Everything you need is already inside you. It’s in your memories and in your natural responses to visiting those memories. Your essay is a story, and a conversation with that story. You’ve been telling stories your whole life.
There’s no ideal way you’re supposed to write this essay. It’s not about cracking the code of “what they want.” What they want is to know you, and that material comes from the details of your own life – stuff you already know inside and out.
We are on your side and we are genuinely curious about what you care about. You don’t have to sound “smart and professional”; that tone often leads to the opposite of what you want to accomplish. You have a voice of your own, and we’re here to help you find it.
Writing is rarely a linear process. We’ll explore ideas and memories that in turn lead to other ideas and memories. This is all part of the process (as a writer, I often have to remind myself of that). When you can relax into that exploration, we always find interesting, unexpected paths.
Often, students wonder if — out of all of the options available to them — they’ve picked the “right” one. Or they wonder if they chose the best possible approach to writing about it. But if you write from a place of curiosity and honesty, countless personal stories and ways of telling them can become excellent essays.
Students often worry about finding a BIG story. But the real subject is always you. Your readers are less interested in your winning goal or your first-place trophy; what they really care about is how you view the world around you. All you have to do is show them, through your own observations, something important to you, no matter how small.
We’re so conditioned to find the “correct” way to do things, but in this project, you’re actually trying to find out what you think. That’s not in any model essay you’ll find on the internet. It comes from exploring your own take on your own experiences. Those discoveries are what truly interest readers.
You don’t need a “brilliant” idea to get started. That kind of pressure is an easy recipe to get in your own way. An authentic essay might look very different from the polished five-paragraph essays you’ve written in school. Writing something real – in your voice – might feel like something you’re not allowed to do. But that is exactly what readers are hoping for.
