psychgirl

I keep hearing the advice that in a college essay, you should "show" and not merely "tell" about something. This, I think, is much harder to do than it sounds!

It seems hard to find an event to describe that, on it's own, reveals a lot about me as a person. If I write something that is vivid and alive, it seems to lack any real information about me. To counter that, I've tried writing more reflective essays. These explain who I am, and yet they seem dull. I've then tried the middle ground- a 'showing' part leading into a reflection. The transition is hard to do, and I then feel like I'm wasting words on telling a story that doesn't reveal who I am.

So what to do? How do you go about this "showing not telling" in practice?

BookAddict

A "showing" part combined with a reflection that shows why that scene/event/picture/whatever describes you is best. It's hard for me to describe generically how you go about describing the two, but this thread has examples of good essays you can probably look at and see how they do it.

juicy08

I feel the EXACT same way...I think what I will be doing is the "showing" part leading to a reflection on who I am, with the transition being how I have changed to become a better person, etc, learned more about life, relating it back to the experience

Theotherguy

The idea is that the reader INFERS who you are by what you say. By "showing" instead of "telling", you merely give them examples without talking about your personality directly. The reader should be able to understand your own personality from the examples you give.

If you merely tell them about your personality, you are actually giving them less, because what the reader can infer from your examples in a few short words is much greater than the amount you could tell them directly in that number of words.

rainmama

psych and juicy - I've never done a college essay, but I have taught writing, and my sense is that you're both going about this in an appropriate way. The "show don't tell" adage is meant to prevent someone saying "I'm a very caring person and I want to change the world. I have participated in excellent ECs such as Model UN...." The author needs to give concrete examples or context for the reader to understand why the author has this goal (ideally a more specific goal than changing the world, of course!). I think it's good to give the reader a nice image to set the stage for the essay, and then explain how that image (experience, whatever) affected you or illustrates who you are (or will be). Don't let the "rules" completely hobble you!