my personal challenge essay

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How to Write a Personal Challenge Essay (with Examples)

A personal challenge essay offers a singular chance for introspection and personal development. It gives you a chance to consider your past, face difficulties, and demonstrate your tenacity. This essay structure enables you to communicate your ideas and experiences with others, regardless of whether you’ve overcome hardship, dealt with a tricky circumstance, or chased an audacious goal. You’ll walk you through the phases of writing an engaging personal challenge essay in this in-depth guide, complete with samples that demonstrate the procedure.

Understanding the Personal Challenge Essay

The Personal challenges in life as a student essay asks you to describe an instance or time in your life when you had to overcome challenges, setbacks, or barriers. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate your resilience, your capacity to face adversity, and the lessons you’ve picked up along the road. This kind of article necessitates reflection, sincerity, and skillful narrative.

Selecting a Meaningful Challenge

It’s important to pick the correct challenge to write about. Think about Personal challenges in life as a student essay that profoundly influenced your development, principles, or attitude on life. It can have been an obstacle you overcame in your studies, relationships, sense of self, or any other area of your life. The task should have personal significance for you and provide information that your audience can relate to.

Structuring Your Personal Challenge Essay

To effectively portray your experiences, feelings, and growth, writing an engaging personal challenge essay involves careful thought and a well-organized format. The following steps will show you how to organize your essay such that it presents a logical and interesting story:

Introduction:

Beginning your essay with an attention-grabbing hook that draws the reader in and highlights the topic of the difficulty you’ll be exploring is a good idea. This might be a provocative inquiry, a moving saying, a detailed account, or a first-hand account associated with your issue.

Background & Context:

Make sure the reader has all the background knowledge they need to comprehend your dilemma. Describe the context, surroundings, and any other pertinent information that establishes the scene for your narrative. Additionally, you have the choice to ask for assistance from PhD thesis writing help if you run into difficulties when writing the background and context of your thesis or dissertation or if you are unsure owing to a lack of experience. They can offer helpful assistance to improve the caliber of your work.

The Challenge:

Describe the challenge in detail in a portion of your essay. When describing the challenges, difficulties, or setbacks you encountered, be descriptive and in-depth.

Your Reaction and Result:

Write about how you responded to the challenge in this part. What steps have you taken? Did you make crucial decisions, prepare a plan, or ask for assistance? Be sure to emphasize your ability to solve problems, tenacity, and any other traits that may have helped you overcome the obstacle.

Growth and Reflection:

Consider the encounter and share what you took away from it. What effects did the challenge have on your emotions, mind, and possibly even body? What new understandings did you get about who you are, your values, or your outlook on life? Describe how you overcame the obstacle to grow personally, discover yourself, or alter your perspective.

Takeaways & Lessons:

The exact lessons you took away from overcoming the obstacle should be highlighted. What priceless knowledge, abilities, or traits did you acquire as a result? Describe how these teachings have shaped your current behavior, choices, or attitude in life.

Conclusion:

Writing a compelling conclusion that connects everything can help you to conclude your essay. Write a summary of your shared journey, highlighting your personal development and new perspectives.

Include a Call to Action (Optional):

Depending on the nature of your issue, you might want to include a call to action that prompts the reader to reflect on their own issues, take action, or adopt a particular attitude.

After you’ve finished writing the essay, take some time to review and make any necessary changes. Check that the grammar, spelling, and punctuation in your writing are correct, as well as the flow.

Maintain You’re Authentic Voice Throughout the Essay:

While it’s crucial to follow a structured methodology, don’t forget to preserve your authentic voice. Remain sincere, honest, and personal in your writing. Your unique perspective and emotions will lend greater authenticity to your writing and make it more compelling. By adhering to the instructions outlined in this comprehensive guide, you’ll effectively organize your personal challenge essay. This approach will skillfully lead your readers through your journey, captivating their attention and leaving a memorable impression. Furthermore, if you find it challenging to maintain a systematic approach, consider seeking assistance from master thesis writing help. Their expertise can aid you in completing your work with precision and coherence.

Don’ts and Dos

Be upfront and honest when discussing your experiences. Do emphasize your development and lessons acquired. To keep the reader’s attention, employ colorful language and descriptions. Don’t make up or embellish details. Instead of blaming others for the difficulty, concentrate on your solution. Choose a challenge that had a significant influence rather than one that was inconsequential.

Examples of Personal Challenge Essays

Following are the Personal challenge essay examples:

Overcoming Academic Challenges:

Navigating the challenges we face in life essay can be a transformative journey that leads to personal growth and self-discovery. A prime example of this is when I confronted a series of academic setbacks. I realized that my ingrained fear of failing was standing in the way of my development. I, however, resisted allowing this fear to direct my course. I started a quest for self-improvement with pure tenacity. I reached out for guidance and support, shedding light on the power of seeking assistance when needed.

Overcoming Fear:

For instance, I had always been terrified of public speaking, but I had to face my phobia to present in front of a large crowd. I overcame my anxiety about public speaking over time with practice and confidence, and I also acquired speaking abilities that I still use today.

Dealing with Personal Loss:

Losing a loved one was a difficult emotional experience that altered my outlook on relationships and life. I learned the value of cherishing moments and helping others in need through my grief and contemplation.

Examples of challenges you have overcome as a student essay

I have encountered a range of challenges as a student, which has pushed my perseverance, adaptability, and resilience to the test. Even though they occasionally proved to be challenging, these obstacles ultimately helped me become a better and more capable individual. Here are a few instances of obstacles I overcame in my academic career:

Time Management Challenges:

Juggling schoolwork, assignments, extracurricular activities, and personal obligations can be difficult. There were times when I struggled to adequately manage my time, which resulted in missed deadlines and frustration. To overcome this difficulty, I started adopting time management strategies like making a thorough calendar, establishing priorities, and breaking work down into smaller, more manageable pieces. I became more organized about my obligations over time, which led to increased productivity and decreased stress. Furthermore, many students pursuing careers in the medical field face similarly demanding schedules that make it challenging to meet deadlines. In such cases, they often turn to nursing research paper writing services to ensure the quality and timeliness of their assignments.

Academic Setbacks:

It was demoralizing to experience academic setbacks, such as earning lower grades than expected. I decided to take advantage of these setbacks as chances for improvement rather than giving in to self-doubt. I requested input from my lecturers, made note of my weaknesses, and put focused study techniques into practice. I was able to improve my academic performance and regain my confidence by persevering and being willing to learn from my failures.

Language Barrier:

Navigating English as a second language introduced a unique set of challenges, especially in terms of effective communication and the completion of writing assignments. In essays and presentations, I often encountered hurdles in articulating my thoughts coherently and concisely. To overcome this hurdle, I actively expanded my vocabulary, engaged in consistent reading and writing exercises, and actively sought input from peers and professors. Furthermore, this drive to enhance my linguistic abilities not only improved my communication skills but also bolstered my confidence in expressing myself in academic and professional settings. My determination to conquer these language-related challenges demonstrates my commitment to growth and adaptability, qualities that I believe would make me a strong candidate for the Harvard Scholarship Essay .

Dynamics of Group Projects:

Due to the various work habits, schedules, and perspectives held by the group members, collaborative projects have occasionally proven to be difficult. I adopted efficient communication techniques, such as active listening and open discussion, to handle these circumstances. By praising each team member’s abilities and accomplishments, I helped to create a more effective and pleasant working atmosphere.

Personal Well-Being and Health:

It can be difficult to maintain a good balance between your personal needs and your academic obligations. I have occasionally overlooked my needs, which has resulted in burnout and a decline in drive. I gave exercise, wholesome eating, and regular breaks top priority since I understood how important self-care was. This all-encompassing strategy not only increased my general well-being but also sharpened my attention and increased my output. These examples collectively constitute my challenges in life as a student essay. They serve as valuable lessons that offer insights on how to navigate and overcome various situations.

How to Revise and Improve Your Essay

For instance, if you are given a topic such as “Essay on Environmental Problems and Their Solutions” and you’re not well-versed in it, it’s advisable to invest time in research. This will enable you to create quality content for your essay. After writing your personal challenge essay, it’s essential to engage in the editing and revision process. Ensure that your essay flows logically and that your ideas are well-organized. Edit for clarity, grammar, and punctuation. If you’re seeking a comprehensive perspective, consider seeking feedback from peers, professors, or mentors.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final thoughts.

Writing a personal challenge essay offers you the chance to share your unique journey and inspire others through your resilience and progress you can create an engaging tale that engrosses your readers by choosing a pertinent challenge, using a solid essay structure, and remaining honest. It’s crucial to remember that your essay about a personal issue demonstrates both your capacity for self-reflection and personal development in addition to your capacity for overcoming challenges. For those who face challenges in managing their academic tasks, there are online homework writing services available that can provide valuable assistance and support.

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Blog > Essay Advice , Supplementals > How to Write a Personal Challenge Essay (with Examples)

How to Write a Personal Challenge Essay (with Examples)

Admissions officer reviewed by Ben Bousquet, M.Ed Former Vanderbilt University

Written by Kylie Kistner, MA Former Willamette University Admissions

Key Takeaway

This post is one in a series of posts about the supplemental essays. You can read our core “how-to” supplemental post here .

What is a Personal Challenge supplemental essay?

Personal Challenge supplemental essays ask you to pick a personal challenge you’ve faced, detail how the problem affected you, and describe the action steps you took to overcome it.

These essays can be challenging for students for two main reasons. First, many students feel like they haven’t faced a problem significant enough to talk about. And second, other students have faced a significant problem but may not feel comfortable discussing it in a college essay.

So why do colleges want to know about a challenge you’ve faced anyway?

Well, admissions offices know that life in college and beyond doesn’t always go as expected. Colleges want to see that you’re resourceful, resilient, and capable of thinking critically to solve problems.

At their core, Personal Challenge essay prompts let you to strategically pick a problem you’ve faced and write about how you worked to solve it.

Before we continue, it’s worth saying explicitly: you do not have to talk about trauma you’ve experienced to get into college. No admissions officer will ever want to read anything you’re not ready to share. In fact, sharing negative experiences before you’re ready can actually work against you. Writing about a situation that you haven’t yet come to terms with can result in an essay that is overall too negative and not forward-looking enough to meet the requirements of Personal Challenge essay prompts.

That caveat out of the way, let’s look at three Personal Challenge supplemental essay prompt examples.

1: Brown University

Brown’s culture fosters a community in which students challenge the ideas of others and have their ideas challenged in return, promoting a deeper and clearer understanding of the complex issues confronting society. This active engagement in dialogue is as present outside the classroom as it is in academic spaces. Tell us about a time you were challenged by a perspective that differed from your own. How did you respond? (200-250 words)

2: Colorado School of Mines

Florence Caldwell was the first woman to graduate from Mines. She enrolled in 1895 and found that her fellow classmates discouraged her attendance. She persevered through that discouragement and graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1898. She was described as a problem-solver, who was loyal, kind, and sympathetic to others and displayed unwavering courage. Describe a time when you overcame an obstacle, persevered through a situation, or displayed characteristics similar to Florence Caldwell. (500 words)

3: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tell us about a significant challenge you’ve faced (that you feel comfortable sharing) or something that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation?

Personal Challenge Essay Strategy

When an admissions officer reads your essay among thousands of others , your supplemental essays are one of the main tools you have to stand out. The key to writing a strong Personal Challenge essay is picking the right challenge to talk about.

Personal Challenge essays are all about finding a delicate balance. While your challenge should be a genuine one that you’ve had to wrestle with, it shouldn’t be so challenging that you can’t write about it in a way that is ultimately positive.

While you don’t have to reveal anything you don’t want to, you should choose a genuine challenge.

“Genuine” problems are those that present real challenges to you, your way of thinking, or your overall lived experience.

They are significant. That means that a genuine problem is more than sleeping in late and missing a test. It’s more than losing your big baseball game or forgetting to put gas in the car before a road trip.

Genuine problems don’t necessarily have to be life-changing, but they do have to be deeply meaningful.

Significant challenges might include:

• conflict or disagreements with friends or loved ones
• information or an event that challenged your worldview
• a significant change or loss
• reconciling with differences
• Dealing with a disadvantage that sets you apart from others

Pick a challenge that lets you refer to one of your strengths.

Personal Challenge essay questions are actually questions about your strengths in the face of adversity. Since all college essays should be rooted in strengths, your supplemental essays should be no different.

The challenge you pick shouldn’t be a covert way to brag about yourself, but it should represent one of your personal characteristics that is ultimately positive.

Whether your goal is to show your resilience, problem-solving abilities, compassion, understanding, fortitude, or something else, your Personal Challenge essay should work to showcase one of your strengths.

Take the “more phoenix, less ashes” approach.

This is one of the most difficult parts of writing Personal Challenge essays. By nature, Personal Challenge essays are about a challenge. That means that you’re inevitably going to be writing about something difficult.

But essays that only focus on the negative aren’t ultimately serving your college admissions goals. The ultimate goal of a personal challenge essay is to demonstrate how you’ve grown, developed, and changed through dealing with a problem.

The essay isn’t about the problem itself. It’s about your growth.

“More phoenix, less ashes” is a helpful way to remember to focus on the positivity. The phrase refers to the mythology of the phoenix, which rises from the ashes of a predecessor. By focusing more on the phoenix and less on the ashes, you’re focusing on the life, hope, and resilience that comes in the aftermath of a challenge.

How to Write a Personal Challenge Supplemental Essay

Step 1: Read the prompt.

As you’ve seen from the example Personal Challenge prompts, there are a few ways schools ask these kinds of questions.

Some ask you to focus on a time your perspective was challenged, others ask you to discuss a time you overcame a challenge, and others yet give you the freedom to discuss any personal challenge you want.

You’ll need to know which kind of prompt you’re responding to before you begin brainstorming, so analyzing the prompt closely should always be your first step.

Step 2: Brainstorm some challenges.

Since picking the right kind of challenge is important to writing a good Personal Challenge supplemental essay, it’s probably a good idea to brainstorm a few different options.

This structured brainstorming chart might help you sort through different areas of your life to identify particular challenges.

Step 3: List your action steps, think about what’s at stake, and find a positive focus.

To maintain sight of “more phoenix, less ashes,” it may be helpful to list out a few specific details for each challenge you’re considering writing about.

Specifically, think about three criteria:

• Action Steps: What specific actions did you take to confront the challenge?
• What’s at stake?: Why is this challenge one of genuine concern? What implications did it (or its solution) have to your life?
• Resolution & Lessons: How was the challenge resolved? What were the positive lessons or outcomes that you learned as a result?

Step 4: Pay special attention to your essay structure.

“More phoenix, less ashes” also means structuring your essay in a way that keeps the focus on the positive outcome rather than the challenge.

If the story about your challenge or difficulty takes up 80% of your essay, then there’s a good chance that you haven’t written enough to address the phoenix instead of the ashes. The best way to structure a Personal Challenge essay is to quickly pivot from discussing the challenge to discussing your actions, solutions, and reflections.

Depending on the prompt you’re responding to, your outline may look something like this:

I. Introduce the challenge

II. Describe inciting incident (what caused things to change for the better?)

III. Detail the action steps you took

IV. Expand on your solution

IV. Reflect on the lessons you learned and relate them to the prompt

Personal Challenge Essay Mistakes

Writing about a fake problem.

Since Personal Challenge essays should be about genuine challenges, few things are worse than writing about a fake problem.

“Fake” problems are those that didn’t actually affect you very much. The stakes were relatively low, and your worldview wasn’t significantly altered.

An example of a fake problem would be

Writing about a “convenient” problem.

A “convenient” problem is like a “fake” problem, but it’s one that conveniently allows you to talk about an accomplishment.

Here’s an example:

The biggest obstacle I’ve faced was when my team was down 88-90 in the state basketball finals. There was only one second left on the clock. My team was really starting to get discouraged, so I called everyone together to rally them back up. When the clock started back up, I sunk a three-pointer.

While that obstacle was obviously important in the writer’s life, the story itself comes across as a convenient way to talk about their team leadership and athletic abilities.

Writing an essay that only discusses problems, not solutions.

To return to the phrase we’ve been using, it’s a mistake to write a Personal Challenge essay that is all ashes and no phoenix. If you weigh your reader down with all the heavy details related to your story, it’ll be hard for them to climb out of those details to see your overall message.

To make it easier for them, only include the details that are necessary to understanding your story. Then quickly move on to addressing your action steps, solutions, and reflection.

Personal Challenge Supplemental Essay Example

Example essay: lead pipes.

MIT: Tell us about a significant challenge you’ve faced (that you feel comfortable sharing) or something that didn’t go according to plan. How did you manage the situation? (~200 words)

Two times a day, I fill up my Hydroflask at the drinking fountain near Room 124. With over 1,000 Hydroflasks of water total, this daily ritual has sustained me through countless lectures, math tests, and in-class essays. What I didn’t realize until last May was that this ritual was also slowly poisoning me.(( This introduction draws the reader in and states a compelling and significant problem.))

Built in the 1920s, my school contains a network of lead-covered pipes. Recent tests of the drinking fountain by Room 124 found over 5,000 parts per billion (ppb) of lead–4,985 more ppb than is considered safe to drink. I started organizing my schoolmates immediately after learning this news, and I put together a petition to the school board. With my Hydroflask in tow, I stood before the board and made our case.(( The writer focuses on the latter part of the prompt to answer the question: “How did you manage the situation?” By focusing on the efforts rather than the problem, the student maintains a “more phoenix, fewer ashes” approach that highlights their strengths rather than the problem.)) Unsafe water in our schools was unacceptable, and the board needed to prioritize the health of its students and staff members. We needed renovations.

After weeks of deliberation, the school board announced its decision to delay renovations. They were concerned about budget constraints. My entire community felt betrayed and disheartened. Not one to settle, I decided if the current board members wouldn’t prioritize our health, then we would elect board members who would. Since then, I have been volunteering with two board campaigns, canvasing our neighborhood, and continuing to organize my classmates to advocate for our health.(( Even though the problem became worse, the writer continues to focus on their actions instead.))

There’s not much I can do about the lead I’ve already consumed, but I’ll continue fighting to keep future CHS students safe.

Interested in seeing even more supplemental essay examples? We've got some of our favorites in our list of college essay examples .

Liked that? Try this next.

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How to Write the Overcoming Challenges Essay + Example

April 17, 2023

At some point, most college-bound students are tasked with writing an overcoming challenges essay. The prompt crops up in various forms, as a supplemental short essay about overcoming a challenge, and in as the main essay itself.

Some students may feel inclined to write about a dramatic experience (say, spotting a grizzly bear outside the kitchen window), mistaking the drama of the moment for a significant challenge. Others may get to work, only to realize they don’t have much to say about the time they got a C in P.E. (that dreaded frisbee unit). Students who’ve overcome unspeakable difficulties, like a death in the family, may find that reducing the tragedy to 650 words feels insufficient, or worse—as if they’re attempting to profit from suffering. One or two students may stare down the blank computer screen as their entire existence shrinks to the size of a 12-point font. Should they write about the challenge of writing about the challenge of writing an overcoming challenges essay??

Don’t worry. Focusing first on how to tackle the essay will help any student decide what they should write about. In fact, how the essay is written will also prove more influential than the challenge itself in determining the strength of the essay.

Decoding the Prompt

Let’s take a look at the overcoming challenges essay question included among the seven 2023-24 Common App Essay Prompts :

The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

Notice how the prompt places an immediate emphasis on the “lessons we take,” rather than on the obstacles themselves, or any potential success. This is because the challenge itself often says less about the student than the way the student chose to tackle it, or the way they now reflect on it. In other words, obstacles often come at us randomly; it’s our personal response to the circumstances which reveals something of who we are.

While studying a prompt for clues, it’s helpful to think from the perspective of the admissions officer (the essay reader). What can they glean from an overcoming challenges essay?  A lot, actually. A thoughtfully written essay may tell them about the student’s personality, as well as things like problem-solving techniques, rigor, persistence, creativity, and courage. These insights can work to prove to the admissions officers that the student has what it takes to overcome challenges in college, too. These future challenges may range from the inevitable academic obstacles that occur with heavy courseloads, to social and moral challenges that arise as college students form their adult identities.

Picking Your Topic: A Brainstorming Activity

With the question of identity in mind, let’s now approach the overcoming challenges essay backwards, by brainstorming the final message the student wants it to contain.

For this three-part exercise, the student will first set a five-minute timer. With the clock ticking, they’ll jot down character traits, values, and any descriptive words or terms that say something about who they are. If stumped, change perspective. The student may imagine what their best friends, parents, coaches and siblings would say. (For example, tenacious , logical , scientific , peacemaker .) Even mild criticism can be helpful, as long as it’s not cruel. While a student’s brother may call him a “perfectionist,” perhaps this word will trigger other relevant words, like persistent and detail-oriented.

Next, the student will set the timer for another five minutes, pull out a second sheet of paper, and jot down any challenges, obstacles, setbacks, failures, and achievements that come to mind. Don’t hold back here or overanalyze. (For example: underdog at state swim meet , getting lost on the family hike , petitioning for a school compost system …)

Lastly, the student will place the two pages side by side, and draw lines between the items on the list wherever connections occur. One student may draw lines between persistent , curious , gamer , passionate about electronics , and saved the day during the power outage. Another set of lines might connect caring, observant, creative thinker , and helped sister leave abusive cult . Whatever ideas are sparked here, the goal is to identify which challenges will demonstrate something essential about the student to an admissions officer.

Topics to Avoid

The internet is rife with advice on what not to write when writing an overcoming challenges essay. Yet this advice can be confusing, or downright hypocritical. For instance, some may advise against writing about death. Yet a student who lost their father at an early age may be capable of writing a poignant essay about their search for an alternative father figure, and how they found one in their soccer coach.

I suggest avoiding guides on what not to write until after the student has done a thorough round of brainstorming. Otherwise, they risk censoring themselves too early, and may reject a promising idea. Once they’ve narrowed down their list to three ideas or less, they may want to check our guide on College Application Essay Topics to Avoid .

The reason why certain types of overcoming challenges essays miss the mark is that they emphasize the wrong aspect of the experience, which turns the topic into a cliché. While it’s generally a good idea to avoid trivial topics (again, that C in P.E.), any topic has the potential to be compelling, if it’s animated through personal opinions, insight, and description. Details bring an experience to life. Structure and reflection make an essay convincing. In other words, how the story is told will determine whether or not the topic is worth writing about.

So, rather than avoid specific topics, consider avoiding these scenarios: if you can’t show the essay to your best friend or grandmother, it’s probably not ready to show a college admissions officer. If you must write a clichéd topic, don’t choose a typical structure.

Techniques to Hone

Techniques that animate an overcoming challenges essay are the same ones used in storytelling. Think setting, visuals, sounds, dialogue, physical sensations, and feelings. “Showing” instead of “telling.” Crafting the essay with these inner and external details will bring the challenge to life, and catch the reader’s attention.

Another technique which works well when trying to avoid the trappings of cliché involve subverting the reader’s expectations. In storytelling terms, this is a plot twist. The student who got a C in P.E. may actually have a stellar essay on their hands, if they can break away from the “bad grade” trope (working harder to improve their grade). Perhaps this student’s story is actually about how, while sitting on the bleachers and not participating in the game, they found themselves watching the frisbee spin through the air, and realized they had a deep interest in the movement of astronomical bodies.

Some of the strongest overcoming challenges essays demonstrate what students have learned about themselves, rather than what they’ve learned about the obstacle they confronted. These essays may show how the student has come to see themselves differently, or how they’ve decided to change, thanks to the challenge they faced. These essays work because the reflection is natural and even profound, based on the student’s self-awareness.

Writing the Overcoming Challenges Essay, or Drafts, Drafts, Drafts

Everyone writes differently, some by outlining (never a bad idea), some by free-styling (good for capturing sensations and memories), some by lighting a candle—but don’t procrastinate too much. The only “must” is to revise. After a first draft, the student should begin to look for several things:

1) Clarity and Detail. Is the challenge recounted with precision? Is it personal?

2) Structure. Consider mapping the structure, to visualize it better. Does the structure suit the story? Can it be changed for clarity, or to keep the reader more engaged?

3) Cliché. Identify words, sentences, and ideas that are dull or repetitive. Mark them up, and in the next draft, find ways to rewrite, subvert, condense, and delete.

4) Lesson Learned. Has the student reflected adequately on the lesson they learned from overcoming a challenge? To add more reflection, students might ask themselves what they have felt and thought about the experience since. Would they do something differently, if faced with the same challenge? Has their understanding of the experience evolved over time?

By the final draft, the experience and the reflection should feel equally weighted. To get there, it may take five or six drafts.

Overcoming Challenges Essay Sample

The Happiness Hotline

First there were reports. Then we were told to stop socializing, go inside, wait. Covid struck. Everyone knows what ensued. It probably looked different from where we were all (separately) standing, even though we faced the same thing. Those first weeks, I stood at my bedroom window. It was dark by early evening in Oregon. The weirdest part—after the fact that we were collectively sharing the loneliest experience of our lives—was the silence.

… it was really quiet.

So quiet, I could hear my mom sigh downstairs. (So quiet, I couldn’t remember if I’d hummed aloud, or if I’d just heard myself in my head.) When I looked out the window, I could hear the stoplight at the end of our street. Green to yellow. Click.

Before going on, you should know three things. First, this is not a Covid essay. This is about melancholy, and the “sadness that has taken on lightness,” to quote Italo Calvino. Second, from my bedroom window, I can see down a row of oak trees, past the hospital, to my friend Carlo’s house. Third, Carlo is a jazz singer. Maybe that sounds pretentious, a freshman kid being a jazz singer, but that’s Carlo, and I wouldn’t be me without Carlo being Carlo. He’s someone who appreciates the unhinged rhythm of a Charlie Parker tune. He’s an extrovert who can bring introverts like me out of my shell. He convinced me to learn trombone, and together we riff in the after-school jazz club.

In the first month of the pandemic, we called each other nightly to talk rap albums, school stuff. At Carlo’s house, he could hear a white-crowned sparrow. He could also hear his parents talking numbers behind the bathroom door. The death toll was mounting. The cost of living was going up too. As the month wore on, I began to hear something else in our calls, in the way Carlo paused, or forgot what he was saying. Carlo was scared. He felt sad, isolated, and without his bright energy, I too, felt utterly alone.

Overcoming Challenges Essay Sample (Continued)

After some dark days, I realized that to help ourselves we needed to help others. It was pretty obvious the more I thought about it. People are social creatures, supposedly, even introverts. Maybe our neighbors needed to remember the noisiness of life.

We built a happiness hotline. That sounds fancy, though essentially, we provided three-way calls on my parents’ landline. The harder part involved making flyers and putting them up around town, in places people were still going. Grocery stores, the post office. We made a TikTok account, and then—the phone rang. Our first caller.

For months, if you called in, you could talk to us about your days in lockdown. People went really deep about the meaning of life, and we had to learn on the spot how to respond. I’d become a journalist and a therapist before becoming a sophomore. After chatting, the caller would request a song, and if we knew how to play it, we would. If not, we improvised.

Now we’re seniors in high school. Carlo visits the hospital with band members. As for myself, I’ve been working on a community music book, compiling our callers’ favorite tunes. I don’t want to forget how important it felt to make these connections. Our callers taught me that loneliness is a bit like a virus, a bit like a song. Even when it stops it can come back to haunt you, as a new variant or an old refrain. Still, sadness can take on lightness when voices call through the dark: sparrows, friends, strangers. I learned I’m good at listening into the silence. Listening isn’t only a passive stance, but an open line of receiving.

Analysis of the Overcoming Challenges Essay Sample

This student uses their musical passion to infuse the essay with vivid detail. There’s a focus on sound throughout, from the bird to the stoplight. Then there are the callers, and the clever way the student conceived of breaking through the silence. The narrator’s voice sharpens the piece further, elevating a clichéd Covid essay to a personal story of self-discovery.

In fact, the essay briefly breaks with structure to tell the reader that this is not a Covid essay. Although techniques like this should be used sparingly, it works here by grabbing the reader’s attention. It also allows the student to organize their thoughts on the page, before moving the plot along.

Outwardly, the student is overcoming the challenge of loneliness in a time of quarantine. Yet there seems to be an inner, unspoken challenge as well, that of coming to terms with the student’s introverted personality. The essay’s reflection occurs in the final paragraph, making the essay experience-heavy. However, clues woven throughout point to the reflection that will come. Details like the Italo Calvino quote hint at the later understanding of how to alleviate loneliness. While some readers might prefer more development, the various themes are threaded throughout, which makes for a satisfying ending.

A Last Word on the Short Essay About Overcoming Challenges

The short essay about overcoming a challenge requires the same steps as a longer one. To write it, follow the same brainstorming activity, then focus more on condensing and summarizing the experience. Students who’ve already written a longer overcoming challenges essay can approach the short essay about overcoming a challenge by streamlining. Instead of deleting all the extra bits, keep two interesting details that will flavor the essay with something memorable and unique.

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Kaylen Baker

With a BA in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, and a Master’s in Translation from Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, Kaylen has been working with students on their writing for over five years. Previously, Kaylen taught a fiction course for high school students as part of Columbia Artists/Teachers, and served as an English Language Assistant for the French National Department of Education. Kaylen is an experienced writer/translator whose work has been featured in Los Angeles Review, Hybrid, San Francisco Bay Guardian, France Today, and Honolulu Weekly, among others.

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How to write about your biggest challenge or adversity

Your adversity statement, often called “the challenge essay,” has the potential to be a major contributor to your medical school application. The goal of the essay is not just to explain the adversities you faced or the challenges you experienced, but rather to demonstrate your ability to overcome them and grow from them. The specific challenge or adversity itself is often times the least important part of the essay! Instead, the majority of your limited word count will be dedicated to demonstrating your preparedness for the many challenges and adversities that you will face in medical school and beyond. Looking at the prompt from this angle may help it seem a bit less intimidating. Now, let’s tackle this essay in three simple steps: 

Step One : Reread the prompt, and select the experience you want to talk about 

Before you even begin brainstorming, reread the prompt! In your excitement (or nervousness) to get started, you may have missed a helpful detail that will narrow the scope of your essay. Depending on the school, you may be asked to discuss a professional challenge, a personal challenge, or even an academic one. Make sure that you understand which of these, if any, is being asked for. Once you have a sense of what type of experience is being requested, start to brainstorm the adversities you have faced, no matter how big or small. As you make a list, make sure each example fits the following criteria: 

• You have overcome the obstacle or have made meaningful progress towards the goal of overcoming it
• You have completed the emotional processing of the obstacle/experience and are comfortable talking about it in writing and potentially in an interview 

Once this is done, take a look at your list and see what experiences you are most confident in. Do those align with the narrative of the application you submitted in your primary application/personal statement? Is this an experience that you’ve discussed extensively in your 15 activities or personal statement already? Asking yourself these questions will help you narrow down the list further until you make a final selection that will complement your application and demonstrate your characteristics well. Examples include: losing a loved one, not succeeding in a class, navigating a health concern or diagnosis, overcoming a language barrier, navigating financial hardship, and more. 

Step Two: Map out the essay by talking through exactly how you overcame the adversity/challenge 

You have your experience selected, but before writing the essay, you need to be sure of the characteristics you wish to demonstrate. Knowing this before you write will help you frame the story in such a way that these characteristics shine through. Remember, you are only using a small amount of the essay to describe the event itself; most of the essay should focus on your journey overcoming the adversity/challenge, so you need to be direct and clear from the start! You can also use this time to get a sense of how long the essay will be. Do you find yourself taking 5 minutes or more to fully explain your story? You may need to be more succinct in order to condense that into an essay with a limited word count. 

Step Three: Write, write, write 

Dedicate a brief intro of the essay to describing the circumstances of the challenge/adversity you faced. No need to be too detailed, but give the reader enough information to understand what you were up against. Next, explain your feelings throughout the experience, how you were affected, and how you overcame. The key to this step is alluding to the qualities you are demonstrating without actually stating them. Rather than saying, “I was resilient,” simply explain the steps you took to keep pushing through despite the circumstances. Do this, and the key words and characteristics will leap off the page between the lines of your story! Once you’ve described the actions you took to overcome, close out the essay with a brief statement about how the experience changed you or gave you an opportunity to grow. This is a great opportunity to demonstrate your ability to reflect and use any experience as a learning experience. 

When you are finished, be sure to go back to the prompt one last time and make sure that your essay answers it appropriately. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments, and keep in mind that the readers of your essay are looking to recruit their future students, colleagues, and patient care providers. What qualities would you be looking for if you were in their shoes?

Olivia attended the University of Rochester, studying Neuroscience and American Sign Language. She's pursuing her MD at Harvard Medical School, where she’s exploring her interests in pediatrics and neonatology.

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Essays About Challenges: Top 11 Examples and Prompts

We come across many challenges we must endure throughout life. If you want to write essays about challenges, start by reading some of our top essay examples.

Everyone has had to deal with obstacles or challenges at some point. Some people can overcome hurdles with confidence and bravery, while many others have difficulty trying to face them. However, the challenges we have faced are, without a doubt, a central part of who we are today. Overcoming challenges can make you a better person. The lessons you learn from them are essential for future success, and as with all other experiences, these challenges help form you into the person you are today. They can also be exciting to some, as they test your skills and capabilities. 

If you are writing essays about challenges, look at our featured essay examples below. 

1. Personal Challenges by Delores Goodwin

2. life’s struggles make us stronger – and happier – if we let them by helen g. rousseau, 3. how to overcome your challenges with openness and courage by tony fahkry.

• 4.  ​​Life: full of challenges by Vaibhav Jain

5. Challenges Facing Public Schools by Lewis Rios

1. challenges i have faced, 2. lessons learned from challenges, 3. how to change your attitude towards challenge, 4. helping others overcome challenges and adversity, 5. challenges faced in your home country, 6. challenges the world currently faces.

“A challenge will tell an individual more about themselves than anything else in life. Am I a quitter? How much adversity can I take? How badly do I want this? What is my breaking point? Where does my loyalty end? Challenge can ask us hundreds of questions and forces us to answer honestly. Challenges end the talk and make one walk the walk. Create challenges for yourself, it will cause you to see who you really are.”

Challenges are a necessity of life despite the hardship and stress they come with, and Goodwin discusses this in her essay. A great accomplishment cannot be made without a challenge. Without challenges, one becomes complacent, so we must keep facing challenges to keep us mentally and physically strong. Goodwin encourages readers to challenge themselves more to help them delve deeper into who they are. For more, check out these essays about life challenges .

“Every human being has been in this place at one time or another. Sometimes depression can make it more difficult to get away from the edge but any spark of light or encouragement should be used to seek help physically, emotionally or spiritually. When we face a crisis, it effects the all of who we are and thus must be met with our total beings.”

Rousseau reflects on overcoming adversity, recalling when she met with two former coworkers. They talked about their lives, families, and struggles during lunch. They could bond over their shared positive, confident mindset, allowing them to overcome challenges. Rousseau clarifies that if you put your mind to it, you can overcome anything and closes her essay with two of her poems about resilience. 

“Instead of running away from your emotions, lean into them and experience them fully. This transforms your fears and anxiety into empowering emotions. Let go of what you believe life owes you. It owes you nothing since you are the expression of life. Rise to your challenges armed with courage and an open mind. Remain confident that your experiences are serving your personal growth.”

Fahkry explains how to face challenges without stress and suffering. He reminds us that, first of all, we have free will, so we do not have to feel the way we do if we put our minds to it. We cannot change our reality once it is already there, so feeling sad or angry for prolonged periods is useless. If we change our mindsets for the better, we can overcome all adversity. Our fear and anxiety can be turned into confidence, empowerment, and courage. Check out these essays about competition .

4.  ​​ Life: full of challenges by Vaibhav Jain

“A person who has not encountered difficulties in life can never achieve success. Difficulties test the courage, patience, perseverance, and true character of a human being. Adversity and hardships make a person strong and ready to face the challenges of life with equanimity. There is no doubt that there can be no gain without pain. It is only when one toils and sweats it out that success is nourished and sustained.”

In his short essay, Jain writes about the wonders of life as well as its challenges. He likens life to a bed of roses, complete with painful thorns. In general, life is good, but adversity and challenges are prevalent. These two concepts seem different, but one cannot exist without the other. As with the previous essays, Jain explains that challenges make us stronger and help us feel successful and relieved: “there can be no gain without pain.” Without challenges, we take the better parts of life for granted; if we accept and overcome our struggles, we can live life to the fullest.

“In conclusion, public educational institutions experience many challenges ranging from budgetary constraints, student violence and low parental involvement. Much research needs to be done to establish why these problems exist in the first place and lasting solutions for these institutions.”

Rios’ essay explores challenges in an education system; he proposes research on the constraints of the U.S. public school system. Public schools face several economic and social challenges, such as insufficient funding and lack of parental involvement due to many students’ working-class backgrounds. Rios wishes for more research on these problems and possible solutions. 

Writing Prompts On Essays about Challenges

In this essay, write about a challenge you previously encountered and how you dealt with it. Provide context by describing the events leading up to it, how it happened, and, most importantly, how you overcame it. Then, describe how you felt after- were you relieved, stressed, or tired? You can also discuss how this experience has affected you today. 

Challenges can teach us a lot about life and the world. Reflect on a challenge you faced previously and what you learned from it, whether positive or negative. As with the previous prompt, feel free to include ways in which the lesson you learned affects you today. 

How can you best handle the challenges you may face? Describe the ideal attitude one would need to overcome complex challenges. For example, what qualities would you need to have- courage, prudence, or sensibility? Regardless of what type of attitude you choose to write about, your essay will be substantive if you can adequately support your argument. 

In your essay, you can write about a time you were able to help someone facing a challenge. Who did you help- a friend, family member, or someone else? Then, write about how you helped them, how it made you feel, and how it has impacted your life. 

Research one particular challenge your country is facing today, whether that be an economic, social, or political issue. Discuss how this challenge occurred and what began the difficulties. If applicable, include multiple viewpoints on the issue and include information from credible sources. You can also propose possible solutions to this issue. 

Humanity faces challenges on a massive scale, from a climate change crisis to possible third world war to a global pandemic. Choose one challenge the world faces today and write your essay about it. As with the previous prompt, write about the causes and responses to this challenge, and feel free to propose a solution. 

Check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

ProWritingAid is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this ProWritingAid review .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Life Experiences — Overcoming Challenges

Essays on Overcoming Challenges

Prompt examples for "overcoming challenges" essays, personal growth through adversity.

Share a personal experience in which you faced a significant challenge or adversity. Describe the impact it had on your personal growth, the lessons you learned, and how it changed your perspective on life.

The Role of Resilience

Discuss the concept of resilience in the face of challenges. How do individuals develop and demonstrate resilience, and what role does it play in overcoming difficult situations?

Overcoming Academic Obstacles

Explore the challenges students often encounter in their academic journeys. Describe a specific academic hurdle you faced, how you addressed it, and the strategies you used to succeed in your studies.

Challenges in the Workplace

Discuss challenges that individuals may encounter in their professional careers. Share a personal or professional experience in which you faced a workplace obstacle and describe how you navigated it to achieve success.

Health and Wellness Journey

Reflect on a health-related challenge, whether it's a physical ailment, mental health issue, or lifestyle change. Describe the steps you took to address this challenge, improve your well-being, and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Overcoming Adversity in Sports

Discuss how athletes often face physical and mental challenges in their sports careers. Share a personal or sports-related story in which you or someone you know overcame adversity in athletics, highlighting the determination and perseverance required.

Challenges in Relationships

Explore the challenges that can arise in personal relationships, such as friendships, family dynamics, or romantic partnerships. Share a personal experience or case study, detailing how communication and resilience played a role in overcoming relationship challenges.

Obstacles in Pursuit of Goals

Describe a specific goal or dream you have pursued and the obstacles you encountered along the way. Explain the strategies you employed to overcome these obstacles and achieve your objectives.

Contributions to Community

Discuss how individuals can overcome challenges to make positive contributions to their communities. Share a personal or community-based initiative you were involved in that addressed a significant challenge or issue.

Lessons from Adversity

Reflect on the life lessons you have learned from overcoming challenges. How have these experiences shaped your values, beliefs, and approach to future obstacles?

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How to Write the “Most Significant Challenge” UC Essay

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by CollegeVine co-founder Vinay Bhaskara in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

Understanding the prompt, avoiding common pitfalls, navigating more difficult topics.

The University of California system requires you to answer four out of eight prompts for its essays. Prompt five asks applicants:

Describe the most significant challenge you have faced and the steps you have taken to overcome this challenge. How has this challenge affected your academic achievement? (350 words)

As with any college essay, this prompt is an opportunity to convey a strong personal voice while communicating personal values and strengths that may not readily apparent in other parts of their application. In this article, we will discuss what the prompt is asking, how to approach writing your essay, and advice for navigating difficult topics. 

The first step in answering this prompt is identifying a challenge to reflect on. You’ll want to focus on a challenge that’s personal, genuine and authentic. A common issue that students struggle with is selecting a challenge that is appropriate in scale for the purposes of this essay. Choosing a challenge that may come across as minor in the eyes of admission officers, such as losing out on extracurricular opportunities because of COVID, for example, likely wouldn’t impress your reader in the same way that a more specific, personal challenge would. Navigating COVID as a challenge is going to be a completely overused response to this prompt, and if you want to stand out you should reflect more deeply on a challenge that is unique to you. 

You don’t want your challenge to come off as tone-deaf. For example, writing about a time that your parents refused to purchase something for you would not reflect very well on you and make you sound spoiled. On the flip side, you also don’t want to choose an outsized challenge that doesn’t resonate you. Your topic should be genuine and authentic.

Additionally, because this prompt specifically calls out an impact to your academic achievement, it’s a little bit more restrictive than the similar prompt in the Common Application . To be clear, you don’t have to write about something that directly affected your academics; however, you should be able to relate the process of overcoming this challenge back to your academic performance.

Focusing Only on the Challenge

We’ve already talked about writing a tone-deaf essay, but another trope you want to avoid is what we call a sob story. Writing an essay solely about the challenge and all the pain that it’s caused you is a good place to start an essay, but pain and struggle shouldn’t be where you end. A key element of the prompt is the act of overcoming the challenge and reflecting on that process and where you ended up. If you can’t end this essay in a better place than where you started, you’re not going to have a strong response to this prompt. 

Blaming Others

Additionally, avoid blaming others for your challenges. For example, if you struggled with a particular academic subject, focus on the specific aspects of that subject that challenged you and how you worked to overcome them. It’s easy to blame a bad teacher for a poor academic performance, and it is possible that the teacher might have objectively not been good. 

But think back to the purpose of the supplemental prompts. Colleges want to understand the person behind the application and how they think and relate to the people around them. Shifting blame to your teacher, even if it is  wholly deserved, could signal a lack of personal responsibility or immaturity to the admissions team. Remember that colleges are looking for students who will add to the vibrant campus community, which of course also includes their faculty and the other students.

Regardless of what you choose as your challenge, it’s important to think critically about how you will frame it within the context of your essay. Difficult topics like mental and physical health can be quite effective essay topics as they’re deeply personal and often quite substantial. However, as you begin to think through your essay, remember that two huge elements of the prompt are overcoming the challenge and reflecting on how it has impacted you academically. 

Remember to start with the end in mind. When we say start with the end in mind, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the challenge is now over. Colleges understand that challenges like mental health and chronic pain often don’t go away. It is important that, in the case of a challenge that you are constantly navigating, you clearly and effectively convey how you’ve overcome it or, in some cases, the ongoing steps you take to mitigate it. 

Ultimately, college is rigorous and challenging in itself, and no college or university wants to set you up for failure if they’re not confident that you can succeed. If you cannot effectively demonstrate that the challenge is no longer a risk to your success and wellbeing, consider choosing a different topic.

Looking for more information on how to attack the UC supplemental essays? Check out this post for a comprehensive guide on how to answer each of the eight prompts!

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Running Has Taught Me to Appreciate What My Body Can Do, Not What Size It Is

Growing up, I was always small and scrawny. I never really noticed my body size until I started high school. I remember hearing people say, "Oh, you're so tiny. How do you do that?" I took pride in being small — something I feel ashamed about now — and the pressure of maintaining that body size led me to be careful about what I ate as I became an adult.

I didn't play sports back then, but my brother ran cross country in high school, and I remember that he would come home stinky and covered in mud. I thought, "This is so silly! Why would you choose to run?" I didn't "get it" until my boyfriend started training for a marathon in 2014. I was 25, and I wanted to understand what he was doing when he left the house for hours at a time. So I just tried running one mile. It was hard, but I kept at it because I wanted to be supportive. That's really why I wanted to get into running.

At the time, I lived near a park with a one-mile loop. I specifically remember the first time I finished that course and didn't feel absolutely exhausted. I think I looked around to see if anyone else was witnessing this moment. It felt both so big and so ordinary at the same time: so big because it was a new feeling; so ordinary because it was already part of a new habit. It was exciting and validating to literally feel the progress of something that had been really hard getting easier and easier.

When you start running, you improve fast . You're running half a mile, then one mile, then one-and-a-half, then two, then three. I started tagging along on my boyfriend's miles, and one day, as we slowed to a jog, he said: "Do you know how long that was? Five miles." Just like when I finished that one-mile loop, this felt like a huge milestone. By then, I was well and truly hooked; I ran the Army Ten-Miler that fall.

Around the same time, I started rethinking my relationship with my body. Before, my approach to eating was "less, less, less." I never had a huge appetite to begin with, but looking back I realize I'd also unconsciously internalized the social pressure to stay small.

But as I began to run more , I realized food is fuel. Making that connection between food and running outcomes was an aha moment. Eating stopped being about controlling the size of my body, and started being more about how to best optimize my performance at this sport that I'd come to love so much.

I was still thin, but I knew that I needed fuel to feel strong on my runs. I've never been a breakfast person, but I started making myself eat a fruit bar before my morning runs. When I was out, I would set an alarm on my phone and eat energy chews every 30 minutes.

I logged two major races in my first two years as a runner: the Marine Corps Marathon in 2015 and Grandma's Marathon in 2017. I made an ambitious goal for the latter event — one that I missed, which ultimately destroyed my relationship with running for a while. I took two years off, and that's when my body really started to change.

I wasn't a "skinny" woman anymore. I no longer heard the "oh you're so tiny" comments. At first, it was an odd, even uncomfortable feeling. Then, a friend who was doing some photos for me — which I felt fairly self-conscious about — admired my muscly calves. Her words stuck with me, and some time later I had another perspective shift, similar to my earlier realization about food being fuel: Heck yes, my calves have grown! Although I wasn't running much at the time, during the previous two years they'd taken an enormous amount of total force over the course of my runs. I was able to celebrate their strength as a result of — even an homage to — my love for the sport.

But our relationships with our bodies ebb and flow, and during the COVID-19 pandemic , I entered an ebb. I felt tired. My depression got worse, and I felt stuck in a vicious cycle: my body wasn't achieving anything for me, and so I wasn't treating it like the amazing machine it is. I felt trapped in it instead of empowered by it.

For several years, I wasn't in a great place with my body image. This discouraged me from getting back into running because I started to think of myself as "out of shape."

But as the pandemic dragged on, I — like so many people — needed a reason to leave the house every day. So I decided to return to running. I started from scratch, using a Couch to 5K program. This time, I felt more empowered and educated. I strength trained and focused on nutrition. I laced up more consistently than I ever had before.

Now, I think my body is probably the same size or even bigger than it was during my break from running, but my relationship with it is totally different. It's strong. I'm not necessarily faster, but I have more energy and passion for what I'm doing.

There's this hill at the end of my regular route. In just the last few weeks, I realized that I've been finishing my runs with my heart rate in an easy zone . Going up that hill is no longer a problem, even though I used to dread it. That's strong.

I've now raced three of four of my spring races, with the Marine Core Historic Half this Sunday. I haven't hit any personal records so far, but I've never completed this many hard-effort runs back-to-back.

face Now when I hear comments like, "Wow, your legs are so strong!" I can take them as the compliments they are . I think the biggest takeaway for me is to focus on what my body can do, not what it looks like — and running helps me keep that perspective.

— As told to Kells McPhillips.

Kells McPhillips is a health and wellness writer living in Los Angeles. In addition to PS, her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, Well+Good, Fortune, Runner's World, Outside, Yoga Journal, and others. On the brand side, she regularly works with Peloton, Calm, and Equinox.

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

Calculate for all schools

Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, personal challenges essay topic.

I need to write an essay about a personal challenge I've faced in my life as a student. I'm not sure how to decide what challenge to write about or how to make it meaningful for my college application. Any advice or suggestions?

It's important to choose a personal challenge that has had a significant impact on your growth and development, rather than focusing on a trivial or temporary difficulty. Consider reflecting on pivotal moments or experiences that have shaped your identity, values, or understanding of the world. Here are some steps and tips to help you brainstorm and select the best topic:

1. Reflect on your experiences: Take some time to think about your life as a student and consider any obstacles you've faced. This could involve academic, personal, or extracurricular challenges.

2. Consider the impact: As you think about the challenges you've faced, consider how they have affected your development. Did they change your perspective, teach you important lessons, or contribute to your growth in any way?

3. Be specific: Once you've identified a few potential topics, choose one that you can discuss in detail. It's better to be specific and focus on one challenge and its impact on you, rather than trying to cover multiple experiences that may be less in-depth or less meaningful.

4. Show personal growth: In your essay, be sure to demonstrate how you've grown or developed as a result of facing this particular challenge. Discuss the changes in your mindset, your values, or your actions that occurred as a result of the experience.

5. Make it unique: To make your essay stand out, focus on bringing your own voice and perspective to the topic. Share personal anecdotes or reflections that showcase your personality and your unique response to the challenge.

6. Proofread and revise: After drafting your essay, be sure to revise and edit it thoroughly. Make sure it flows well, stays on-topic, and effectively communicates the message you want to convey.

Also, check out this CollegeVine article for some more in-depth advice: https://blog.collegevine.com/overcoming-challenges-essay

Remember that your personal challenge essay is an opportunity for colleges to learn more about you. By carefully selecting a topic and showcasing your growth and development, you can create a meaningful essay that will leave a lasting impression on admissions officers. Good luck!

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

More From Forbes

Finding a buyer for my business.

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Finding a buyer for your business can be tough. Here are 5 ways to help you.

When it's time to sell your business, you probably wonder ‘How should I go about finding a buyer for my business?’ Finding a buyer can be tough. Many small business owners believe this is hard because they don't have a strategy to draw in serious buyers.

Exiting your business isn't just about selling. It's about making sure your legacy continues and your business does well under new ownership.

In this article, I'll show you five ways to find the right buyer and explain why this strategy might work for you and why other ones won’t fit.

How to Find a Buyer for Your Business

• Use Your Personal and Professional Contacts
• Hire a Trusted Business Broker
• Advertise on Online Business Sale Platforms
• Use Google Search Wisely
• Network at Industry Events and Conferences

Fallout Dethroned In Amazon Prime Video s Top 10 List By A New Offering

Anya taylor joy messi and more grace the cannes film festival 2024 red carpet, televisaunivision 2024-25 slate touts latino culture, vix growth, juanpa zurita, william levy deals, strategy 1: use your personal and professional contacts.

Why It's Important: People you already know might know someone who's interested in buying your business. Asking friends, family and other small business owners is a strategy that works really well to find buyers for a small business.

Tips: Tell these people about your business's success and potential. Share this story in conversations, at networking events, and on social media. You could also make a brief information packet that your contacts can give to potential buyers.

Some Caution : As the team at bizval points out, be cautious of word getting out to competitors or key customers and suppliers - this could have negative consequences.

Unless you are being approached by them, like it happened for Nathan Hirsch from trioseo.com :

“I was lucky that I sold to one of my clients. They came to me and said they love my business and want to get into the VA space. They buy businesses, not start them, and made me an offer. The key is to build your business to be sellable. You never know when opportunities will come up.”

Want to know what makes a business sellable and valuable? Here are 9 lessons from failing to sell my business.

Strategy 2: Hire a Trusted Business Broker

Why It's Important: Business brokers can help you find qualified buyers quickly and easily. Reach out to brokers when your business is making more than 2 million a year, as this is often the minimum requirement they have to support you on your exiting journey.

Advice: Search for ‘business brokers near me’ or ‘small business broker near me’ to get a longlist of brokers in your neighborhood with a specific expertise. You want them to understand your business, what kind of buyer you're looking for and the kind of buyer they see as a great match. I cannot stretch this enough, but choose a broker with experience in your industry and a good track record. It will make all the difference.

Strategy 3: Advertise on Online Business Sale Platforms

Why It's Important: Websites that list businesses for sale can help you reach potential buyers all over the world. The global and extensive reach these platforms have will bring your business in front of potential buyers you would otherwise never encounter. When you can connect with buyers on different continents, the likelihood of connecting with strategic buyers who are looking to expand in a certain geographical area increases.

Resources : Online places to find qualified buyers for your business are Flippa, BizBuySell, Baton and EmpireFlippers, to name a few.

Strategy 4: Use Google Search Wisely

Why It's Important: Many small business owners won’t sell through a broker, as their annual revenues are too low. A lot of these owners go into the selling process on their own, looking for buyers by simply googling them.

From Experience: That is exactly what Jodie Cook did. She searched for PE firms in the UK who buy agencies and ended up selling her marketing agency to one of them. It’s entirely possible for entrepreneurs to take this route, just make sure you are getting proper legal advice along the way.

Important: When you go in alone, it’s key to get the right independent support, like an outsider view on the value of your business. You need to know what your small business is worth.

Strategy 5: Network at Industry Events and Conferences

Why It's Important: Industry events are great for networking and can help you meet interested buyers.

Tips: Go to these events with the goal of networking. Have a short pitch about your business's strengths and potential ready. Talk to speakers and attendees who might be interested in investing or acquisitions in your industry.

How a Cold Email Led to a Business Exit

Laura Roeder, the founder of MeetEdgar, a social media planning tool, decided to sell her business when growth started to plateau. She read books on business exits and identified potential buyers herself. She wrote a great cold email and sent it to these potential buyers.

This email was short and clear, and it caught the attention of the right buyer. She eventually sold her business for a price that was higher than she expected.

This story shows that if you prepare well and understand what makes your business attractive, you can find a buyer without needing any middlemen.

Your Challenge

• Think about what makes your business special. Write these things down.
• Identify what kinds of buyers you should approach, based on your goals and their goals.
• Then, think about which of the above strategies above would work best based on your business.
• Decide where to find the right buyers and approach them

If you take these steps seriously, you can increase your chances of finding a buyer who will respect your business and take it to the next level.

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I finally understand my mother's tough love

"you and your mother are just alike," my father would tell me, by randall horton.

I remember, as if it were yesterday, sitting in an Alabama church as the Baptist preacher eulogized my grandmother. I waited patiently for tears to stream down my cheeks. They did not.

Only days before, I’d received notification my grandmother had died from one of the four roommates I shared a house with on Harvard Street in Washington, D.C. It was 1982 and I was a student at Howard University . I’d gone to the fall Homecoming concert featuring musical groups Time and Vanity 6 at Crampton Auditorium on campus. This was before cellphones, texting and other instant communication, so my mother had to call the police station in D.C., give them my address, and ask them to send a patrol car to our house where the message was relayed to me before I was about to go inside the auditorium.

I remembered being in that church — numb, unsure of how to act or respond to death. I’d been close to Grandmother. I loved her dearly; yet, I did not cry.

I wanted to display a sense of love and affection, that tenderness death exposes. I wanted Grandmother to know the crater she left inside my heart was gargantuan, unfillable. However, it is difficult to escape the lessons of supposed manhood from neighborhood cats that specialized in the art of misogynistic behavior, believed in preying on the weak, and being a real N___ was the only thing in life to aspire to. What I mean is from an early age both inside and outside the home, I was taught real men don’t cry. They bet not.

The majority of this I had learned by the tender age of eight, from pouring shots of white and red liquor in my grandmother’s shot house.

During this transformation from college student to drug seller, my mother and I had a difficult time being in the same room without arguing about my life choices.

My grandmother’s shot house was frequented by men hardened by the weatherworn elements of time, those tiny particles of memory that refuse erasure. They held it all in. There was no crying. The emotive was damn near mythological and prohibited by the innate laws that governed these men. I watched them. I learned from them. I wanted to be them.

It was an environment my mother was accustomed to as well, having come of age in that old veridian clapboard house, an experience she never wanted to talk about, especially what it was like for a young woman to be present in a place that sexualized women on the daily. Even before my grandmother died, my mother and I always had this sort of brokenness, a fractured claim to connection. It seemed like we would never find a way to bond as mother and son, or wade in an emotional state of comfort.

By the time I was in that southern church processing Grandmother's death, I’d become a participant in the national narrative of cocaine through a Cuban cartel operating out of Miami.

In the future version of Randall, there would be twin-engine planes, cigarette boats moving through Caribbean waters with fiberglass kilos headed to Miami. There would also be homelessness and prison. There would be near-death misses, near-deaths attempted. I was a lost human drifting through the corridors of consciousness. What I am trying to say is I had become immersed in a culture of drugs. At the time of my grandmother’s death I was a college student in name and appearance only.

I was straddling a wafer-thin allegorical fence: The young man my parents wanted me to be versus who I was becoming.

During this transformation from college student to drug seller, my mother and I had a difficult time being in the same room without arguing about my life choices. To be honest, I did not make it easy. I rebelled at authority. Our disagreements were intense, mainly because, in the end, I wanted her to love me in a way I could not express. So I acted out, even as an adult. Perhaps my father saw this dynamic play out more than anyone, and when I was alone and angry, he would only offer, “You and your mother are just alike.”

My mother was never easy on me. Even as a boy she demanded I be tough, that I not cry. One time when I was homeless in D.C., I called the house late one night, and while my dad wanted to talk to me, my mother told my dad to hang up the damn phone . If I am honest with myself, I know why. I needed a tough love because a conventional love wasn’t working. It would take many years to understand my mother, that the silence she lived with growing up around her mother, the things she witnessed, it all played a part in how she raised me as her son. She saw how society withered those men up and took the joy out of living before they returned to the dirt. The booze, the women of the night, the gambling, the cons, all of these factors of the living she grew up around, as did I.

The day before my mother passed, I was at home in Birmingham, Alabama.

My mother had recently suffered a mild stroke, so mild she wasn’t aware until she went to the hospital and the doctor confirmed bleeding on the brain. The prognosis seemed to be good, so I did not fly home. I came two months later on my way to a literary conference in Dallas.

Perhaps my father saw this dynamic play out more than anyone, and when I was alone and angry, he would only offer, “You and your mother are just alike.”

The night before my flight departed for Texas, I was working on my panel presentation in my father’s office downstairs when I looked up and saw my mother lingering in the doorway with the most angelic smile. At that moment, wading in my own silence, I felt the sincerest connection I’d ever shared with my mother. Her glowing face was full of innocent youth. It was as if she were a teenager, and I was meeting her for the first time. My mother proceeded to explain she’d backed the car out of the garage and back in. A simple task, but for her it was validation that she was on the road to full recovery.

When I finished my panel the next day in Dallas, I checked my cell phone only to see way too many missed calls from my brother-in-law. The sheer volume told something was wrong. My mother had suffered a severe stroke. I needed to return to Birmingham immediately.

At the hospital my dad, sister and I received the prognosis there was nothing else to do, that she would never regain consciousness.  My mother would hang between the balance of life and death for the next five days. I could only think back to our exchange in the doorway of my father's office, that moment when whatever we were battling against with each other was over. In many ways that moment told me that whatever connection we had or did not have, I was her child, and she was my mother. The only way I knew to deal with the impending loss was to visit mother every day in the hospital and read her passages from my soon-to-be published book, "Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays."

The first essay I read was from “November 2nd and A Mother’s Love,” in which I recall my mother and I attending the Inaugural Ball in honor of President-elect Barak Obama.

I wanted my mother to know how special that moment was when we shared the first dance, dressed to the nines in formal attire in the nation’s capital. This dance came after a five-year bid inside the carceral state, after two years in a drug program, a bachelor's degree, an MFA, and a PhD. After the PhD came my first tenure track job. I was now following in the shadow of my mother, also a lifelong educator.

The second passage came from my essay, “Eleven Days.” It took my mother 57 years to reveal to me — or rather, to my wife, on a visit after our marriage — that after my premature birth in 1961, I’d been separated from my mother for 11 days, for the sole reason of race. I recount what it must have felt like for her to have a child and then not have a child. For all the reasons in the world, this revelation made sense in terms of our broken claim to connection, and why we’d been on this journey since my birth.

Though my mother could not formulate words, I could stare into her fading eyes, and as I did, I became in sync with her every breath. I’d like to think she saw the passion, the writer in me, and never imagined this to be my destiny. I uttered the most difficult words I've had to speak when I told her, "It is OK to let go." 

I cried at the foot of her bed like I’d never lived by the code that weeping is for the weak. I didn’t give a damn. Whatever it was that I could not articulate had to come out. And in the crying came the baptism, and after the baptism came a sense that our love had always been that of mother and son, and maybe in the progression of death we truly understood each other. This was my mother’s final gift to me.

At the funeral, it was assumed, that I — the writer — would say something.

I sat in that same basement study where I last saw my mother alive, and after another good cry,  the first words I wrote were: “Come celebrate with us this life of longevity, a life realized through a commitment to service and achievement, taking every inch of what this social order gives, with all its constructs and ideologies within a nation that never could have imagined the existence of the strong Black woman — who is often cloaked in a sort of invisibility.” I wanted my mother to know she was never invisible.

I returned home a motherless child.

The next morning, while working on a creative nonfiction essay on my backyard deck in North Jersey, two doves appeared on the wooden railing. It is a backyard visited by darting sparrows and dignified blue jays lingering in the skeletal tree branches of spring. Sometimes against the background of a shed and garden, cardinals flash their emblematic red wings. But never doves.

As a poet, I viewed these two birds as Grandma and Momma, the two most important women in my life, checking in on me, letting me know they are always here, there, everywhere. 

personal stories about mothers

• The parasites inside my mother were both real and spiritual
• A mother's vanishing: A secret that haunted my family for generations, hiding in plain sight
• My parents are dead—can I afford avocado toast now?

Randall Horton is the author of " {#289-128}: Poems ," which received the 2021 American Book Award; " Dead Weight: A Memoir in Essays ;" " Hook: A Memoir ," which received the Great Lakes College Association 2017 Award for Creative Nonfiction; and three additional poetry collections. The recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature, Horton is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of  the Affrilachian Poets , as well as the experimental performance group Heroes Are Gang Leaders, which received the 2018 American Book Award in Oral Literature. He is the co-creator of Radical Reversal , a poetry/music band dedicated to challenging systemic injustice in the American legal system through the installation of recording studios and creative/performance spaces as well as programming in Department of Correction facilities in the United States. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, he now resides in New Jersey and is a Professor of English at the University of New Haven. 

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