Remember being in the sixth grade, and your teacher decides to make your class play one of those dreadful ice breaker games? You know, the ones where you go around the room, stating your name along with some irrelevant fact about yourself. The exercise typically reaps not much more than half a dozen "um's" and "I don't know's," from the mouths of almost everyone in the room, along with a whole bunch of red faces. Well, that's the gist of what writing a college essay feels like. You're not so put on the spot, but you're still faced with the pressure of giving a concise blurb regarding something with semi-significance in your life, just like you would in a college essay. Although, no one ever tells you how difficult it is to write about yourself.
Your college essay is a collection of words strung together on a page that will—among other things—ultimately determine your entry into college. (No pressure, right?)
Going into your senior year of high school, you'll be given a list of prompts to choose from, that'll serve as your outline for what story you're going to tell the admissions committee at all your top choice colleges. Now, even if you would consider yourself a good writer, you never realize the difficulty level of writing an essay about yourself, compared to that of writing an essay on virtually anything else.
The reason it's so much harder to be your own muse when it comes to writing, is because you are simply too attached to the subject, because, well, you are the subject. Most essays you write are a polished, final product comprised of all the research you've done on a particular person, place, idea, etc. They are more or less easier to write because most often, all the information you have gathered on the topic comes from a second or third hand source. In your college essay, the only research you have to do is all in your head. As a result, it can be a lot harder to remove yourself from the information, and write down these personal events exactly how they happened.
Whether or not your story is gut-wrenching, deeply personal, or maybe even a tad bit humiliating, getting yourself to pull all that content out of your brain and into a word document can be rather stressful. Partly because, ultimately, you know it'll be scrutinized under the eyes of your english teacher, read by your parents at the table after dinner, maybe even your guidance counselor will look at it before you send it off. Taking any kind of personal blurb and putting it out there for others to see will have you second guessing your choice of words before you even put them to paper. It could even be argued that sending your college essay to a college isn't even the most stressful part, because in your mind, the admissions counselor reading your paper isn't even human, but some godlike force that'll admit you into college if the words you wrote down leave enough of an impact. Really, it's everyone else's feedback you're concerned about, even if they're the ones who don't determine whether or not you get into the school.
The solution? Better said than done, you must remove yourself from your own story, and tell it as if it is someone else's. Now, if your story is really as personal as most people say college essays are intended to be, this can be hard. There are details you'll want to remove and to change to make the story seem a little more flattering or maybe a little less embarrassing - don't. Your college essay is supposed to be an accurate representation of your persona, whether it be about an identity, background, or talent you may have. Don't censor yourself, and be as genuine as possible with your own story.
