Essay about overcoming anxiety disorder as a child. Good idea, or too risky?

College Essays
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Hi fellow students/parents. So I’m applying to UT Austin, and one of the prompts is “Describe a circumstance, obstacle or conflict in your life, and the skills and resources you used to resolve it. Did it change you? If so, how?”.

I’m considering writing about my childhood selective mutism. For those of you who don’t know, selective mutism is a severe social anxiety disorder that causes people to be essentially mute in certain settings. I’d write about my negative experiences with SM, of course, but I’d mainly talk about my transition out of it/what I took away from it. I’m confident that I could write a good essay about this.

However, I also know that mentioning psychiatric problems is generally a bad idea. I’m especially wary about mentioning SM, simply because it’s a social abnormality. It’s hard to explain, but there’s a certain stigma against people who aren’t socially normal. I don’t suffer from social anxiety anymore, and I’d convey that in my essay, but I’m still worried that college adcoms would perceive me differently because of such an essay. Also, it doesn’t help that the Virginia Tech shooter was diagnosed with selective mutism as a child. I might be being paranoid here, but that’s a well-known fact that seriously harms the reputation of people like me.

What are your thoughts? Any advice would be greatly appreciate. Thanks!

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B/c you are probably 17? you are still technically a child (in our binary child/adult system), so what isn’t clear is what age range you are talking about. If your SM was resolved while you were still in primary school, I wonder:

= does your recovery process best reflect your skills and resources? that is, how much of your was your recovery was down to your skills and resources (and what sort of skills would those be?) and how much was led by the adults in your life at that time (parents, therapists, doctors, etc)? Obviously, you were the one who went through the process, but from a college’s point of view what is interesting is what you- as a young adult- bring to the table.

= have you not had to deal with any obstacles or conflicts since primary school? What skills and resources do you have for dealing with obstacles in your life now?

= is your childhood SM still the most interesting thing about you? I know it’s pretty rare, so it may seem like it is the most unusual thing about you, but most unusual may not be the most interesting from the point of view of a college. Turn it around: let’s say you got lost in the woods when you were 6, but were rescued several days later. Huge deal in your childhood, obviously, and pretty unusual, but at 17 is it still the most interesting thing about the person you have become? It might be, if you have since developed and led woodland safety programs for kids, but probably not if it is just an (admittedly major) episode from your childhood.

= I have absolutely no expertise in SM, but associate it with anxiety disorders, which can be hard to fully resolve. Even if you have no continuing issues, imo opening it up could be risky. Not because of a “stigma against people who aren’t socially normal” but because colleges have a (legitimate, imo) concern that their students can handle college life- from academic pressures to the social pressures of living in a college community (and away from home/home supports).

fwiw, I very seriously doubt that the adcomm at UT is going to see ‘selective mutism’ and think of the VaTech shooter. It’s the kind of fact that you notice most if it has relevance to you. I was aware that there was a history of mental health issues and that he stopped treatment when he went to university and privacy laws meant that nobody knew of them- but didn’t know that the issue was SM, and I was living in VA (where there was massive coverage of the shooter) at the time. I suspect more people will think of the character Koothrappali on Big Bang Theory.

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Follow up: just read @techmom99’s post on a somewhat similar topic. If you do write about it, follow her advice:

.

In other words, the past should be the smallest part of the essay: how you apply what you brought from that experience going forward should be the core of the essay.

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@collegemom3717 Thanks for the detailed reply. For me, my experience with SM didn’t really shape my personality (well, it made me shy, but I wouldn’t mention that in my essay). However, it was one of my major hardships in life. I’ll give it some though…but you’re right, I’d have to convince the adcom that I’m not dysfunctional.

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@collegemom3717 Oh, and I forgot to mention age. I had selective mutism until the 5th grade, so it’s been a while. The thing is, I can’t think of any significant hardships I’ve been through besides that. I guess I could answer the prompt differently (like writing about an insignificant problem/obstacle that occurred more recently), but I want my essay to stand out.

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As a general rule of thumb, avoid focusing on anything that occurred before high school. S since you had SM until 5th grade, scrap this essay idea entirely.

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Rarity won’t necessarily make your essay stand out: remember that the focus is on “the skills and resources you used to resolve it” and how it changed you. Can you connect the dots between 8-10 year old AspiringSlacker and ~17 yo AspiringSlacker (beyond generally being shy) such that the significant majority of the essay relates to you now?

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I apologize if I’m a bit late, but I wanted to jump in and give my personal advice on this topic.

You do not need to show the adcoms a “significant hardship” in order to “stand out.” In fact, writing about something mundane and really diving deep into that moment, focusing on “the skills and resources you used to resolve it” and what you learned from it, is an awesome way to not only show your analytical writing but also that you think outside the box. For example, a friend of mine wrote an essay on not being a morning person and having to get up for before-school swim practices. She talked about the specific strategies she used to pump herself up in the mornings to get herself out of the house and how she was able to force herself to work hard in those early hours. She then went on to explain how she now applies those same strategies to break down other challenges and will herself to get through other things in her life that she dreads doing. What this essay showed was that she has a lot of self-control and motivation, that she doesn’t allow herself to be lazy even at a rough time of day. Those would be good qualities in a college student or employee. The essay wasn’t about a major hardship to which no one else in the world can relate, but it was a means of selling herself to the school, telling them the kind of student she could be. It also had some humor in it. I would assume that there were not hundreds of people who wrote about that same problem on the basis that it is so mundane, so I’d think it stands out in that sense.

Challenge essays aren’t really asking about the challenge and certainly are not being judged by how significant the hardship was. That’s very important to remember. Challenge essays should not spend much time focusing on the problem itself. They are asking about how you overcame the problem and what you learned from it. Ideally, they would include a selling point: your creativity, optimism, determination, thoughtfulness, etc.

Of course, SM was a major part of your childhood and surely you overcame a severe challenge. But can you put into words the exact way you went about fixing it on your own and how you can apply those skills to other situations. What does it say about your strengths as a person? Could your essay communicate that these skills will make you more successful moving forward? Since SM was back in elementary school, how have you already used those skills to overcome other obstacles (which obviously can be insignificant) since then?

I don’t think the problem with your idea lies in the stigma. I think the main issue is that you may be trying to force a major hardship into an essay that doesn’t need it. If you can communicate how you will succeed going forward because of that challenge, then go for it. But ad coms aren’t going to accept someone just because they have a sob story or significant struggle that occurred in the past if they can’t communicate how they took things into their own hands and will continue to do so in the future. They don’t need to hear about a weakness you once faced, no matter how serious, if it does not continue to interfere with your daily life and you can’t communicate how it will make you stronger going forward.

So, given that you actually know about the specifics of your situation, decide if you want to write this essay based on whether it will market your good qualities, not based on whether it will “stand out” because it is unique and unrelatable.

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OP, could you simply write about being shy in a world that caters to extroverts ? It sounds like this topic resonates with you, and I think if that’s the case, it could be a good one for you.

There is so much advice on “how to stand out”, but there are lots of people who would prefer not to. That’s a challenge, right?