Describing oneself is among the hardest tasks various candidates are met with during job interviews and college admissions. As such, learning to express yourself is a key skill that students should develop in the course of their studies.
Unfortunately, writing an essay about yourself is a task that many students often dread. Unlike common essays, essays about oneself are based on your experiences and creativity as opposed to fact-based arguments. If you are struggling with writing an essay about yourself, this article will highlight narrative essay writing tips about yourself and analyze the outline for an essay about yourself.
How to start an essay about yourself
Determining where to start is often the key challenge when writing an essay about yourself. Frequently, students employ the I am x and my interest is Y or my favorite day was x because of the Y schema in their essay opening.
Besides being boring, these openings limit your capacity to hook your reader into reading your essay. It would be better if you were to start your essay with rhetorical questions, or by setting a scene and leaving your readers craving for more information.
e.g., if you were to talk about your most memorable day, you could start as:
The day was finally here. My friends and I would finally have the chance to attend the famed X-grand party and enjoy an experience we’d been craving for months. Little did we know what awaited us. What we were about to experience was not what we had envisaged, nothing we had been prepared for within our six years of adulthood.
This opening leaves your reader craving to establish the events that befell your group, pushing them to read through your essay. This is as opposed to starting with stating the event and giving out the reason why it’s your favorite day.
How to write an essay about yourself for college
Like other academic assignments, there are multiple approaches you could take to write an essay about yourself. Our recommended approach involves:
- Brainstorm an event you experienced
The first step to writing an essay about yourself is to establish an event you experienced that falls within the confines of the essay question. It is best to write about a true experience as this helps you achieve a smooth flow in your story, reducing the stress of writing your paper.
Be keen to highlight the details of the events leading to your event, painting a picture for your reader in the words used for writing your essay.
- Outline the occurrence of events
After you’ve selected your event, retrace your steps through the day and make a plan detailing the flow of the day’s events. The outline will help you gauge various loopholes and to add on the areas that require further investigation.
Be keen to avoid the nitty-gritty occurrences of the day, thus keeping your essay precise and covering your theme in the prescribed word count.
- Writing and proofreading
After drafting your narrative, write the paper and go over it to fix various grammatical issues. Consider accessing expert help for your paper to paint a better picture with your words and to derive the intended emotions in each portion of your narrative.
Essay about yourself outline
Similar to other essays, an essay about yourself comprises the introduction, a body, and the conclusion. The introduction for the narrative essay about yourself should set the grounds for your story and hook your reader into reading your paper.
It is thus crucial to omit the lesson of the event and hint at the consequences. If you were to speak about your worst day in school, avoid saying what happened and hint at the consequence of the event.
Tips for writing a self-reflection essay about yourself
- Outline the noteworthy events of the day and refrain from recounting every second of the day.
- Narrow your topic to a specific event to exhaust your narrative in the provided word count.
- Maintain a modest tone and refrain from using boastful words when recounting your event. Boasting may turn your reader off, causing them to lose interest in your work.
- Be honest in your story and avoid hiding the stinky portions of an event. Omission of these ‘embarrassing events’ may result in gaps in your story and make it hard to present a flowing narrative.
- Always proofread your work to avoid creating a negative impression on your invigilator.
Ideas for essay titles about yourself
- A humorous incident that occurred to you
- A memory from your youth
- A story about being lost
- When you saved someone’s life
- A life lesson you’ve discovered
- When someone unexpectedly assisted you
