<p>Hi!
I’m a junior in high school and I’m really excited about writing my college essays and starting applications and now that APs are over, it’s pretty much summer and I’m so dang ready to get out of here. So, I thought about some essay ideas. ( these are like my last thoughts before going to bed every night. pathetic? yeah, but i’m pumped so whatever)</p>
<p>I thought I’d like to know what you guys think about these. If they rock, they suck, they’re cliched, they’re interesting, whatever. So, here they are</p>
<li><p>(cliche?) I’ve moved a ton in my life. 5 different schools and cities since I’ve lived in America, and then I also lived in India until I was 7. I thought about talking about the thoughts going through my head through each car ride or plane ride between the cities and showing how each time, some thoughts would recur, but how I changed between and with each transition</p></li>
<li><p>My life as a series of speeches. I’m Vice President of Speech & Debate, President of Model UN, and historian of Mock Trial so I thought I would demonstrate my passion for speaking, and debating, by talking about how this all started out in 1st grade when they made me give this big speech about our prime minister of India to our school and how overwhelming it all was and then transitioning into how each “era” of my life was associated somehow with a speech, from my Gifted Education final debate about immigration and winning that and then the 8th grade commencement speech and then student body VP speech in front of a camera and then finally committing myself to doing it every Saturday of the school year and making it to States and getting awards and stuff. Or how I can never stop feeling the insane nervousness and gut wrenching butterflies, even after umpteenth speeches, because that would mean that I’d stopped caring.</p></li>
<li><p>How I’ve really wanted to go on a road trip across the country, and committing myself to eating lunch every day at a gas station cafe because the best sandwich I ever had was when I was seven years old and I had just moved to America and it was at a gas station. Of course, I’d try to be eclectic and stuff for dinner, but it’s really all about the gas stations. I’ll tie it into some higher meaning afterward haha</p></li>
<li><p>Meeting people again. How every time I see people that I’ve had to miss because of all the moves, seeing them makes me see myself through newer eyes </p></li>
<li><p>Every week, I go to a local coffee shop and listen to our open mic night with local musicians and even just high schoolers who just want to try out a cover and stuff and meet people from all the nearby cities and towns and how that routine is the only true routine I can handle because each experience is so different from the last that it doesn’t feel routine at all.</p></li>
<li><p>How it always bothered me that I don’t have a middle name, and how it really got to me during the beginning of every school year in elementary school, we always get into a big discussion about names and how I have such a strange one and why I don’t have a middle name and etc, etc, and how I learned to accept my lack of middle name as an opportunity to give myself my own tag.</p></li>
<li><p>( too informal?) I’ve written over 150 notes on facebook with poems and short stories- and though some of my writing has been published, how the true pleasure is derived when it’s 4 am in the morning and I finally figure out how to convey a message with the perfect rhyme for “tenacity” or something like that.</p></li>
<li><p>My laugh changes every month or so.</p></li>
<li><p>How some of the most influential people in my life are people that I knew for less than a day, like the aged man who sat next to me on the way when I flew from North Carolina to Ohio on my last move and the 8 year old who played better guitar than I could dream of playing at open mic night or the single father with two kids I met on a bus in downtown while I was heading home from my internship.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>ah, I think that’s it for now. I don’t know, I probably have like 40 more floating around somewhere in my brain if all of these just seem to suck. I’d just love to hear your honest opinion</p>
<p>1 is a bit cliche but it doesn’t have to be. Moving provides the chance for a person to “reinvent” one self if wanted so consider that perhaps. </p>
<p>I like 3 and 5 alot though, I’m guessing colleges would like a creative insight into your personality.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ve gotten the most positive responses for the speech stuff, but I’m really afraid that it will come off showy. </p>
<p>And I think that 3 and 5 are probably the ones I’d find easiest to write, just because the majority of my free writing is on concepts like those. I just think that sometimes it depends on what colleges you’re sending these essays to, right? Some want the creative, artsy types - some want the ambitious leader types… </p>
<p>I just don’t know which I am more of because it completely depends on the situation.</p>
<p>I was going for the speech one and the coffee shop one myself, just thought I’d take a little bit of strangers’ input since strangers will be reading this. Thanks, though.</p>
<p>I absolutely agree that you can benefit from having a limited number of strangers (preferably, imho, experienced, adult strangers) read your draft essays. Those strangers, though, can’t reasonably pick out what topic will be best for you. How could they? They don’t know you.</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear that you have a preference. Listen to yourself! :)</p>
<p>It’s strange because all of these showcase completely different aspects of who i am, and require completely different styles of writing. I suppose it would be best to pick some that play to the stuff my colleges want to see. </p>
<p>Here’s the list so far… I effed my junior year grades so I don’t know if this will stay the same, but still:</p>
<p>Columbia
Cornell
Duke
Brown
Dartmouth
Georgetown
UChicago
UMich
UC Berkeley
UCLA
Amherst
Upenn</p>
<p>I haven’t decided what to apply to, yet, but I’m President of Debate also a successful national circuit Lincoln Douglas debater. I really look forward to competing again next year.</p>
<p>I am quite enthralled that you are a published writer–excellent. I feel that the facebook writing idea is extremely, extremely novel. Do you get positive response on your writing pieces?</p>
<p>I do, however, at the same time, complain about the sheer number of pieces written. (This is a person thing; I write sparsely, with what I would argue as 8 finished pieces, only, in my portfolio. However, each piece goes through a minimal of 10 drafts and massive edits in order to become a finished product, etc. I’d like to see this more frequently in younger writers.)</p>
<p>I for one do NOT like the speech idea.</p>
<p>I hope you shy away from it, because it is NOT affect at all for a college essay. You cannot develop a sufficient number of speeches within the word-limit requirement and still maintain competent speeches. Also, it’s really difficult to format such an idea (format, ie presentation, of a piece is just as significant in prose as it is in poetry. It is REALLY hard to clearly portray that each speech is an individual, independent entity without confusing the reader.)</p>
<p>yup, that was my main concern about the whole thing. lack of space. that’s why I would, if I end up going with it, pick maybe the 3 most significant. </p>
<p>as far as writing, out of the 150, the vast majority is definitely me rambling on rather self consciously or well. I’d say there’s maybe 15 that I actually like, and perhaps 15 more that, after revision, will be worthy of something more than facebook. </p>
<p>I do get positive feedback, or negative feedback, and though sometimes I’m embarrassed to be putting my brain on display like that… I think it’s worth it in the end. </p>