annular marking, or undigested food fragments in the fossilized fecal remains, I mean you wouldn’t want to accidentally tread on one.
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