y'all so many students think that you have to write about traumatic challenges in order to write a great personal statement and it's just not true okay you can tell them heated about this right you can write an amazing personal statement on anything ranging from like an incredible trip you took to uh your childhood dream of flying to uh poop animals in the environment yes these are all real essay topics in this video I want to talk to you about why you don't have to write about traumatic challenges how you can write an essay that stands out that isn't on those things and what are the qualities to include first I want to jump into an example essay and as I'm reading this I want you to think about two things first of all I want you to see if you can notice how many values the student brings in and by values I mean specific qualities that that student's going to bring to the college campus and if you're like what is he talking about I'm talking about these you can pause the video and go back if you need to the second thing I want you to notice is this student is talking about challenges briefly but doesn't Focus the whole essay on them here's the essay growing up my world was basketball my Summers were spent between the two solid black lines my skin was consistently Tan in splotches and ridden with random scratches my wardrobe consisted mainly of track shorts Nike shoes and tournament t-shirts Gatorade and fun dip were my pregame snacks the cacophony of Rowdy crowds ref whistles squeaky shoes and scoreboard buzzers was a familiar sound I was the team captain of almost every team I played on familiar with the X's and O's of plays commander of the court and the coach's right-hand girl now now you might think okay this sounds like a basketball essay wait for it but that was only me on the surface she writes deep down I was an East Asian influence bibliophile and a young adult fiction writer what hidden in the cracks of a blossoming Collegiate level athlete was a literary Fiend I devoured books in the daylight I crafted stories at nighttime after games after practice after conditioning I found Nooks of solitude within these moments I became engulfed in a world of my own creation initially I only read young adult literature but I grew to enjoy literary fiction and self-help Kafka doeski Brandon chent Mi High I expanded my bubble to Google+ critique groups online discussion groups blogs writing competitions and clubs I wrote my first novel in fifth grade my second in seventh grade and started my third in nth grade reading was instinctual writing was impulsive I stumbled upon the movies of hay Miyazaki at a young age I related a lot to the underlying East Asian philosophy present in his movies my own perspective on life growth and change was echoed in his storytelling so I read his autobiographies watched anime and researched ancient texts analex the way Art of War then I discovered the books of Haruki morakami whom I now emulate in order to improve my writing like two sides of a coin I lived in Two Worlds one world was outward aggressive noisy invigorating the other internal Tempest uous Serene nuanced internal and external conflict ensued many times I was seen only as an athlete and judged by the stereotypes that come with it self-centered unintelligent listens to rap but off the court I was more reflective empathetic and I listen to music like Florence in the machine I was even sometimes bullied for not acting black enough quote unquote my teammates felt that my singular focus should be basketball and found it strange that I participated in so many extracurriculars but why should I be one-dimensional I had always been motivated to reach the Pinnacle of my potential in whatever I was interested in why should I be defined by only one aspect of my life I felt like I had to pick one world then I had an ACL injury and then another and then another after the first ACL surgery my family and I made the decision to homeschool I knew I wanted to explore my many interests literature novel writing East Asian culture and basketball equally so I did I found time to analyze heart of dark and use my blog to instruct adult authors how to become self-published authors I researched Shintoism read dozens of books on writing and self-improvement my sister and I have been talking for a while about starting a nonprofit focused on social awareness education and community outreach finally we had time to do it while basketball has equipped me with leadership skills and life experiences it is only one part of who I am as a socially aware intellectual and introspective individual I value creative expression and Independence my life's mission is to reach my full potential in order to help others reach their own what do I love about this essay first of all I love that she weaves in so many different values did you count as many as I did I'll give you some examples leadership she says growing up my world was basketball but she talks about basically how she was always the coach's right-hand girl and she says I was the team captain of almost every team I played on next she talks about curiosity and creativity she shows her intellect ual Vitality by talking about all those different authors that she read next she shows her critical thinking and complexity by saying you know on the surface I was this outwardly I was this way but inwardly I was this other way so she shows her ability to be able to hold these intersecting like complex identities which is great colleges love this and then she shows her commitment to service and helping others with the nonprofit that she started with her sister now the reason I'm harping on these values is they're the first of four qualities of what I believe goes into an outstanding personal statement which is to say values SL qualities that you're bringing with you to a college campus this is especially important after the Supreme Court decision to ban race conscious admissions because I've getting a lot of students asking me can I write about race in my college essay and the answer side note if you are considering this is yes but it's important to make sure that if you're talking about race or culture that you connect it to some of the skills qualities values like the ones that I mentioned in the example essay above the next quality that the student show shows is what I like to call Insight and insight is these so what moments moments where she's revealing something that isn't obvious from elsewhere in the application so for example when she says you know I read all these authors I may not know what those authors mean even though she mentions them in her activities list unless she tells me hey this is part of my commitment to personal growth there's also that moment where she talks about this nonprofit that she started I may not know the context for that unless she tells me so that's what your personal statement can do is give insight and context into some of the things you mention in your activities list the third thing that I think the student's doing that's really interesting is she does mention her challenges but like I said she doesn't Focus the whole essay there and I want you to know this is an option for you if you face challenges and you feel like it would be kind of weird to not mention them at least at all you can mention them in just like one to three sentences and then focus on specific skills or qualities that you've developed as a result of those challenges and she does this at least twice one when she mentions getting bullied and the second time when she mentions the sports injury now the value of doing this is then you're not sort of defined by this single story as it were and there's a great Ted Talk that I'll link below this video that talks more about the dangers of a single story but essentially you're still paying honor and homage to those sides of you but they're not dominating your story and in that way you're basically saying yes these are things that I've experienced but they're not all of who I am now am I saying that you can't write about challenges or shouldn't not necessarily if you face challenges in your life and you think there might be a personal statement story there below this video I'll link something called my free Guide to the personal statement and I want you to check it out and click in particular the feelings and needs exercise cuz it's a great like 15minute exercise to help you decide if challenges that you faced might make for a good personal statement so it's possible I just wanted to share with you in this video why you don't necessarily have to do that in order to write a great essay all right so how do you do this let me give you a step-by-step approach to writing this identity style essay if this is appealing to you step one below this video I'll link something called the if you really really knew me exercise and I want you to do this exercise make a copy for yourself and I want you to focus on in particular question three which is around different identities that you claim so this student for example has athlete young adult fiction writer uh nonprofit starter I want you to brainstorm what are all the different identities that you possess that you feel like you could show in your application next step I want you to think about for each identity that you've written down what is a value or what are a couple different values that you feel like you could show off based on that identity so for example in the essay we just read that student mentioned her athlete identity but it wasn't about like discipline or hard work it was about leadership so what you'll do essentially is brainstorm okay each identity could show this particular value once you've done that I want you to brainstorm a specific example image or moment that would show us that you've embodied that particular value so for example with this student she wanted to show leadership how well the fact that she was team captain of almost every team that she'd ever been on is a great bit of evidence that shows she's embodied that quality then I want you to create a simple outline where you basically write a paragraph on each of the identities and the values that you want to show and if you want here's a simple structure that you can use growing up many people thought I was just X but actually I was y now I know that sounds a little bit like the structure that we saw in the sa above so you don't have to copy it I really just want to get your brain going with this okay what you'll do next because this is what I'm most interested in is write a paragraph for each of those other identities those other sides of you if you want you might weave in a little moment that talks about how when you are starting to express and explore these different identities how are people responding to you and then finally as you're wrapping the essay up I want you to reflect on what these identities have taught you are there any skills that you've gained are there any values you've developed because that's what colleges are going to be especially intered in below this video I'm going to link to a couple different resources one is a longer guide that accompanies this video that will show you some alternate approaches and some other example essays and then there's also a podcast that's a much deeper dive into this topic with Tina young I hope you found this video useful you'll find lots more at collegeessay guy.com and fun fact we also have free one-on-one essay help for students if you're interested just go to collegeessay guy.com match lighters much love I'll see you soon [Music]