Is this too risky a topic?

College Essays
1

I feel like the essay is probably where I would shine the most, but my first attempt was completely vanilla. I think my most potentially interesting idea, though, might be a little off-putting to admissions officers.

It’s a summer camp story (I know everybody does those), but I feel like it’s unique. Basically, it talks about how I’d loved camp for my first few years and had always wanted to be a CIT, and then later a counselor; especially because of a CIT (let’s call him George) I had met during my second year who I really looked up to-- I sent him a letter after my second year and didn’t get a reply. My last year of being a camper, I went a different session where I didn’t know anyone, but then I made friends, blah, blah. The risky part: in my skeet class, I made a ‘slap bet’ with another camper (I know it’s stupid, but we both agreed to it, and it wasn’t a big deal). I ended up winning and so I slapped him, on the second to last day of camp. He ended up bleeding a little bit because his braces got caught in his lip-- he was fine, but the last morning, I got called in to the office to talk with the heads of camp, and they basically told me this had pretty much killed my chances of becoming a CIT. The rest of the day I had to deal with all my friends excitedly talking about maybe being CITs next year, when I knew I didn’t have a chance. I was taking one last walk around camp before I got picked up when I ran into George, and we talked for the first time in 4 years. He told me that he was sorry about what happened with the slap thing, and he had always thought that I would’ve been a perfect CIT; he then apologized for having not responded to my letter. That was my last memory of camp, I got picked up about 5 minutes later. The next few years, I did have to deal with my friends being CITs and counselors without me, which was rough, but I couldn’t really have asked for a better ending.

This wasn’t my essay, just a summary; that’s another problem-- this was about 350 words, and I just gave a brief overview of everything. It might be too long a topic.

Mainly, though, I’m wondering about the slap thing-- is that bad enough that I should scrap this topic? I think the rest of it is a pretty strong story, but I don’t want them to think I’m going around getting kicked out of whatever I do.

Thanks in advance!

2

My thoughts:

  1. This sounds like something that happened before high school.
  2. It says nothing about you now.
  3. It’s too much detail that, again, reveals nothing about you.
  4. Why would you think that someone who thinks its a good idea to slap someone else would be a good choice for a leader, in charge of younger children?

IMO, you should try something else.

3

Thanks for the reply!

  1. This happened the summer after Freshman year.
  2. See above
  3. In the essay, I guess I’d more go into how I deal with my friends being counselors without me, and how I learned from my mistake.
  4. I’m not sure I understand your point here. I admitted that it was stupid; It’s not a tirade saying “grrr how could my camp not have let me be a counselor after that.” At the same time, I don’t just go around slapping people-- it was a stupid little bet that we made. I’ve been slapped a lot more than I’ve slapped other people in my lifetime. I also obviously wouldn’t have slapped my campers… I guess I’m just not really sure what you’re saying here.
4

But, again, just to be clear, this isn’t me getting mad at my camp or anything. I completely understand why they would be upset with that and it makes sense that that was a dealbreaker.

5

I wouldn’t write about this. No matter how you frame it, you did slap someone- why even risk putting yourself in a negative light?
I’m sure there are many positive things about you that you could write in an essay.

6

Ugh, alright. Back to the drawing board I guess.