why do girls always go for the bad verbs?

Like Sue, I complain bitterly to students about word choice, highlighting 16 instances of "is" in a paragraph and commenting briefly on "strong verbs." Or something equally hypocritical. This fall, writing my personal statement(s), I beat my wordy head against the wall of 500-700 word limits, and usually lost. Some of my excesses are style, but quite a few of them result from poor verb choice. For this exercise, I dug out the very first draft of a statement I abandoned entirely, and tried to reduce a couple sentences by way of using more precise verbs. 

OLD: It was obvious in the resulting silence that both of us were thinking the same embarrassed thought: “I thought I was talking to someone like me.” (26 words)

NEW: The resulting embarrassed silence revealed the thought in both our minds: “I thought I was talking to someone like me.” (20 words)

Cutting six words doesn't seem like a lot, but they add up. I don't need "was" or "were," and using a more explicit verb like "revealed" makes "obvious" superfluous. I toyed with leaving "same" in there, but I think the sentiment still comes through without it. 

OLD: There’s always a drive to focus on what is not work in our lives, to identify myself as a feminist, as a student, as an intellectual, as a dabbler in fiction, as anything and everything except the one thing which is absolutely necessary to my survival. (46 words)

NEW: I felt pushed to identify myself as a feminist, student, intellectual, or writer; as anything but the identity enabling all the others –my identity as a worker. (27 words)

Nineteen words is a lot. It helped that I made this statement apply directly to me, rather than everyone (who do I think I am, anyway, speaking for everyone?). Aside from that change, though, I don't need "there is" or "the one thing which is," both of which invite me to use six more words to elaborate.