How should I come up with ideas for the common app prompts when I don’t have a sense of who I am?
I know i don’t need “an amazing event” but even if I pick a commonplace event, I find it hard to write about because I don’t know how to relate to me on a larger scale, because I don’t exactly know who I am. I can’t describe myself; I don’t know what’s exactly meaningful to me.
I can’t write personally when I don’t know what kind of person I am is basically what I’m trying to say. I’ve been trying to self-reflect but I just can’t remember very much at all from earlier years that really shaped me.
@GeometryForLife I have. What you should do is to find a few of your friends, teachers (people who know you really well) and ask them to describe you in 5 words. Compile that list and do some brainstorming. Read some of the essays that JHU has posted online as well as using sites like College Essay Guy and Hack the Essay.
Don 't look for a life changing event. At your age, a typical kid has been lucky enough not to have experienced too many of them.
Find an event that sticks in your memory. One that you’ll tell your kids about one day. It doesn’t have to be an event that tells us all of who you are-- you can’t do that in 650 words, and who you’ll be next year isn’t who you are today anyway.
Just find one small episode that happened to you or with you or because of you.
Write an essay that your best friend could pick out of a pile and just KNOW that you wrote it.
My suggestion is that you take the Common App prompts and brainstorm: 4 minutes a topic, absolutely anything goes and the more outrageous the better. Then you can start eliminating topics.
It’s so much easier to edit than to write, so start brainstorming. Ask your parents and your cousins and your best friend for their favorite GeometryforLife story, and see what you can do with it.
Another idea: how did you come up with your user name? In my experience, Geometry is an acquired taste-- you and I are in a minority in this site as people who love it. What about it attracts you?
I chose my name haha because during MathCounts I would always only do the geometry questions on the team round, while everyone else did all the other problems. (Lol MathCounts state was a very interesting experience…I got diarrhea during the test but uh yeah that doesnt seem the most appropriate) On stuff like the AMC test, I would get the first 15 or so questions (the easier ones), and then I would only know how to do the geometry questions from the last 10. I think being an artist allowed me to visualize the problems the geometry problems differently, and I could see them in a different way than my teammates. ← Possibly could expand on this?
I haven’t brainstormed on a piece of paper intensely yet but the other idea I had is how I LOVE to try new food all the time (ive tried so many cuisines and stuff I’ve lost count, I always make my friends hungry because I talk about food a lot haha) and relate to how I’m adventurous in life and love a wide variety of subjects in school, and I love different branches of science, math, as well as art.