3 Examples of Personal Writing to Inspire You
by Michelle P.
Along with summer sunshine and catching up with exciting summer flicks, students might find themselves spinning the gears in their brains for ideas for their college application essays.
What does it mean for college applications to ask you to write a personal essay? And as a student, what does personal writing even look like? It’s a very different piece of writing from an argumentative essay or an essay requiring literary analysis.
A personal essay can be very individual, expressive, and emotional. Here are 3 examples of personal writing below that students can learn from, to apply to their own college application essay writing.
1. “Fuel, Medicine, Pleasure” – Krista Diamond, Longreads
“Never has a mountain had so many false summits. At this point, my body is doing the things my body does on a steep hike. My calf muscles burn each time they contract, release. My quad muscles tighten. My toes ache like they’re bruised, broken. My heart is loud and my blood is hot. The air I pull into my lungs never seems to fill me up. A tenth of a mile from the summit, there is another signal emerging, one that becomes louder and clearer the harder I push myself. It is my stomach, gnawing and turning like an angry animal.”
2.“A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft” – James Somers, The New Yorker
“At my friend’s company, I felt my mechanical sympathy developing. In my sophomore year, I was watching “Jeopardy!” with a friend when he suggested that I make a playable version of the show. I thought about it for a few hours before deciding, with much disappointment, that it was beyond me. But when the idea came up again, in my junior year, I could see a way through it. I now had a better sense of what one could do with the machine. I spent the next fourteen hours building the game.”
3. “Why I Run: On Thoreau and the Pleasures of Not Quite Knowing Where You’re Going”– Rachel Richardson, LitHub
“When the endorphins start kicking in, around mile three, I love everybody, even the sourest-faced walker or most oblivious group of teenagers taking up the whole trail and dropping Doritos on the ground. Nice dog!, I shout when I see a dog happily panting at her runner’s side, or You’ve got this! to the struggling jogger stumbling to the end of his route. When a car nearly flattens me as I cross an intersection, I throw up my hands and shout HEY! and sometimes even get a Sorry. I’m shaken for a minute, but still consider myself a public servant, improving Bay Area drivers’ awareness with my presence.”
What are some questions you can consider from reading these examples? How do the authors recount a series of events? What sorts of details do they include in their stories? What kinds of emotions do they bring in that makes the writing feel alive?
For other posts on getting started on your college essays, you can also read:
Start College Essays in the Summer
Ways to Brainstorm about STEM Interests (for Free) Before College Essays
