Common app- Personal essay
College Essay writing reflection
Writing a college essay was difficult for me. I had a hard time deciding what I was going to write about and mainly how I was going to write it in under 650 words. I think that the biggest growth I had in the college essay writing experience was sitting down and just writing. Most of the time I procrastinate until the day before and end up with a writing piece that barely gets me a B. This time I wrote the first draft of my essay a few days (which is early for me) before it was due and then I consulted with a peer because I was stuck. My first draft was basically a story that had no meaning and didnt answer the prompt question I had chosen. After discussing and talking it out I was able to change prompts and alter my essay to answer the question. It was a difficult task because I dont usually write about myself, I typically write about a book or an article. After I got the essay to where I liked it, I asked someone to edit it and I took a step back. I was extremely over the word limit and I had a few awkward parts *refer back to goal 2 of the writing reflections. Some sentences did not make sense and others just needed some different words. For example, I wrote “Heading out on a lone stretch of road that has little traffic and just enough of an incline to get my heart rate going.” The comment on this sentence from the editor was, “this is not a sentence.” So I spent an hour rewriting sentences so that they were crafted better. Another difficult part of this process was cutting down my 1000 word essay to 650 words. I had to shorten and take out a lot of stuff. Some sections were so awesomely written that I really didn't want to cut the beautiful descriptive writing. However, I was able to end up with some sentences that I was pretty proud of, for example, “I’m so upset, tears run down my face creating pathways amongst sweat and dirt.” In the end I had a nicely written college essay that was 640 words. Looking back at the whole college essay writing process, I had a hard time getting going but in the end I worked hard to write an essay that will help me get into college and that I liked.