Passion? What passion?

_rentof2
Sat, 13 Sep 2008 01:02:25 +0000

I think passion is a pretty abused term at this point. But here’s another to look at the essay from the perspective of someone like you, blueducky, who is interested in so many things.

Last year when my son was looking at writing essays for his application he was faced with a set of prompts. In the supplement to the Common App the school he was applying to had a prompt that might most appeal to the literature types, one for the politics types, one for the science type, the community service types, the art enthusiasts, etc.

He wrote like 4 or 5 essays each time trying to wing it with a different prompt. He was pretty interested in just about everything, but mostly he was looking for which prompted essay got the most traction while he was writing it. Interestingly, it was the science prompt. He does find science quite fascinating, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a “passion”, but it was the best essay from a writing point of view and had a bit more originality to it, so he submitted that one.

Maybe you should just start with one topic, and try several drafts looking deeper, trying to punch it up a bit… and if it’s just not going anywhere try another. It doesn’t matter which topic it is, so much as getting a good essay out of it.