Many colleges tell you to discuss a learning experience for you, particularly one outside of the classroom. During the first term of freshman year, my grandfather died. We had always been really close, and I felt like I was at fault for his death and thus dwelt in the “guilt” stage of the stages of grief for quite a long time. I’d touch on that, and then move on to how this taught me to persevere through hard experiences and also how I learned to be productive even in the midst of great sadness (writing poetry, using my pain to help others get through theirs, etc.). Would this be bad, or should I stick with the traditional “I doubted myself before this MUN conference but it turned out my fears were unfounded and I really rocked it” response?
This is a very overused essay topic. The MUN topic seems preferable.
yeah, probably. unless you have some unique spin on these topics, they seem pretty generic.
writing poetry seems interesting, though. maybe you could turn that into an essay?
Hmm. I don’t know. The whole story with the poetry is that essentially I was in a really bad place emotionally, I wrote some angsty poetry and posted it online, and apparently gained a bit of a following (over 700 people) of other depressed kids who could apparently relate to me. The whole big thing there was that some of my poems helped several people decide not to take their own lives. I’m not really sure how I’d write about that, or if it would be a very good idea. I think I’d be more inclined to do the MUN thing because the whole “depressed teenager helps other depressed teenagers” may not read as well.