personal experience essay questions

Personal Essay Topics

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A personal essay is an essay about your life, thoughts, or experiences. This type of essay will give readers a glimpse into your most intimate life experiences and life lessons. There are many reasons you may need to write a personal essay , from a simple class assignment to a college application requirement . You can use the list below for inspiration. Consider each statement a starting point, and write about a memorable moment that the prompt brings to mind.

• Your bravest moment
• How you met your best friend
• What makes your mom or dad special
• How you overcame a fear
• Why you will succeed
• Why you made a difficult choice
• A special place
• A place you try to avoid
• When a friend let you down
• An event that changed your life
• A special encounter with an animal
• A time when you felt out of place
• An odd experience that didn't make sense at the time
• Words of wisdom that hit home and changed your way of thinking
• A person that you do not like
• A time when you disappointed someone
• Your fondest memory
• A time when you saw your parent cry
• The moment when you knew you were grown up
• Your earliest memory of holiday celebrations in your home
• Times when you should have made a better choice
• A time when you dodged a dangerous situation
• A person you will think about at the end of your life
• Your favorite time period
• A failure you've experienced
• A disappointment you've experienced
• A surprising turn of events
• What you would do with power
• What superpower you would choose
• If you could switch lives with someone
• How money matters in your life
• Your biggest loss
• A time when you felt you did the wrong thing
• A proud moment when you did the right thing
• An experience that you've never shared with another person
• A special place that you shared with a childhood friend
• A first encounter with a stranger
• Your first handshake
• Where you go to hide
• If you had a do-over
• A book that changed your life
• Words that stung
• When you had the desire to run
• When you had the urge to crawl into a hole
• Words that prompted hope
• When a child taught you a lesson
• Your proudest moment
• If your dog could talk
• Your favorite time with family
• If you could live in another country
• If you could invent something
• The world a hundred years from now
• If you had lived a hundred years earlier
• The animal you'd like to be
• One thing you'd change at your school
• The greatest movie moment
• The type of teacher you would be
• If you could be a building
• A statue you'd like to see
• If you could live anywhere
• The greatest discovery
• If you could change one thing about yourself
• An animal that could be in charge
• Something you can do that robots could never do
• Your most unfortunate day
• Your secret talent
• Your secret love
• The most beautiful thing you've ever seen
• The ugliest thing you've seen
• Something you've witnessed
• An accident that changed everything
• A wrong choice
• A right choice
• If you were a food
• How you'd spend a million dollars
• If you could start a charity
• The meaning of color
• A close call
• Your favorite gift
• A chore you'd do away with
• A secret place
• Something you can't resist
• A hard lesson
• A visitor you'll never forget
• An unexplained event
• Your longest minute
• An awkward social moment
• An experience with death
• Why you'll never tell a lie
• If your mom knew, she'd kill you
• A kiss that meant a lot
• When you needed a hug
• The hardest news you've had to deliver
• A special morning
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student opinion

550 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing

Questions that invite students to tell stories, describe memories, make observations, imagine possibilities, and reflect on who they are and what they believe.

By The Learning Network

Update, Sept. 9, 2022: We published a new collection of 445 narrative and personal writing prompts.

We’ve been posting fresh writing prompts every school day for over a decade now, and every so often we create a themed collection like this one to help you find what you need all in one place.

This fall, in honor of our new narrative-writing unit and our first-ever Personal Narrative Essay Contest for teenagers, we’ve rounded up 550 evergreen questions on everything from family, friendships and growing up to gender, spirituality, money, school, sports, social media, travel, dating, food, health and more. (They’re also all available here as a PDF .)

We hope they’ll inspire you, whether you’re entering our related contest or just want to improve your writing skills. Like all our Student Opinion questions , each links to a related Times article, which is free to read if you access it from our site.

So dive in and pick the questions that most inspire you to tell an interesting story, describe a memorable event, observe the details in your world, imagine a possibility, or reflect on who you are and what you believe.

Overcoming Adversity

1. How Resilient Are You? 2. What Do You Do When You Encounter Obstacles to Success? 3. When Have You Failed? What Did You Learn From It? 4. Have You Ever Felt Like an Outsider? 5. What Are Your Secret Survival Strategies? 6. When Have You Reinvented Yourself? 7. How Often Do You Leave Your ‘Comfort Zone’? 8. When Was the Last Time You Did Something That Scared or Challenged You? 9. How Do You Handle Fear? 10. What Do You Gain From Pursuing Something You Do Really, Really Badly? 11. Do You Give Yourself Enough Credit for Your Own Successes? 12. How Often Do You Cry? 13. How Do You Cope With Grief? 14. How Have You Handled Being the ‘New Kid’? 15. How Do You Deal With Haters? 16. How Do You React When Provoked? 17. Does Stress Affect Your Ability to Make Good Decisions? 18. Are You Too Hard on Yourself? 19. How Do You Find Peace in Your Life? 20. Does Your Life Leave You Enough Time to Relax? 21. What Did You Once Hate but Now Like? 22. Do Adults Who Are ‘Only Trying to Help’ Sometimes Make Things Worse? 23. How Well Do You Take Criticism?

Your Personality

24. What Motivates You? 25. What Makes You Happy? 26. What Are You Good At? 27. How Do You Deal With Boredom? 28. Do You Like Being Alone? 29. How Full Is Your Glass? 30. Do You Have a Hard Time Making Decisions? 31. How Much Self-Control Do You Have? 32. Are You a Patient Person? 33. How Well Do Rewards and Incentives Work to Motivate You? 34. How Productive and Organized Are You? 35. Under What Conditions Do You Do Your Best Work? 36. How Do You Express Yourself Creatively? 37. Do You Hold Grudges? 38. How Good Are You at Judging Your Own Talents? 39. How Emotionally Intelligent Are You? 40. Do You Take More Risks When You Are Around Your Friends? 41. Are You a Procrastinator? 42. What Role Does Envy Play in Your Life? 43. How Much of a Daredevil Are You? 44. Are You a Perfectionist? 45. How Impulsive Are You? 46. Are You a Novelty-Seeker? 47. What Annoys You? 48. Do You Apologize Too Much? 49. What Animal Are You Most Like? 50. How Materialistic Are You? 51. How Easy — or Hard — Is It for You to Say No When You Want To? 52. Are You a Hoarder or a Minimalist? 53. Are You an Introvert or an Extrovert? 54. Are You Popular, Quirky or Conformist? 55. How Good Is Your Sense of Direction? 56. How Competitive Are You? 57. What Assumptions Do People Make About You? 58. Are You More of a Leader or a Follower?

59. What Are Your Hobbies? 60. What Are Your Passions? 61. What Would You Choose to Do If You Had Unlimited Free Time and No Restrictions? 62. Are There Activities You Used to Love That Are Now So Competitive They’re Not Fun Anymore? 63. What Activities Make You Feel Most Alive? 64. What Do You Collect? 65. What Work, Sport or Pastime Do You Like to Do at Night?

66. Do You Wish You Had a Different Morning Routine? 67. What Ordinary Moments Would You Include in a Video About Your Life? 68. What Are Your Best ‘Life Hacks’? 69. Do You Spend Enough Time With Other People? 70. How Do You Greet Your Friends and Family? 71. How Do You Remember What You Need to Remember? 72. What’s Your Sunday Routine? 73. How Often Do You Talk to Yourself? 74. When and For What Reasons Do You Seek Silence? 75. What Habits Do You Have, and Have You Ever Tried to Change Them? 76. What Small Things Have You Seen and Taken Note Of Today? 77. What Are the Sounds That Make Up the Background Noise in Your Life? 78. What Sounds Annoy You? 79. What Public Behavior Annoys You Most? 80. What Are Some Recent Moments of Happiness in Your Life? 81. What Are You Grateful For?

Role Models

82. What Heroic Acts Have You Performed or Witnessed? 83. What Are Some ‘Words of Wisdom’ That Guide Your Life? 84. Who Outside Your Family Has Made a Difference in Your Life? 85. What Does the World Need to Know About an Important Person in Your Life? 86. To Whom, or What, Would You Like to Write a Thank-You Note? 87. What Does Dr. King’s Legacy Mean to You? 88. What Six People, Living or Dead, Would You Invite to Dinner? 89. Who’s Your ‘Outsider Role Model’?

90. How Do You Define ‘Family’? 91. What Events Have Brought You Closer to Your Family? 92. What Have You and Your Family Accomplished Together? 93. What Is Your Relationship With Your Siblings Like? 94. Have You Ever Felt Pressured by Family or Others in Making an Important Decision About Your Future? 95. What Possessions Does Your Family Treasure? 96. What Hobbies Have Been Passed Down in Your Family? 97. What’s the Story Behind Your Name? 98. How Have You Paid Tribute to Loved Ones? 99. What Family Traditions Do You Want to Carry On When You Get Older? 100. Did Your Parents Have a Life Before They Had Kids? 101. How Much Do You Know About Your Family’s History? 102. Where Would You Visit To Find Out More About Your Family’s Past?

Parents & Parenting

103. How Close Are You to Your Parents? 104. How Are You and Your Parents Alike and Different? 105. How Much Freedom Have Your Parents Given You? 106. Do You Push Your Parents’ Buttons? 107. How Often Do You Fight With Your Parents? 108. Are Your Parents Addicted to Their Phones? 109. Is Your Family Stressed, Tired and Rushed? 110. How Do You Get What You Want From Your Parents? 111. Do You Ever Feel Embarrassed by Your Parents? 112. Do Your Parents Try Too Hard to Be Cool? 113. Do Your Parents Support Your Learning? 114. Do Your Parents Yell at You? 115. Do You Want Your Parents to Stop Asking You ‘How Was School?’ 116. How Much Do Your Parents Help With Your Homework? 117. How Has Your Family Helped or Hindered Your Transition to a New School? 118. Have Your Parents and Teachers Given You Room to Create? 119. Are You Conforming to or Rebelling Against Your Parents’ Wishes for You? 120. What Advice Do You Have for Teenagers and Their Parents? 121. Do Your Parents Spy on You?

Your Neighborhood

122. What’s Special About Your Hometown? 123. Who Are the ‘Characters’ That Make Your Town Interesting? 124. What Marketing Slogan Would You Use for Your Town or City? 125. After Home and School, Where Do You Find the Strongest Feeling of Community? 126. What Do the Types of Dogs in Your Neighborhood Say About Where You Live? 127. Who Is the ‘Mayor’ of Your School or Neighborhood? 128. How Much Does Your Neighborhood Define Who You Are? 129. What ‘Urban Legends’ Are There About Places in Your Area? 130. Do You Know Your Way Around Your City or Town? 131. How Well Do You Know Your Neighbors? 132. What Is Your Favorite Place? 133. What’s Your Favorite Neighborhood Joint? 134. What Is Your Favorite Street? 135. Do You Hang Out in the Park? 136. What Buildings Do You Love? What Buildings Do You Hate? 137. Have You Ever Interacted With the Police? 138. What Ideas Do You Have for Enhancing Your Community? 139. Where Do You Think You Will Live When You Are an Adult? 140. Would You Most Want to Live in a City, a Suburb or the Country?

141. What is Your Favorite Place in Your House? 142. Do You Wish You Had the Go-to House? 143. Do You Need to De-Clutter Your Life? 144. Do You Plan on Saving Any of Your Belongings for the Future? 145. Is Your Bedroom a Nightmare? 146. What Would You Grab in a Fire? 147. Do You Think You Might Like Communal Living When You’re an Adult? 148. Who Lived Long Ago Where You Live Now? 149. What Would Your Dream Home Be Like? 150. What City or Town Most Captures Your Imagination?

Childhood Memories

151. What Was Your Most Precious Childhood Possession? 152. What Objects Tell the Story of Your Life? 153. Have You Ever Given, or Received, a Perfect Gift? 154. What Were Your Favorite Picture Books When You Were Little? 155. What’s the Best Party You’ve Ever Been To? 156. What Places Do You Remember Fondly From Childhood? 157. What Food or Flavor Do You Remember Tasting for the First Time? 158. What Do You Wish You Could See, Hear, Read or Experience for the First Time All Over Again? 159. Have You Ever Felt Embarrassed by Things You Used to Like? 160. Do You Wish You Could Return to Moments From Your Past? 161. Was There a Toy You Wanted as a Child but Never Got? 162. What Childhood Rules Did You Break? 163. What Is the Most Memorable Thing You Have Ever Lost or Found? 164. What Is Your Earliest Memory? 165. What Nicknames Have You Ever Gotten or Given? 166. What Are Your Best Sleepover Memories? 167. What Old, Worn Out Thing Can You Just Not Part With? 168. What Is Your Most Prized Possession?

169. What Have You Learned in Your Teens? 170. What Rites of Passage Mark the Transition to Adulthood in Your Community? 171. What Letter of Inspiration Would You Write to Your Younger Self? 172. Do You Hate When Adults Ask You What You Want to Be When You Grow Up? 173. Do You Look Forward to Old Age? 174. What Can Older People Learn From Your Generation? 175. What Have You Learned From Older People? 176. What Advice Do You Have for Younger Students? 177. Do You Recognize Yourself in Descriptions of ‘Generation Z’? 178. Do Other People Care Too Much About Your Post-High School Plans? 179. Do You Have ‘Emerging Adult’ Skills? 180. What Do Older Generations Misunderstand About Teenagers Today? 181. What Have You Learned From a Younger Person — and What Have You Taught An Older Person? 182. What Legacy Do You Want to Leave Behind?

Morality & Ethics

183. What Ethical Dilemmas Have You Faced? 184. Have You Ever Taken a Stand That Isolated You From Your Peers? 185. Have You Ever Donated Your Time, Talents, Possessions or Money to Support Anyone in Need? 186. What Acts of Kindness Have You Witnessed or Participated In? 187. Have You Ever ‘Paid It Forward’? 188. How Would You Like to Help Our World? 189. What Would You Invent to Make the World a Better Place? 190. What Would You Risk Your Life For? 191. How Trustworthy Are You? 192. How Comfortable Are You With Lying? 193. When Do You Lie? 194. Have You Ever Lied to Your Parents or Done Something Behind Their Backs? 195. If You Drink or Use Drugs, Do Your Parents Know? 196. Have You Ever Taken Something You Weren’t Supposed To? 197. Do You Ever Eavesdrop? 198. Do You Know How to Say ‘I’m Sorry?’

Religion, Spirituality & Beliefs

199. What Is the Role of Religion or Spirituality in Your Life? 200. How Often Do You Start Conversations about Faith or Spirituality? 201. Do You Believe That Everything Happens for a Reason? 202. How Much Control Do You Think You Have Over Your Fate? 203. Can You Be Good Without God? 204. Can You Pass a Basic Religion Test? 205. What Can You Learn From Other Religions? 206. What Legends and Myths Do You Believe In? 207. Do You Believe in Astrology? 208. Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Gender, Race & Sexuality

209. Do You Feel Constricted by Gender Norms? 210. Do Parents Have Different Hopes and Standards for Their Sons Than for Their Daughters? 211. Have You Ever Been Told You Couldn’t Do Something Because of Your Gender? 212. Is There Too Much Pressure on Girls to Have ‘Perfect’ Bodies? 213. How Much Pressure Do Boys Face to Have the Perfect Body? 214. What Experiences Have You Had With Gender Bias in School? 215. What Does it Mean to Be ‘a Real Man’? 216. What Have You Learned From the Women in Your Life? 217. What Messages About Gender Have You Gotten From Music? 218. How Do You Feel About Being Told to Smile? 219. Have You Ever Tried to Hide Your Racial or Ethnic Identity? 220. Do You Ever Talk About Issues of Race and Class With Your Friends? 221. Have You Experienced Racism or Other Kinds of Discrimination in School? 222. What Has Your Sex Education Been Like?

Money & Social Class

223. What Are Your Attitudes Toward Money? 224. Are You a Saver or a Spender? 225. What Have Your Parents Taught You About Money? 226. Do You Expect Your Parents to Give You Money? 227. How Important a Role Has Money, Work or Social Class Played in Your Life? 228. Do You See Great Disparities of Wealth in Your Community? 229. Can Money Buy You Happiness? 230. What Are the Best Things in Life and Are They Free? 231. What Are Your Expectations About Earning, Saving and Spending Money? 232. How Much Financial Help Do You Expect From Your Parents in the Future? 233. What Choices Do You Make About Money Every Day?

234. Are You Distracted by Technology? 235. Are You Distracted by Your Phone? 236. Are You ‘Addicted’ to Texting? 237. Do Screens Get in the Way of the Rest of Your Life? 238. Do You Experience FOMO When You Unplug? 239. Could You Go a Year Without a Smartphone? 240. Is Your Phone Love Hurting Your Relationships? 241. How Much of Your Day is Voluntarily Spent Screen-Free? 242. To What Piece of Technology Would You Write a ‘Love Letter’?

The Internet

243. How Do You Know if What You Read Online Is True? 244. How Much Do You Trust Online Reviews? 245. What Has YouTube Taught You? 246. What Would You Teach the World in an Online Video? 247. Do You Worry About Your Digital Privacy? 248. Do You Listen to Podcasts? 249. Would You Share an Embarrassing Story Online? 250. Do You Leave Funny Comments Online? 251. What Are Your Experiences With Internet-Based Urban Legends? 252. How Do You Use Wikipedia? 253. Have You Ever Been Scammed? 254. Whom Would You Share Your Passwords With? 255. Do You Ever Seek Advice on the Internet? 256. What Are Your Favorite Viral Videos?

Social Media

257. What Role Does Instagram Play in Your Life? 258. Do You Have ‘Instagram Envy’? 259. Do the Adults in Your Life Follow You on Social Media? 260. Have You Ever Gone to a Place for the Primary Purpose of Taking Selfies? 261. Who Is Your Favorite Social Media Star? 262. How Much Do You Trust the Celebrities and Social Media Stars You Follow? 263. Are You the Same Person on Social Media as You Are in Real Life? 264. What Memorable Experiences Have You Had on Facebook? 265. Why Do You Share Photos? 266. How Do You Archive Your Life? 267. Have You Ever Posted, Emailed or Texted Something You Wish You Could Take Back? 268. Have You Ever Sent an Odd Message Because of Auto-Correct? 269. Would You Want Your Photo or Video to Go Viral? 270. Do You Worry Colleges or Employers Might Read Your Social Media Posts Someday? 271. What Advice Do You Have for Younger Kids About Navigating Social Media?

272. What Are Your Earliest Memories of Music? 273. Who in Your Life Introduces You to New Music? 274. How Much Is Your Taste in Music Based on What Your Friends Like? 275. What Role Does Hip-Hop Play in Your Life? 276. What’s Your Karaoke Song? 277. How Closely Do You Listen to Lyrics? 278. What Is Your Favorite Musical Instrument? 279. What Would You Name Your Band?

Movies, Television & Video Games

280. What Have You Learned About Life From Watching Movies? 281. What Is Your Favorite Sports Movie? 282. Do You Like Horror Movies? 283. What Are Your Favorite TV Shows? 284. What Role Does Television Play in Your Life and the Life of Your Family? 285. What Stereotypical Characters Make You Cringe? 286. Have You Fallen Into ‘Friends’ or Any Other Older Television Shows? 287. How Much Are You Influenced by Advertising? 288. Do You Play Violent Video Games? 289. Who Are Your Opponents in Online Gaming? 290. What Classic Video Games Do You Still Enjoy Playing? 291. Are You a Fortnite Addict? 292. Do You Gamify Your Life?

Books & Reading

293. Read Any Good Books Lately? 294. What Books Do You Think Every Teenager Should Read? 295. What Role Have Books Played in Your Life? 296. Has a Novel Ever Helped You Understand Yourself or Your World Better? 297. Has a Book, Movie, Television Show, Song or Video Game Ever Inspired You to Do Something New? 298. What Book Would You Add to the High School Curriculum? 299. What Have You Learned from Comics? 300. Do You Read or Write Poetry? 301. What Is the Scariest Story You Have Ever Heard?

302. What Purpose Does Writing Serve in Your Life? 303. Do You Keep a Diary or Journal? 304. Do You Want to Write a Book? 305. When Do You Write by Hand? 306. Do You Write in Cursive? 307. Do You Write in Your Books? 308. What ‘Mundane Moments’ From Your Life Might Make Great Essay Material? 309. What Is Your Most Memorable Writing Assignment? 310. Do You Ever Write About Challenges You Face in Life? 311. What’s Your Favorite Joke? 312. If You Had a Column in The New York Times, What Would You Write About? 313. What Would You Write in a Letter to the Editor?

314. What Has Arts Education Done For You? 315. What Work of Art Has Changed Your Life? 316. What Are the Most Memorable Works of Visual Art You Have Seen? 317. Who Is Your Favorite Visual Artist? What Is Your Favorite Work of Art? 318. Which Photograph Stays In Your Memory? 319. What Would You Like to Learn to Make by Hand? 320. Are You Intimidated by Classical Music and Art? 321. Do You Love to Dance? 322. Have You Ever Performed for an Audience or Shared Creative Work With Others? 323. Have You Ever Stumbled Upon a Cool Public Performance? 324. What Show Do You Wish Your School Would Stage?

Language & Speech

325. What’s Your Favorite Word? 326. What Words Do You Hate? 327. Do You Say ‘Kind of, Sort of’ More Than You Realize? 328. What Makes a Great Conversation? 329. How Often Do You Have ‘Deep Discussions’? 330. Do You Wish Your Conversations Were Less Small Talk and More ‘Big Talk’? 331. How Much Information Is ‘Too Much Information’? 332. How Good Are You at Coming Up With Witty Comebacks? 333. Do You Sometimes ‘Hide’ Behind Irony? 334. How Good Is Your Grammar? 335. Do You Speak a Second, or Third, Language? 336. What Does Your Body Language Communicate?

337. Do You Like School? 338. Are You Stressed About School? 339. Are High School Students Being Worked Too Hard? 340. Would You Want to Go to a School Like This One? 341. How Much Do You Speak Up in School? 342. What ‘Pop-Up’ Classes Do You Wish Your School Offered? 343. Is Your School a Safe Learning Space? 344. Would You Want to Be Home-Schooled? 345. What Can Other Schools Learn — and Copy — From Your School? 346. What Do You Hope to Get Out of High School? 347. What Are Your Thoughts on Riding the School Bus? 348. Do You Feel Your School and Teachers Welcome Both Conservative and Liberal Points of View? 349. Do You Want to Be ‘Promposed’ To? 350. How Big a Problem Is Bullying or Cyberbullying in Your School or Community? 351. Can Students at Your School Talk Openly About Their Mental Health Issues? 352. What Career or Technical Classes Do You Wish Your School Offered?

Learning & Studying

353. Do You Have Too Much Homework? 354. Do You Need a Homework Therapist? 355. What’s the Most Challenging Assignment You’ve Ever Had? 356. Are You Afraid of Math? 357. How Would You Do on a Civics Test? 358. What Was Your Favorite Field Trip? 359. What Are Your Best Tips for Studying? 360. What Kind of Time Management Skills Are You Learning from the Adults in Your Life? 361. What Would You Like to Have Memorized?

362. What Do You Wish Your Teachers Knew About You? 363. When Has a Teacher Inspired You? 364. What Teacher Would You Like to Thank? 365. Have You Ever Been Humiliated by a Teacher? How Did it Affect You? 366. Have Your Teachers or Textbooks Ever Gotten It Wrong? 367. Does Your Teacher’s Identity Affect Your Learning? 368. Has a Teacher Ever Changed Your Mind-Set? 369. Do You Have a Tutor?

370. What Personal Essay Topic Would You Assign to College Applicants? 371. How Prepared Are You For College? How Well Do You Think You’ll Do? 372. What Worries You Most About the College Admissions Process? 373. What Worries Do You Have About College? 374. What Role Has Community College Played in Your Life or the Life of Someone You Know? 375. What Qualities Would You Look For in a College Roommate? 376. Would You Want to Take a Gap Year After High School? 377. Do You Intend to Study Abroad While You Are in College? 378. Are You Worried About the Rising Cost of Attending College? 379. Do You Want Your Parents to Live Nearby When You Go to College? 380. What Specialty College Would You Create?

Work & Careers

381. What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? 382. Do You Have a Life Calling? 383. What’s Your Dream Job? 384. Would You Pursue a Career If You Knew You Likely Would Not Make Much Money? 385. What Jobs Are You Most Curious About? 386. Will You Follow in Your Parents’ Footsteps? 387. Would You Consider Moving Overseas for a Job? 388. Would You Want to Be a Teacher? 389. Would You Rather Work From Home or in an Office? 390. What ‘Back-to-the-Land’ Skills Do You Have, or Wish You Had? 391. What Skill Could You Teach in Two Minutes? 392. What Have You Made Yourself? 393. Do You Have an Idea for a Business or App? 394. How Did You Start Doing Something You Love? 395. Did You Ever Take a Break From Doing Something You Love? 396. Would You Quit if Your Values Did Not Match Your Employer’s? 397. Do Your Summer Plans Include Employment?

398. Do You Have Satisfying Friendships? 399. How Alike Are You and Your Friends? 400. Do You Have Any Unlikely Friendships? 401. Do You Like Your Friends? 402. Do You Have a Best Friend? 403. Have You Ever Been Left Out? 404. Do You Ever Feel Lonely? 405. How Often Do You Spend One-on-One Time With Your Closest Friends? 406. How Do You Feel About Introducing Friends from Different Parts of Your Life? 407. Do You Find It Easier to Make New Friends Online or In Person? 408. How Good a Friend Are You? 409. How Have You Helped a Friend in a Time of Need? 410. Is Competitiveness an Obstacle to Making or Keeping Friendships? 411. How Should You Handle the End of a Friendship?

412. Are You Allowed to Date? 413. Is Dating a Thing of the Past? 414. What Advice Would You Give to Somebody Who Just Started Dating? 415. How Do You Think Technology Affects Dating? 416. Have You Ever Been in Love? 417. How Much of a Romantic Are You? 418. Have You Ever Been Ghosted? 419. What’s the Best Way to Get Over a Breakup? 420. Would You Want to Be Proposed to on a Jumbotron? 421. If You Get Married Someday, Do You Think You Will Change Your Last Name?

Sports & Games

422. Why Do You Play Sports? 423. Have You Ever Learned Something From a Professional Athlete? 424. How Would You Change Your Favorite Sport? 425. Does Being a Fan Help Define Who You Are? 426. What Kinds of Games and Puzzles Do You Like? 427. What Are Your Favorite Board Games? 428. Are You a Good Driver?

429. Where Do You Want to Travel? 430. What Is Your Most Memorable Family Vacation? 431. How Would You Spend Your Ideal Family Vacation? 432. What Do You Think You Would Learn From Traveling to All 50 States? 433. What Would Your Fantasy Road Trip Be Like? 434. What Crazy Adventure Would You Want to Take? 435. What Local ‘Microadventures’ Would You Like to Go On? 436. How Has Travel Affected You? 437. What Kind of Tourist Are You? 438. What Are the Best Souvenirs You’ve Ever Collected While Traveling? 439. What Famous Landmarks Have You Visited? 440. What’s the Coolest Thing You’ve Ever Seen in Nature? 441. Would You Like to Live in Another Country? 442. If You Could Time-Travel, Where Would You Go?

Shopping, Looks & Fashion

443. What’s Your Favorite Store? 444. Could You Stop Shopping for an Entire Year? 445. Are You an Ethical Consumer? 446. Do Politics Ever Influence How or Where You Shop? 447. What Is Your All-Time Favorite Piece of Clothing? 448. Are You a Sneaker Head? 449. Do You Wear Clothes for the Logo? 450. Would You Like to Be a Fashion Model? 451. What’s Your Favorite T-Shirt? 452. What Does Your Hairstyle Say About You? 453. How Do You Feel About Your Body? 454. Have You Inherited Your Parents’ Attitudes Toward Their Looks? 455. What’s Your Favorite Room?

Exercise, Health & Sleep

456. What Rules Do You Have for Staying Healthy? 457. Do You Like to Exercise? 458. Do You Get Enough Exercise? 459. How Has Exercise Changed Your Health, Your Body or Your Life? 460. Do You Vape? 461. How Do You Get Your Nature Fix? 462. How Strong Is Your Sense of Smell? 463. What’s Your Favorite Mood Booster? 464. Do You Have Any Bad Health Habits? 465. Do You Learn Better After Moving Around? 466. How Often Do You Engage in ‘Fat Talk’? 467. Do You Pay Attention to Nutrition Labels on Food? 468. What Are Your ‘Food Rules’? 469. What Are Your Healthy Habits? 470. What Health Tips Have Worked for You? 471. What Are Your Sleep Habits? 472. Do You Get Enough Sleep?

Meals & Food

473. What Foods Bring Up Special Memories for You? 474. What Are the Most Memorable Meals You’ve Ever Had? 475. Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been, a Picky Eater? 476. What Foods Best Represent Your Hometown? 477. Have You Ever Experienced Food Insecurity? 478. What’s Your Favorite Holiday Food Memory? 479. What Convenience Foods Make You Happy? 480. How Do You Like Your Pizza? 481. What Are Your Favorite Junk Foods? 482. What’s Your Favorite Candy? 483. What’s Your Favorite Sandwich? 484. What Food Would You Like to Judge in a Taste-Off? 485. Do You Cook? 486. What Would You Most Like to Learn to Cook or Bake? 487. What Messages About Food and Eating Have You Learned From Your Family? 488. How Often Does Your Family Eat Together? 489. What Are Your Favorite Restaurants? 490. What Restaurant Would You Most Like to Review? 491. What Do You Eat During the School Day?

Holidays & Seasons

492. How Do You Celebrate Your Birthday? 493. How Much Scare Can You Handle in Your Halloween Entertainment? 494. Did You Take Part in Any Thanksgiving or Post-Holiday Traditions? 495. What Will You Talk About on Thanksgiving? 496. What Has Been Your Most Memorable Thanksgiving? 497. What Do You Look Forward to Most — and Least — During the Holiday Season? 498. What Are Your Tips for Enjoying the Holiday Season? 499. What Does Santa Claus Mean to You? 500. How Do You Fight the Winter Blues? 501. How Do You Feel About Valentine’s Day? 502. What Would Your Ideal Summer Camp Be Like? 503. What’s Your Favorite Summer Food? 504. Do You Choose Summer Activities to Look Good on Applications? 505. What’s the Most Memorable Thing That Happened to You This Summer?

Animals & Pets

506. What Are the Animals in Your Life? 507. What Have You Learned From Animals? 508. What’s Your Relationship Like With Your Pet? 509. What Are Your Thoughts on Cats? 510. Would You Want to Hang Out at a Cat Cafe? 511. How Do You Feel About the Spiders, Insects and Other Tiny Creatures in Your Home?

Environment

512. How Concerned Are You About Climate Change? 513. How Do You Try to Reduce Your Impact on the Environment? 514. Do You Ever Feel Guilty About What, or How Much, You Throw Away? 515. How Much Food Does Your Family Waste? 516. What Could You Live Without? 517. Would You Change Your Eating Habits to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint? 518. Could You Live ‘Plastic Free’?

History, Politics & Current Events

519. What Event in the Past Do You Wish You Could Have Witnessed? 520. What National or International Events That You Lived Through Do You Remember Best? 521. Is Your Online World Just a ‘Filter Bubble’ of People With the Same Opinions? 522. Do You Ever Get the ‘Bad News Blues’? 523. Have You Ever Changed Your Mind About a Hot-Button Issue? 524. What Do American Values Mean to You? 525. How Much Do You Know About the Rest of the World?

526. Would You Want to Live Forever? 527. Would You Want to Live a Life Without Ever Feeling Pain? 528. If You Had an Extra Billion Dollars, What Cause Would You Support With Your Philanthropy? 529. Are You Hopeful About the Future? 530. If the World Was Ending, What Would You Want to Say? 531. Would You Like to Be Famous? 532. Would You Like to Be Cryogenically Preserved (Frozen!) Upon Your Death? 533. Would You Like to Be a Farmer? 534. What Items Would You Place in a Time Capsule for Future Generations? 535. What Fantasy Invention Would You Want to Exist in Reality? 536. What Do You Want to Be Known for After Your Death? 537. Do You Like Your First Name? Would You Change It if You Could? 538. What Would You Do if You Won the Lottery? 539. What Era Do You Wish You Had Lived In? 540. Would You Want to Be a Child Prodigy? 541. What Kind of Robot Would You Want? 542. What Would You Outsource if You Could? 543. What Would You Like to Learn on Your Own? 544. What Would You Be Willing to Wait in a Really Long Line For? 545. Do You Want to Live to 100? 546. Given Unlimited Resources, What Scientific or Medical Problem Would You Investigate? 547. What Scientific Mysteries Do You Want Solved? 548. What Idea Do You Have That Is Ahead of Its Time? 549. How Would Your Life Be Different if You Had Better Listening Skills? 550. What Do You Want Your Obituary to Say?

Home — Essay Samples — Life — Life Experiences — Personal Experience

Personal Experience Essays

Personal experiences are the threads that weave the fabric of our lives. Writing a personal experience essay isn't just about storytelling; it's about finding meaning, connecting with others, and leaving your mark on the world. So, why should you write an essay about your personal experiences? Let's explore the importance together! 🌟

Personal Experience Essay Topics 📝

Selecting the right essay topic is key to crafting a compelling narrative. Here's how to pick one:

Personal Experience Argumentative Essay 🤨

Argumentative essays based on personal experiences require you to defend a viewpoint or argument. Here are ten intriguing topics:

• 1. Argue for or against the idea that personal experiences are the most influential factors shaping an individual's personality.
• 2. Defend your perspective on whether overcoming adversity through personal experiences builds stronger character.
• 3. Debate the impact of personal experiences on shaping one's political beliefs and values.
• 4. Argue for the significance of sharing personal experiences in order to promote empathy and understanding among diverse communities.
• 5. Defend the idea that personal experiences play a crucial role in career development and decision-making.
• 6. Debate the ethical implications of sharing deeply personal experiences in the era of social media and oversharing.
• 7. Argue for the therapeutic benefits of writing about and reflecting on personal experiences.
• 8. Defend your perspective on whether personal experiences should be a central part of school curricula.
• 9. Debate the influence of personal experiences on an individual's approach to health and wellness.
• 10. Argue for or against the notion that personal experiences can serve as catalysts for social change and activism.

Personal Experience Cause and Effect Essay 🤯

Cause and effect essays based on personal experiences explore the reasons behind events and their consequences. Here are ten topics to consider:

• 1. Analyze the causes and effects of a life-changing personal experience on your academic or career choices.
• 2. Examine how personal experiences can lead to personal growth, increased self-awareness, and improved well-being.
• 3. Investigate the effects of travel experiences on personal perspectives and cultural understanding.
• 4. Analyze the causes and consequences of sharing personal experiences with others, including its impact on relationships.
• 5. Examine how personal experiences can influence one's hobbies, interests, and leisure activities.
• 6. Investigate the impact of a significant personal experience on your family dynamics and relationships.
• 7. Analyze the causes of personal transformation through exposure to diverse cultures and environments.
• 8. Examine how personal experiences can shape one's attitude toward risk-taking and adventure.
• 9. Investigate the effects of sharing personal experiences through writing, art, or storytelling on your personal well-being.
• 10. Analyze the causes and consequences of personal experiences that challenge societal norms and expectations.

Personal Experience Opinion Essay 😌

Opinion essays based on personal experiences allow you to express your subjective viewpoints. Here are ten topics to consider:

• 1. Share your opinion on the importance of documenting personal experiences for future generations.
• 2. Discuss your perspective on whether personal experiences should be kept private or shared openly.
• 3. Express your thoughts on how personal experiences have shaped your sense of identity and self-worth.
• 4. Debate the significance of personal experiences in fostering empathy and compassion among individuals and communities.
• 5. Share your views on the role of personal experiences in building resilience and coping with life's challenges.
• 6. Discuss the impact of personal experiences on your approach to decision-making and problem-solving.
• 7. Express your opinion on the therapeutic benefits of writing or talking about personal experiences.
• 8. Debate the influence of personal experiences on your sense of purpose and life goals.
• 9. Share your perspective on how personal experiences can inspire creativity and artistic expression.
• 10. Discuss your favorite personal experience and the lessons or insights it has provided.

Personal Experience Informative Essay 🧐

Informative essays based on personal experiences aim to educate readers. Here are ten informative topics to explore:

• 1. Provide an in-depth analysis of the impact of a specific personal experience on your career choices and aspirations.
• 2. Explore the therapeutic benefits of journaling and writing about personal experiences for mental health and well-being.
• 3. Investigate the history and significance of storytelling as a means of preserving personal experiences and cultural heritage.
• 4. Analyze the connection between personal experiences and the development of emotional intelligence.
• 5. Examine the influence of personal experiences on decision-making processes and risk assessment.
• 6. Investigate the role of personal experiences in shaping cultural perceptions and worldviews.
• 7. Provide insights into the art of crafting compelling narratives based on personal experiences.
• 8. Analyze the impact of personal experiences on an individual's resilience and ability to adapt to change.
• 9. Examine how personal experiences can serve as valuable life lessons and sources of wisdom.
• 10. Investigate the therapeutic benefits of group discussions and support networks for individuals sharing similar personal experiences.

Personal Experience Essay Example 📄

Personal experience thesis statement examples 📜.

Here are five examples of strong thesis statements for your personal experience essay:

• 1. "Through the lens of personal experiences, we uncover the profound impact that seemingly ordinary moments can have on our lives, reshaping our perspectives and guiding our journeys."
• 2. "Personal experiences serve as powerful mirrors reflecting our growth, resilience, and capacity to navigate life's challenges, ultimately shaping the narratives of our existence."
• 3. "The sharing of personal experiences is an act of vulnerability and courage, fostering connections, empathy, and a deeper understanding of the human condition."
• 4. "Our personal experiences are the brushstrokes on the canvas of our identity, influencing our choices, values, and the stories we tell ourselves and others."
• 5. "In exploring personal experiences, we embark on a journey of self-discovery, unlocking the untold stories that shape our uniqueness and enrich our shared human tapestry."

Personal Experience Essay Introduction Examples 🚀

Here are three captivating introduction paragraphs to kickstart your essay:

• 1. "Amid the chaos of everyday life, our personal experiences are the constellations that guide us, the moments that define us. As we embark on this essay journey into the depths of our own stories, we unravel the threads of our existence, each tale a testament to the power of the personal."
• 2. "Picture a canvas where the brushstrokes are the chapters of your life—a canvas waiting for you to paint your experiences, thoughts, and emotions. The personal experience essay is your opportunity to create a masterpiece that reflects the colors of your journey."
• 3. "In a world of noise and distractions, our personal experiences are the melodies that resonate within us. As we venture into the heart of this essay, we uncover the symphony of our lives—a composition of highs, lows, and the beauty in between."

Personal Experience Conclusion Examples 🌟

Conclude your essay with impact using these examples:

• 1. "As we close the chapter on this exploration of personal experiences, we are reminded that our stories are the threads that connect us all. The journey continues, and each experience, no matter how small, contributes to the tapestry of our shared humanity."
• 2. "In the final brushstroke of our personal experience essay, we recognize that our stories are not finite; they are ever-evolving, ever-inspiring. The canvas of life awaits, ready for us to create new narratives and continue shaping our destinies."
• 3. "As the echoes of our personal experiences linger, we stand at the intersection of past, present, and future. The essay's conclusion is but a pause in the symphony of our lives, with countless more notes to be played and stories to be written."

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Writing About Personal Experiences

Table of Contents

Introduction.

Writing about personal experiences is an art that requires infusing your story with raw emotions and vivid details. More than just recounting events, these narratives offer a glimpse into the author’s life, fostering connection and understanding. This blog is your guide. We will explore a step-by-step procedure to unlock the potential of your memories.

Let’s start by understanding what writing about personal experiences means!

What Does It Mean to Write about Personal Experiences?

Understanding what writing about personal experiences means is like unlocking a treasure chest of emotions, memories, and unique perspectives. It transcends the mere act of putting words on paper; it’s about excavating the essence of your lived moments, distilling the emotions that linger in the corners of your memories.

It involves not just recounting events but infusing your narrative with the richness of your personal journey, allowing readers to get a glimpse of your life.

What Does It Involve to Write About Your Personal Experiences?

Writing about your personal experiences involves the following:

• Self-Reflection: Engage in deep introspection to identify key moments in your life that have left a lasting impact or evoke strong emotions.
• Emotional Connection: Convey the raw emotions associated with your experiences; be it joy, sorrow, triumph, or challenge, as it is this emotional authenticity that resonates with readers.
• Vivid Detailing: Paint a vivid picture by incorporating sensory details, setting the scene with sights, sounds, smells, and textures to immerse your readers in the essence of your experiences.
• Personal Growth and Reflection: Explore how these experiences have shaped you, sharing insights into the lessons learned or the personal growth achieved as a result.
• Universal Relevance: Connect your personal narrative to broader themes or universal truths, making your story relatable and offering readers a chance to find common ground in their own experiences.

Structure of an Essay about Your Personal Experiences

An essay about your personal experiences typically follows a specific narrative structure. This structure often includes the following components:

• Sets the tone for the essay.
• Introduces the central theme or experience.
• Captures the reader’s attention with a hook or engaging statement.
• States the main point or purpose of the essay.
• Provides a roadmap for the reader, outlining what to expect.
• Presents the chronological or thematic unfolding of your personal experiences.
• Each paragraph focuses on a specific aspect or phase of the experience.
• Includes vivid details, emotions, and reflections to enrich the narrative.
• Connects paragraphs smoothly, ensuring a coherent flow.
• Guides the reader through the different stages of the narrative.
• Highlights a pivotal moment or realization in the experience.
• Intensifies the emotional impact and adds depth to the narrative.
• Summarizes the key points made throughout the essay.
• Reflects on the significance of the experiences and their lasting impact.
• Leaves the reader with a final thought or takeaway.

This structure allows for a compelling and organized exploration of personal experiences, enabling the writer to share a cohesive and meaningful narrative with the audience.

The Process of Writing About Personal Experiences

Here is a comprehensive guide outlining the steps for writing about personal experiences:

1. Preparation:

Before starting the drafting process of your personal experience essay, consider immersing yourself in the art of narration by studying a well-crafted sample . Following this, select the event you wish to recount and start the gathering of ideas, forming a structured outline for your essay.

a. Reading a Sample Example:

• Choose a well-written personal experience essay to understand the narrative structure, style, and how the author weaves emotions into the story.

b. Selecting a Personal Experience:

• Choose a significant experience that has left a lasting impact or taught you valuable lessons.
• Ensure the experience is rich in details and emotions, making it compelling for readers.

c. Collecting Ideas and Making an Outline:

• Jot down key memories, emotions, and reflections associated with the chosen experience.
• Organize these elements into a rough outline, ensuring a logical flow of the narrative.

2. Drafting:

During the drafting stage, concentrate on translating your ideas into coherent words, sentences, and paragraphs while adhering to your initial outline. Avoid becoming overly concerned with precision at this point; instead, prioritize fluency in your writing.

Below is an example of an outline to guide you through this process:

a. Introduction:

• Begin with a captivating hook to grab the reader’s attention.
• Introduce the chosen personal experience and include a clear thesis statement.

b. Body Paragraphs:

• Develop each paragraph around a specific aspect or phase of the experience.
• Use descriptive language, sensory details, and emotions to enhance the narrative.
• Ensure a chronological or thematic order for a coherent progression.

c. Climax or Turning Point:

• Highlight a pivotal moment or realization within the experience.
• Build anticipation and intensify emotions to engage the reader.

d. Conclusion:

• Summarize the main points and restate the thesis in the context of the experience.
• Reflect on the broader significance or lessons learned.

3. Revising, Editing, and Final Draft:

The stages of revising, editing, and creating the final draft are crucial in shaping a relevant, accurate, and well-structured narrative of your personal experience. During the revision phase, prioritize assessing the relevance and coherence of your ideas. As you move to the editing stage, focus on refining your writing by rectifying any grammar, spelling, or punctuation mistakes.

Here is a guide to what you have to do at this stage:

a. Revising:

• Review the draft for coherence, ensuring a smooth flow between paragraphs.
• Check for clarity and consistency in the narrative.

b. Editing:

• Edit for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.
• Trim unnecessary details or repetitions to maintain conciseness.

c. Final Draft:

• Incorporate revisions and edits to produce a polished, final version.
• Ensure the narrative effectively conveys the intended emotions and reflections.

General Tips for Writing the Perfect Narrative of Your Personal Experience

Crafting a captivating narrative essay revolves around key principles. These include prioritizing authenticity to deepen reader connections, enhancing the narrative’s impact by engaging the senses with vivid details, using descriptive storytelling, seeking external feedback, and adopting a revision strategy with breaks to ensure a fresh, objective perspective:

• Be genuine and honest in sharing your experience; readers connect with authenticity.
• Use vivid sensory details to make the narrative more immersive.
• Instead of merely stating facts, show the emotions and events through descriptive storytelling.
• Have someone else read your essay for fresh perspectives and constructive feedback.
• Take a break between drafting and revising to approach the essay with a fresh perspective.

By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to crafting a compelling personal experience essay that resonates with readers.

Note: Enhance Your Narrative with Detail

• Feelings: Immerse your readers by recalling and expressing your emotions in vivid detail.
• Thoughts: Share your inner reflections, thoughts, and the mental landscape of the moment.
• Objects Around You: Paint a detailed picture by describing the shapes, colors, sizes, and characteristics of the objects in your surroundings.
• Smell: Engage the olfactory senses by capturing and conveying distinctive scents associated with the moment.
• Taste: Delve into the flavors present, whether they are connected to the environment or your emotional experience.
• Actions: Chronicle the actions that unfolded, providing a dynamic portrayal of the scene.
• Setting: Establish the context by specifying the place and time, offering readers a clear backdrop for your narrative.
• Chronological Order: Structure your storytelling by presenting events in the order in which they occurred.
• Flashback Technique: Employ the flashback technique to depict or recall a set of events that took place before the scenes immediately preceding the narrative.

Topics About Personal Experience Narrative

Here are ten suggested topics for writing about a personal experience:

• Explore the transformative experiences, challenges, or insights gained during a significant journey.
• Share a personal story about confronting and overcoming a fear, whether it be public speaking, heights, or something else.
• Reflect on a milestone or significant achievement in your life, delving into the journey and lessons learned.
• Detail the process of making a tough decision and the impact it had on your life.
• Discuss the cultural immersion or exchange program that left a lasting impression on your perspectives and worldview.
• Narrate an experience where an unexpected act of kindness, or receiving/giving, had a profound impact on you.
• Share a story about overcoming a personal challenge, whether it be a physical obstacle or a mental hurdle.
• Explore the dynamics of a friendship that significantly influenced your personality, values, or life path.
• Reflect on a failure or setback, discussing the lessons learned and the personal growth that resulted.
• Detail a family tradition or ritual that holds special significance and has shaped your sense of identity and belonging.

Sample Personal Experience Narrative

Here is a sample narrative of a personal experience:

“Embracing Life’s Fragility: A Journey Through Illness”

Life often unfolds in unexpected ways. This part of my life begins with a chapter marked by a grave illness that forever altered the fabric of my existence. It was a diagnosis that cast a dark shadow, yet within its ominous embrace, I discovered resilience, gratitude, and a profound shift in perspective.

The ominous clouds gathered when a routine checkup revealed an unexpected intruder in my body – cancer, a relentless adversary stealthily making its presence known. The sterile hospital walls echoed with the measured words of the doctors, their diagnosis cutting through the air like a surgeon’s scalpel. Shock and disbelief became my immediate companions, and the room seemed to contract, suffocating hope.

Receiving such news felt akin to standing on the precipice of an abyss. The world, once familiar, crumbled before my eyes like a fragile sandcastle washed away by the relentless tide. The enormity of the diagnosis wrapped around me, a suffocating cloak threatening to snuff out the light. The initial waves of fear and despair were overwhelming, an emotional tempest that threatened to drown me. In those vulnerable moments, with the stark reality of mortality hanging heavy, I found myself at a crossroads. It was a choice – succumb to the despair or summon the strength to fight.

In the quietude of uncertainty, a resolute spirit emerged. The decision to fight wasn’t born out of blind optimism but a deep-seated determination to defy the prognosis. I clung to the fragments of hope, remembering the faces of loved ones, the warmth of shared laughter, and the myriad experiences yet to unfold. The fight wasn’t just against a physical ailment; it was a battle for the very essence of life. With newfound determination, I embraced the journey ahead, armed with courage and a realization that even in the darkest moments, the human spirit possesses an indomitable light.

Amidst the trials, I unearthed an unyielding wellspring of resilience within. Each treatment, a battle won; each setback, a lesson learned. I became intimately acquainted with the fragility of life, realizing that strength is not the absence of vulnerability but the courage to persist in the face of it.

As the seasons changed, so did my perspective. Gratitude blossomed in the most unexpected places – in the warmth of sunlight streaming through a hospital window, in the laughter shared with fellow patients, and in the unwavering support of friends and family. Life’s transient nature became a poignant reminder to savor every fleeting moment, to find beauty in the ordinary, and to cherish the people who walked beside me on this unforeseen path.

The story is not one of despair but of transformation. The illness, once a dark antagonist, became a catalyst for self-discovery. It prompted a reevaluation of priorities, a shedding of superficial concerns, and a newfound appreciation for the sheer gift of being alive. The mundane became extraordinary, and every heartbeat became a melody of gratitude.

Today, as I stand on the other side of that harrowing chapter, I carry the scars of battle but also the profound wisdom that accompanies adversity. Life, once taken for granted, is now a cherished tapestry, each thread a reminder of the resilience found in the face of illness and the beauty inherent in embracing life’s fragility.

In summary, writing about personal experiences is a distinctive narrative form that invites readers into the intimate corridors of the author’s life. It involves the skillful blending of emotions, vivid details, and reflections to construct a compelling story. To try this literary essay, one must explore their memories, choosing experiences that resonate on a personal level. The process demands authenticity, encouraging writers to express their true selves and connect with readers through shared human experiences.

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Top 50 Personal Essay Topics

You might be set a personal essay as a criterion for your admission to college or it might be set at any time during your academic career. A personal essay is essentially a form of self-expression. It draws on other essay formats – like a narrative essay – but of all academic assignments it is the loosest and least dogmatic. It can be more prosaic than other more technical formats demand. Whatever form, at its core is the presentation of your experience or emotions. It is a time when you can find your muse and really express yourself in the written word.

• I went to college to say thank you to my parents
• How being bullied made me the person I am today
• William Blake is the poet I most admire
• My spirit of adventure
• How I propose to spend the long vacation
• Why I am taking a gap year
• What the “art of conversation” means to me
• Why I left Facebook
• I want to be able to drink legally before I’m 21
• How being in a band helped my leadership skills
• Why I chose a career in the medical field (or any other field)
• My first experience as a babysitter
• Becoming an older sister (or brother)
• I will be a lifelong learner
• My father (mother) is my hero
• Life skills I learned in college
• Why I love the Golden Age of Hollywood
• Chocolate is my comfort food
• The reasons I keep a food diary
• The bravest thing I have ever done
• The one thing I would change about the world
• I will never forget the day that …
• The advice I would give to a new high school student
• My siblings and childhood
• How I would spend $1 million
• The place I would most like to live
• The proudest moment of my life so far
• Did I feel pressured into going to college?
• Why I joined an online dating site
• I wish I had looked after my teeth
• The things I learned from my grandmother (father)
• I’m proud to be a Millennial
• The way I deal with my allergies
• Why opera moves me so much
• My love of Shakespeare
• I will never prefer eBooks over printed books
• Why pole dancing is my favorite form of exercise
• I wasn’t allowed a pet as a child. Today I have 5 pets.
• Why marine pollution breaks my heart
• I took a gap year but wish I had traveled more
• Why I plant a new tree every year
• I do not use social media
• I wish my mother had taught me to cook
• Visiting museums has taught me a great deal
• Monet and Van Gogh are my favorite artists
• An eclectic music taste makes me interesting
• I want to enter local politics in my 40s
• It’s time I learned to appreciate my Irish roots
• There was a time when …
• If I ruled the world …

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How to Write a Personal Essay for Your College Application

What does it take to land in the “accept” (instead of “reject”) pile?

How can you write an essay that helps advance you in the eyes of the admissions officers and makes a real impression? Here are some tips to get you started.

• Start early.  Do not leave it until the last minute. Give yourself time when you don’t have other homework or extracurriculars hanging over your head to work on the essay.
• Keep the focus narrow.  Your essay does not have to cover a massive, earth-shattering event. Some people in their teens haven’t experienced a major life event. Some people have. Either way, it’s okay.
• Be yourself.  Whether writing about a painful experience or a more simple experience, use the narrative to be vulnerable and honest about who you are. Use words you would normally use. Trust your voice and the fact that your story is interesting enough in that no one else has lived it.
• Be creative.  “Show, don’t tell,” and that applies here — to an extent. The best essays typically do both. You can help your reader see and feel what you are describing by using some figurative language throughout your piece.
• Make a point. As you finish your final body paragraphs ask yourself “So what?” This will help you hone in on how to end your essay in a way that elevates it into a story about an insight or discovery you made about yourself, rather than just being about an experience you had.

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend here .

We’ve all heard about the dreaded “college essay,” the bane of every high school senior’s existence. This daunting element of the college application is something that can create angst for even the most accomplished students.

• AA Amy Allen is a writer, educator, and lifelong learner. Her freelance writing business,  All of the Write Words , focuses on providing high school students with one-on-one feedback to guide them through the college application process and with crafting a thoughtful personal essay. A dedicated poet, Amy’s work has also been published in several journals including  Pine Row Press ,  Months to Years,  and  Atlanta Review .

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110 Personal Essay Topics

Though written from a lived experience, personal essay topics can be tricky to come up with because they have to be universal enough for other people to relate to.

Since the skill of writing a good essay is being able to paint an image with words, students must choose a topic that will get others interested in the story and what it has to say about life, society, or themselves.

In essence, personal essays are written from a personal point of view and express a writer’s own insights, opinions, and feelings on a particular topic. Additionally, these types of essays lead to an overall point, lesson, realization, or revelation.

Most commonly, personal essays are written by high school students as part of their college applications. However, there are many other reasons that a personal essay may be assigned or written, including:

• Scholarship applications
• Job interview
• Writing contest
• Grad school admission

Students and others struggling with a valuable personal essay topic can choose from any of the 110 personal essay topics on this list to help them get started.

How to Write a Personal Essay

Writing a personal essay will require you to follow a traditional essay’s guidelines, structure, and format. However, you will also need to ensure that your essay is personal or tells a story about yourself rather than being entirely academic.

For example, you might want to explain an experience that changed how you saw the world or share an opinion on something important to you – even if the rest of the world doesn’t agree with it.

It often helps to make a list of experiences that you may want to share before starting with the writing aspect of the personal essay.

Introduction

The introduction to your personal essay will set the scene for the reader. Therefore, your personal essay needs to start with a compelling hook that will draw the reader in and make them want to read more.

This hook statement could be a humorous or poignant anecdote related to your topic or a line of questioning that the reader will be interested in following. For example, some possible opening lines for a personal essay could start with:

• “I remember exactly where I was when I first realized …”
• “What would you do if you knew the world was going to end tomorrow?
• “So, I once had this problem …”

These beginning lines will often create questions in the reader’s mind, which is an excellent way to capture their interest and keep them reading. Following this initial opening sentence, you can introduce other details as you build up the main point of the story.

Your introduction should end with a thesis statement that verbalizes the general direction the story will go.

Body Paragraphs

Generally, a personal essay will have no less than three body paragraphs that detail your experience in chronological order. Each section should discuss one part of the story, including the events leading up to it, what happened during the experience, and what you learned from it.

Body paragraphs may also include examples of feelings, emotions, or arguments that support your experience. The goal of a personal essay is to share a compelling story and teach the reader something about life or themselves by using specific details and language.

Consider this formatting when creating the body paragraphs of your personal essay:

1st Paragraph

• Beginning of the story that answers questions related to “Who?” and “Where?”
• Initial attitudes, moods, feelings, and assumptions about the event or experience about to take place

2nd Paragraph

• Middle of the story
• Details that show how the situation evolved over time, including any changes in mood or assumption on your part

3rd Paragraph

• Ending of the story/resolution
• The final analysis on overall feelings, emotions, and mood

By sticking to this formatting for the body paragraphs, students can ensure that they are telling the story correctly and including every key detail as it happens.

Conclusion Paragraph

The conclusion of a personal essay is optional and depends on what you want to accomplish with the telling of your story. If you want to leave the reader feeling inspired or emotionally moved, then focus on summarizing the main points in a short paragraph that ends on a positive note.

However, if this was a darker story, you may want to use the concluding paragraph to sum up your feelings after the experience has ended or explore any unanswered questions that remain.

In any event, your conclusion does need to include an overall moral or lesson of how the writer:

• overcame hardship
• rose to the occasion
• identified new traits or abilities that they never realized existed
• turned defeat into success
• followed their instincts and made the right choice
• came to appreciate something about life after the experience took place

Any of these statements can stand alone as a powerful lesson learned. However, when combined in one concluding paragraph, you will leave your reader with a profound impression.

Using any of these 110 personal essay topics will ensure that you have a strong and interesting story to tell.

Personal Essay Topics About Relationships

• What was a time when you made a friend?
• What would your worst enemy say about you?
• Talk about the death of a friend.
• How did it feel to be bullied in school?
• The time when you had to get along with a sibling despite being different ages
• What you learned from your first relationship
• Why marriage isn’t important to you
• How you discovered polyamory, and how it changed your view of relationships
• How your best friend made you a better person
• The lesson you learned from being catfished
• The first time you experienced heartbreak
• A funny story about how technology ruined a relationship.
• How did you learn to recognize love?
• Who would you consider your soulmate? What makes them that person specifically for you?
• What was your most embarrassing moment as a boyfriend or girlfriend, and what did you learn from it?

Personal Essay Topics About Hardships

• The worst thing that ever happened to me
• The roughest time in my family’s life
• The hardest challenge I’ve ever had to overcome
• How did you deal with the stress of moving?
• What was your most embarrassing moment as a kid?
• What are some reasons that I am grateful for my disability/illness/condition?
• When have you had an “Aha!” moment in life?
• What’s something terrible that happened to you that turned into something good?
• What’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from my failures?
• The time when it almost felt like the world was against me
• How did I handle/recover from a severe illness/injury/accident?
• When was the first time I realized that life isn’t fair?
• What was the biggest struggle I went through in my teens?
• The most challenging situation I faced in high school
• When was a time when I made a negative impact on someone else?
• The first time I got caught stealing
• The most embarrassing mistake I ever made with money
• What was the most challenging thing about getting sober/clean/overcoming addiction?
• When did I realize that life is short and that nobody is promised tomorrow?
• How did you learn to persevere through tough times?

Personal Essay Topics About Success & Achievements

• Best moment in my sports career
• My greatest success story
• The time I overcame my fear and found strength I didn’t know I had.
• What’s the happiest day of my life?
• How did I learn to overcome failure?
• The time I knew that dreams really do come true
• My greatest triumph over adversity – and what it taught me about myself.
• What made you realize that you have to work hard in order to achieve something meaningful in life?
• When did I know that I had made it in life?
• When was the first time you were acknowledged for your achievements?
• The night when my hard work truly paid off
• My most powerful moment after overcoming a setback
• How did I become successful?
• What are some defining moments in my career?
• How did I make it through a difficult time in college/university?
• What motivated me to become the person I am today?

Personal Essay Topics About Personal Growth & Self-Reflection

• Whose lifelong encouragement helped make me who I am today
• The first time I took responsibility for my own actions
• What gave me the courage to be myself?
• The most valuable life lesson I’ve ever received. Who taught it to me, and what was the context?
• How did I get through a difficult childhood/adolescence/teenage years?
• What did I learn from becoming a yoga master?
• How has meditation helped me overcome anger issues?
• How did I recover from using drugs and alcohol?
• What’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned from quitting my job?
• When did I realize that life is too short to hate someone?
• The moment when I knew it was time for a change
• I made a mistake – and this is how I bounced back
• How did I overcome depression/anxiety/mental illness?

Personal Essay Topics About Passions & Hobbies

• How did learning a skill change my life?
• Why exercise makes me a better person
• My passion for writing
• What’s the best advice I’ve ever received? Who gave it to me, and in what situation?
• The moment when I realized my true calling in life
• The importance of keeping a journal and how it has helped me become a better person
• My biggest bucket list dream and why it’s so important to me
• What is my vision for the future?
• How did I find peace, contentment, and happiness?
• The time when I truly lived outside of my comfort zone
• When was the moment when I felt like I “got” meditation?
• My journey towards becoming vegan. What inspired me to make this change, and what were the challenges I faced?
• What lessons have been easy for me to learn, and which ones have been harder?
• The time when travel changed my life

Personal Essay Topics About Challenges & Failures

• The low point of my life and how I got through it
• How did an illness/injury/death in the family affect me?
• Why did I decide to stop going on blind dates?
• What were the consequences of losing my temper, and how did I make amends?
• The time when I was broken. What happened, who got hurt, and how did it affect me? How did I overcome this experience?
• When was the moment when I realized that my words carry weight?

Personal Essay Topics About Family & Childhood Memories

• The time when my family showed me what unconditional love means
• My most vivid childhood memory and how it has affected me as an adult
• How did I learn to be patient and kind?
• What was the moment that sparked a change in my life? What caused this change, and what happened after the changes took place?
• The moment when I realized the true meaning of friendship
• What lessons did growing up teach me about life?
• My childhood dream and what it taught me about myself
• How do I feel about my hometown after living in three different places?
• Why is it important to visit your birthplace/hometown during holidays/vacations?
• My family’s most influential life lesson and how it has affected me
• What was the moment when I realized that my parents had their own struggles?
• The time when I learned about my family history. What happened, why did this happen, and how did it affect me? How did things change after this event?
• What do I know about family traditions now that I didn’t understand as a child?
• Why are your family memories vital to you?

Personal Essay Topics About Cultural Heritage & Identity

• What does being bilingual/multilingual mean to me? Why is it unique?
• My first interaction with someone from another culture
• What’s wrong with cultural appropriation, and how did I learn to stop?
• The moment when I became aware of my race/ethnicity
• My culture’s most influential life lesson and how it has affected me
• How I learned to not be afraid of my cultural differences
• Why is diversity important in my community? In what ways do I contribute?
• The moment I realized that I am proud of my culture
• How has the immigrant/refugee experience shaped who you are today?
• How traditions have changed the way I view my family

Personal Essay Topics About Childhood Dreams & Aspirations

• What were my childhood dreams, and how have they changed over the years?
• How did I make peace with the fear of growing up?

Any of these 110 personal essay topics are perfect for students struggling to find a topic that will impress a college admission officer or any other person with whom you’re trying to connect with on a personal level through storytelling.

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How to Mine Your Personal Experiences for Essay Topics

The college application essay can be one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the college admission process, but it can also be one of the most fun – and important – aspects of your overall admissions package.

Writing your college essay can help an admissions officer see your authentic self and get to know you better than they could with just a GPA or SAT score. Reading an essay is a glimpse into a student's life, allowing the decision-makers to determine if you would be a good fit and if you would be happy at their schools. It's important to take the college admission essay seriously, but don't forget that it is creative endeavor that you can enjoy as well.

Know Which Topic to Choose

Deciding what to write about in your essay is the key question that most students face. Because the essay is a personal story, of course, it should be about you. However, determining what to write about can be the challenge. You want the essay to be a reflection of your personality, so you should think about the things that are the most important to you in life.

Here are some questions to guide you to use your personal experiences to come up with the essay topic that is unique to you:

- What are you passionate about?

- What makes you want to be a better person?

- Which pivotal moments have changed your outlook on life?

- What challenges have you overcome?

- Which conflicts have happened in your life that you have resolved?

When you ask yourself these kinds of questions, one specific event or experience may seem like the one topic you should write about, or you may come up with several ideas. If you have several, you can write a list and then outline what you might write about on that topic to help you pinpoint the one that may be strongest. If you're still on the fence, you could ask your guidance counselor or high school English teacher which topic they think might be the best. You can brainstorm with them to determine how you would tell your story in narrative writing before you actually start typing your essay.

Ask Yourself Questions

“The best way to mine your life experiences and find good material for a personal statement is by asking yourself questions," says Alan Gelb, author of Conquering the College Admissions Essay in 10 Steps . “What keeps you up at night? What has been your biggest challenge? Who has surprised you the most? There are many such questions in my book but students can make up — and answer — on their own."

Keep it personal: It's the personal aspect of college admission essays that make college applicants stand out from the crowd. Admissions officers can feel the emotion in a well-written essay, and you want to make sure yours comes through.

"Choose a topic you really want to write about. If the subject doesn't matter to you, it won't matter to the reader," advises Rachel Toor, author of Write Your Way In: Crafting an Unforgettable College Admissions Essay .

Remember — while you are writing your essay, try to have fun with it. There are not many opportunities in life where you get to tell the world a part of your life story and your audience is all ears. The college application essay is one of those chances. You can reveal your true self through writing your story, and it should be an activity you enjoy rather than one you dread.

Elena Loveland

Elena Loveland has been a writer and editor covering higher education and college admissions for 18 years and is the author of Creative Colleges: Finding the Best Programs for Aspiring Artists, Designers, Dancers, Musicians, Writers, and More. Creative Colleges has earned recognition in the College Bound Teen, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Gate and U.S. News and World Report's Annual College Guide. Loveland has spoken at the Independent Educational Consultants Association and the University of the Arts, as well as several high schools about college admission for creative students. She has worked for the National Association for College Admission Counseling as editor of the Journal of College Admission and for NAFSA: Association of International Educators as editor-in-chief of International Educator magazine. As an independent journalist, Loveland.s work has appeared in numerous publications such as American Careers, Dance Teacher, Hispanic Outlook on Higher Education, International Educator, Pointe, Teen Vogue, University Business and the U.S. News & World Report's Annual College Guide, among several others. She has a master's degree in English and has been an adjunct instructor at three higher education institutions. Loveland provides private college admissions consulting to families upon request. She lives in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

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Webinar Transcripts: What About Me? Using Personal Experience in Academic Writing

What about me using personal experience in academic writing.

Presented October 31, 2018

View the webinar recording

Last updated 12/11/2018

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Housekeeping

• Will be available online within 24 hours.
• Polls, files, and links are interactive.
• Now: Use the Q&A box.
• Later: Send to [email protected] or visit our  Live Chat Hours .
• Ask in the Q&A box.
• Choose “Help” in the upper right-hand corner of the webinar room

Audio: All right. Well, hello, everyone and thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Beth Nastachowski and I am the Manager of Multimedia Writing instruction here at the Writing Center and I'm just getting us started here with a couple of quick housekeeping notes before I hand this session over to our presenter today, Claire

A couple of things to keep in mind, the first is I have started the recording for the webinar. I'll be posting the regarding in the webinar archive and you can access that later if you have to leave for any reason during the session or if you would like to come back and review the session or access the slides, you can do that from the recording.

I also like to note here that we record all of the webinars in the Writing Center, so if you ever see a webinar being presented live and you can't attend or if you're looking for help on a particular writing topic, we have those recordings available for you 24/7 so you can just take a look at the archive in the categories there to find a recording that would be useful for you

We also hope that you'll interact with us throughout the session, so I know Claire has lots of polls and the chats she'll be using throughout the session, so make sure to interact with her and your fellow students there

But also note that the links throughout the slides that Claire has are also interactive, so you can click on the links and it will open up in a new tab on your browser, and can you also download the slides that she has here in the Files Pod that’s at the bottom right‑hand corner and can you download those slides and they'll save to your computer as well

Finally, we also have a Q&A Box on the right‑hand side of the screen so I'll monitor that box throughout the session and would be happy to answer any questions or respond to any comments that you have, so do let me know as soon as you have a question or comment, I'm happy to hear from you and I know Claire will be stopping for questions and comments to address those aloud throughout certain points of the presentation as well

However, at the very end of the session if we get to a point where we need to close out the session because we're out of time and you still have questions, please feel free to email us or visit the Live Chat Hours and we're happy to respond to you there and I'll display this information at the end of the session as well

Alright. Actually, this is our final point here. If you have any questions or have any technical issues, feel free to let me know in the Q&A Box, I have a couple of tips and tricks I can give you, but the Help Button at the top right‑hand corner is really the place to go if you have any significant issues.

Visual: Slide changes to the title of the webinar, “ What About Me? Using Personal Experience in Academic Writing ” and the speakers name and information: Claire Helakoski, Writing Instructor, Walden University Writing Center.

Audio: Alright, and so with that, Claire, I will hand it over to you.

Claire: Thanks so much, Beth. Hi, everyone, I'm Claire Helakoski a writing instructor here at the Walden Writing Center and I’m coming in from Grand Rapids, Michigan today to present What About Me? Using Personal Experience in Academic Writing today, and also Happy Halloween to those of you that celebrate it.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Learning Objectives  

After this session, you will be able to:

• Identify the benefits and drawbacks of using personal experience in writing
• Determine the situations when using personal experience is appropriate
• Integrate personal experience effectively
• Access additional resources

Audio: All right. So first I want to go over our learning objectives today which are that after the session you'll be able to identify the benefits and drawbacks of using personal experience in your academic writing, determine the situations where using personal experience is appropriate, integrate personal experience effectively, and access additional resources.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Caveat

We are specifically talking about

personal experience in coursework ,

meaning discussion posts or weekly

assignments .

Doctoral studies are a whole other thing!

Audio: All right, and I do want to start with a caveat that I'm specifically talking about personal experience in coursework, so discussion posts, or weekly assignments. Doctoral studies are a very different things and if you are beyond your coursework and just working on your doctoral study, this presentation may not be as beneficial to you at your current stage since it does get a little more specific and the requirements are a little bit different in those aspects of your writing.

So today we're going to really focus on that coursework discussion post, weekly paper assignments.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Walden Students

• Are at an advantage!
• In previous education institutions
• In careers in their chosen field of study
• In military , family , or volunteer situations

Audio: All right. So Walden students are at an advantage for talking about personal experience because most of you are already working in your fields or have previous education and careers in your field of study, even if you're not working in that now, you've had some sort of career most likely, and I'm just speaking broadly and statistically here, but also through military family or volunteer situations, our students from my experience, tend to be very passionate and knowledgeable about their topics and that means you're at an advantage to have all of these great personal experiences to inform that passion and your coursework as it applies to your current job, future job, or past work that you've done.

Where does that experience go?

What does it count for?

Audio: So, we might wonder where does that experience go, right, because we're often kind of told to pull back on the personal experience in our coursework. So where does it go? Where does it end up sort of counting for? Sorry. I thought there was a pop‑up there.

That experience doesn't go anywhere in a sense that it's there, it is valuable, it is important, it has informed your decision to pursue your degree and there are many assignments that I have personally seen in the Writing Center that will let you kind of tap into that and express it in your coursework. It doesn't count for anything as far as, you know, a grade or something like that, but it's beneficial because it gives you that sort of starting point, that jumping off place to begin your work, right.

A lot of times even if you're starting an assignment that's not really meant to explore personal experience, you might think of a personal experience that you've had had and decide to pursue that topic, so it counts in a sense that you're mentally kind of already engaged with your subject, you’re invested in it, and that gives you a starting point for any type of writing you're going to do for your coursework.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Poll: How convinced are you?

Paragraph A

            By and large, substance abuse in the United States begins during adolescence. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2013) stated that on an average day 881,684 adolescents smoke cigarettes, 646,707 smoke marijuana, and 457,672 drink alcohol. Adult addicts typically report beginning substance use in adolescence. In fact, one in four Americans who started using addictive substances in their teens are addicted now, compared to one in 25 who began using after the age of 21 (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 2011). When teens engage in substance use, their behavior impacts their adult lives.

Paragraph B

            By and large, substance abuse in the United States begins during adolescence. As a school paraprofessional, I know this is a problem. I see teenagers every day in the high school library who are drunk or high. Just this past year, five separate students got into serious car accidents (with injuries) due to substance use. We actually have to employ drug-sniffing dogs in the school as well. These teens do not get the help they need, and so addiction becomes something they struggle with as adults as well.

Audio: So, we're going to start with a little poll here. We have Paragraph A and Paragraph B, so I'd like you to read them both and note which option you're most convinced by, and I'm going to not read these aloud because I think it would take longer than you guys reading them through, but I will give you a couple minutes to read them through and consider which of them you find most convincing and then let us know in the poll.

[silence as students respond]

I see the answers still trickling in here. I'm going to give you another minute to go ahead and respond if you have not and then we'll talk over our responses.

All right. It looks like the responses have kind of stopped trickling in so I'm going to go ahead and talk about each of these options. So, a lot of you, most of you, chose Paragraph A and that is probably because we have a lot of great statistics in Paragraph A, right. We're focusing on this kind of overall issue, we have proof that it is an issue, really specific proof, right. We're talking about numbers and statistics, and then we kind of explain what all of that means at the end there. Whereas in Paragraph B, we have kind of the same topic, right. So, we're still talking about substance use in teenagers, but this one is talking about what this writer sees in their work every day. They see these things happening, and they do have some specifics like the five separate students and what's going on in their school, and they have a kind of the same takeaway or opinion, which is that addiction is an issue and, you know, something kind of needs to be done.

So, they really are about the same topic, but Paragraph A is likely a little more convincing to the wider majority of people because it's more neutral, it has facts and statistics, you know, from all over really because it's from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Organization and so it's a big study by an established organization. And in Paragraph B while these personal experiences are great and they definitely do speak to an issue at this person's school, so if that was the assignment, then this would probably be appropriate, but if we're talking about this as a whole issue for the country or like a larger health issue, then talking about it more globally with more global statistics is going to be effective there and a little bit more convincing for an outside reader who isn't a member of this Paragraph B person's school.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Academic Writing

Readers expect

• to see research-based evidence* supporting statements even if the writer has expertise in the area
• to be persuaded through logic and reasoning

*information from course readings, books, scholarly journals, trusted websites

The need for research doesn’t mean your own knowledge is unimportant or wrong

Audio: All right. So as I kind of went over, in academic writing, readers expect to see that research‑based evidence which supports statements even if the writer has expertise in the area, so because none of us are doctors in our field yet, we aren't considered experts in our area, even though we most likely have experiences that inform us on our topic and we might have really great things to say about it, but we're not considered experts yet. And in academic writing, even the experts are still going to find that research‑based evidence to help support what they're saying. So that's just a general expectation of academic writing, and it's one of the things that separates it from other types of writing that you may have done in the past or that you may see in other fields.

Readers also expect to be persuaded through logic and reasoning rather than sort of emotional appeals or those other, you know, tools that people will use in online articles or, you know, commercials and things like that that are really overly persuasive and personal and have lots of emotion. That's not quite the right tone for that academic writing, that scholarly writing. It's not a wrong technique, but it should be saved for different arenas, different places where you're going to write. In academic writing, you want to be logical, objective, fact based, and by evidence, I mean information from your course readings, from books, scholarly journals, trusted website, so research you're doing that's been done by other people in your field and is supported and reviewed.

All right. As I've kind of gone over as well, the need for research doesn't mean your own knowledge is unimportant or wrong. It just means that you need to be a little bit careful about when and where you use that personal knowledge in your course writing because a lot of times it won't meet reader expectation, so while it can inform what you're going to write about, you'll want to use that information to fuel your research, for example.

And as we'll go over in a little bit, there are assignments that specifically ask for your own experiences, opinions, and ideas and so you can look out for those as well.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: When is personal experience okay?

• In the research process
• Thinking ● Researching ● Thinking ● Researching ● Writing

Audio: All right, so as I've sort of gone over, you might be wondering when is personal experience okay? As I mentioned in the research process, we're kind of getting you started and personal experience is a great tool, a really beneficial tool to give you a jumping off point. Like in our paragraph example, this writing has seen these issues with teenage addiction in their school so they can say, I know this is an issue and I don't think it's just an issue in my school so what I want to do is think about that issue, research that issue, and then end up writing about that issue.

And your research and thinking and writing process may go back and forth, and it probably should, right. You think of an idea, do a little research to see what's out there, think about it again, do I have enough points, do I maybe need more, is it maybe going in a different direction than I thought? Maybe do a little more research, and then start your writing. And informing that with your personal experience to help get you started for something that you observe or something that you already know to be true can be really beneficial as a jumping off point for your research.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Type of Assignments

• Assignment instructions might use the term “you” as in “What do you think will be most useful to you…”
• Assignment instructions might say, “Demonstrate your learning…” or “Refer to specific experiences in your workplace…”
• Assignment instructions might say, “Select a topic based on something you have seen, heard, or experienced…”
• Assignment instructions might say, “Describe your educational and professional background…”

Audio: So in your assignments, you may have some assignments, as I mentioned, that are going to ask for you to talk about personal experience and that is a great, great use of personal experience and a place where personal experience is not only okay but it's asked for and it's expected, and one of the key words you can look for in your assignment prompt is you, so look out for assignment prompts that use the word "you." What would you do? What do you think? What experience do you have in this field? And what would you do in this situation? Lots of "you" there but, of course, you're going to use "I," you're going to use your personal experience in those situations.

So, here’s a few that come up. An example in a reflection paper or a post, what do you think will be most useful to you? Right, reflection means you're going to talk about your experience, it's kind of inherent to reflecting on your own writing and ideas.

In a prior learning narrative, the assignment instructions might say something like, demonstrate your learning, refer to experiences in your workplace. I've seen a lot like that so obviously those are really good places to bring out that personal experience.

The assignment instructions might say something like, select a topic based on something you have seen, heard, or experienced. Or I've seen papers that deal with, you know, for example, different leadership styles or something like that and it will ask if you've had any experience with a prior manager that exhibited one of these leadership styles. Those are great places to use that personal experience. And in your professional development plan, if you write one of those, you'll definitely write about personal experience because the assignment instructions will say something like, describe your educational and professional background. So those are all wonderful places to use that personal experience and where you're being asked to use that personal experience.

So, don't feel like we're saying never, ever, ever use personal experience. You're going to have to use your judgment, and that's kind of what this webinar is to help you do, right. So, in your research process, personal experience can be helpful. In assignments that are using "you" and not just this week "you've read," but like asking questions of what do you think, what would you do in your workplace? Those are great questions where you could use some of the experience that you may have.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: To Illustrate a Theory

According to the theory of caring, nurses should be sensitive facilitators of a healing environment (Watson, 1979). I demonstrate this when I talk to patients in a calm voice, listen attentively to their needs, and limit the amount of visitors and noise.

Systems theory looks at a system holistically, with the parts working together (Janson, 2015). An example of this interdependence in my organization is…

Audio: And Sometimes talking about illustrating a theory could be a good place to introduce personal experience as well. Here is an example. According to the theory of caring, nurses should be sensitive facilitators of a healing environment. I demonstrate this when I talk to patients in a calm voice, listen attentively to their needs, and limit the amount of visitors and noise.

So, this assignment probably has something to do with talking about nursing theories and how you do or do not implement them in your nursing practice, right. So, they probably used "you" in the assignment somewhere, but it's not just all personal reflection. It's talking about the reading, talking about how you use these tools, so that's a great place to use that personal experience in a nice specific concrete way.

Here is another example. Systems theory looks at a system holistically with the parts working together and an example of this interdependence in my organization is, and again here we've probably been asked to write about your organization or a past experience in your workplace in the assignment prompt, but when you're combining that with research, demonstrating that theory with personal experience can be really beneficial and helpful for readers because you have that nice evidence and then a concrete example.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Benefits of Personal Experience

• better understanding
• stronger connection with the material
• perhaps more confidence
• more interesting
• helpful to see an example from an insider perspective

Audio: All right, so the benefits of personal experience for you are that better understanding of your topic, a stronger connection with the material. I mentioned that passion before. And maybe more confidence writing about it because you know for sure that this is an issue, this is something that's going on, this is something you've noticed, you've experienced, and so you can go into it with confidence into your research that there is going to be something out there that supports what you've seen and what you've experienced or what practices you have in your workplace.

For your reader, adding that personal experience where appropriate can be more interesting and helpful to see those examples from an insider perspective. As you all know, I'm sure, excuse me. ‑‑ as you all know I'm sure, reading just about theories can be a little dry, so having those concrete examples of what that looks like in practice can be much more engaging for readers.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Questions

Audio: All right. Let's pause for a moment to see if we have any questions.

Beth: Thanks so much, Claire. Something just came in here. Oh, yeah, so you just said this I think a little bit, but could you talk a little more and kind of address the question that the student had had on whether they can use first person in their personal experience when discussing personal experience, and specifically maybe tips for using first person in those cases too. Does that make sense?

Claire: Yes, it does. That's a great question. So, I know that some of you have probably heard beyond just don't use personal experience but you may have heard don't use "I," right, which is the first person. So, don't use "I," but using "I" isn't incorrect per APA, and I'll go over this a little about bit later, but the kinds of "I" statements you want to avoid are those I believe, I feel, I think statements. Unless of course your writing a personal reflection of some kind in which case those would be appropriate. But when you’re talking about personal experience you’re going to have to use "I," right. That just makes sense, it would be really weird to say something like, this this writer has experienced. Instead just say, in my workplace I have done this, I exemplify this theory when I do this really focusing on actions you've taken or things that you've observed in your workplace through the use of "I" is going to be much clearer for the readers and help them out. So, using "I" is not inappropriate for personal experience. It's really those other kind of more feeling‑based statements that you really want to watch out for.

Beth: Thank you so much, Claire. I think you just covered a little bit of examples of when to use that first person, and so I think we're good for now. Yeah. I'll keep watching out for more questions, but I think that covers it for now.

Claire: Thanks, Beth, and yeah, we will go can over some examples of using "I" a little bit further on in this presentation too, so you can look for that or look forward to that, sorry.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: When is using personal experience inappropriate?

• Avoid generalizing
• Our schools are failing. Parents want more individualized support for their children in the classroom.
• My daughter texts constantly, which shows that teenagers use cell phones more than they did in the past.

Audio: All right. So, when is using personal experience inappropriate? So, we talked about when it's appropriate, right, during your research process, when your assignment specifically asked for that reflection, that background information, or when you're exemplifying a theory in an assignment which has kind of asked for how you connect to the source reading for that week.

Right, so those are all great places and appropriate places to use that first person and that personal experience.

When using personal experience is inappropriate is using it as evidence in an argument, it's kind of like our Paragraph B from earlier. I noticed this at my school so all teenagers should go through drug testing and that's just too general, right. It's not backed up enough. You want to avoid generalizing. Personal experience can lead to those generalizations, so here are some examples.

Our schools are failing, parents want more individualized support for their children in the classroom, and so this is just really vague, right? This first one, it's really vague and how do I know that schools are failing, whose opinion is this, it's just the writer's opinion and that's probably not enough to say that our schools are failing, like they might be an authority on if their own school is failing, but that's a whole big other ‑‑ I assume they're talking about schools in the United States but they could be talking about the whole world, so it's important to be really specific and use that evidence to avoid those generalizations.

Our second example is my daughter texts constantly which shows that teenagers use cell phones more than they did in the past. So again, this observation, we can't expand it out to all teenagers or all schools or all anything from one personal experience, right? Even our own hospital or at our own high school that our daughter attends, we would have to actually do research and do some kind of study to make this type of statement because otherwise somebody could say anything they wanted, right. I could say, online students are lazy, which I know to be very untrue since I work with Walden students all the time, but I could just say that if we didn't need to have that evidence, if I was just going to use my own personal biased opinion, I could say whatever I wanted. I could say something like that and I wouldn't need to go find any research. I would just say it like it's true and move on, so to avoid that, to have that credibility, you want to have that research to back up statements and avoid using that personal experience, those personal observations, and stating them as facts that extend beyond your own observation.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Problems with Using Only Experience

• How does one person’s experience compete with verified and reported research involving many people?
• No foundation of knowledge
• No practice with library skills, research, and using sources

Audio: The problems with using only your personal experience in your work are that it's not a very convincing argument. As I sort of just explained, one person's experience, how does that compete with verified research involving many people or across many states or years. You know, one person's opinion just isn't as strong as that. There isn't a clear foundation of knowledge if you're only using personal experience, then you're not explaining, you know, how you contribute to the conversation that's already happening on this topic and that's one of my favorite, favorite things about academic writing is that we're constantly contributing to the conversations that are already happening in our field. And if it's just your opinion and you’re not taking into account what other people have already said or are saying on your topic, then you're not coming off as having a foundation of knowledge or really contributing to that conversation.

Also, the problem with only using experience is you won't get practice with those library skills, research, and using sources effectively. And you're going to need those skills as you progress through your programs, even if maybe you don't need them on your first few discussion posts, for example, you will need them throughout your program and to succeed in your fields.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Example of Effective Integration

By and large, substance abuse in the United States begins during adolescence. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2013) stated that on an average day 881,684 adolescents smoke cigarettes, 646,707 smoke marijuana, and 457,672 drink alcohol. Adult addicts typically report beginning substance use in adolescence. In fact, one in four Americans who started using addictive substances in their teens are addicted now, compared to one in 25 who began using after the age of 21 (National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 2011). To address this pattern, school districts should implement prevention and intervention programs.

At my high school in suburban Atlanta, I helped create Clean Matters. The program follows the National Institute on Drug Abuse principles of …

Audio: All right. So, I want to talk about an example of that effective integration of personal experience with research, so this isn't only research, right, it's personal experience and research.

By and large, substance abuse in the United States begins during adolescents. The substance abuse and mental health services administration stated that on average, an average day, oh, man I'm so bad at reading numbers aloud. This many adolescents smoked cigarettes, marijuana, and drank alcohol. Adult addicts typically report beginning substance use in adolescence, and in fact one in four Americans who started using addictive substances in their teens are addicted now compared to 1 in 25 who began using at the age of 21. To address this pattern, school districts should implement prevention intervention programs. At my high school in suburban Atlanta, I helped create Clean Matters and the program follows the National Institute on Drug abuse Principles of ‑‑

So here you can see that we have this great effective paragraph, and this is that you might recognize as our Paragraph A from earlier, and so we have this effective paragraph that has lots of information from a source. We have a clear takeaway at the end, right? We're saying this is information that is true, here is what this means, this is an issue, it needs to be addressed, right? And here is what we can do.

Then we have an example of what someone is doing already, so for example I've seen some paper assignments that say something like establish your health issue, discuss what your community is doing to combat this issue, for example.

So, this would be a great place to establish your issue using that research and then include what you're doing in your community, especially if you do have that personal involvement and the assignment asked about your community, then this is a good place to use that personal experience and talk about the campaign that you personally worked on.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Chat

Chat: Did the author effectively

integrate their personal experience in this reflection paper?

Being an active listener is probably the most challenging part of my face-to-face communication. Although I choose my responses wisely and use skills such as validation and empathic listening, I struggle to be an active listener and easily get distracted by mental noises and perceptual biases. Active listeners are “people who focus on the moment, are aware of interactions as they unfold, respond appropriately, and are aware of distractions” (Dobkin & Pace, 2006, p. 98). To strengthen this skill, I must practice clearing my mind and eliminating distractions so I can fully focus on the messages I am receiving.

Audio: All right, so let's do another practice, now that we've done through an example of that effective integration. Did the author here effectively integrate their personal experience in this reflection paper, and why or why not? I will read it aloud for you. Being an active listening is probably the most challenging part of my face‑to‑face communication. Although, I choose my responses wisely and use skills such as validation and empathic listening, I struggle to be an active listener and easily get distracted by mental noises and perceptual biases Active listeners are people who focus on the moment, are, aware of interactions, respond appropriately and are aware of interactions. To strengthen this skill, I must practice clearing my mind and eliminating distraction so I can fully focus on the message I am receiving.

Go ahead and take a minute and then tell us what you think in the chat box.

[silence as students type]

I can see some people are still typing. I'll give you another minute to go ahead and finish up with your response here.

All right. It looks like our contributors have dried up, so I'm going to go ahead and talk over. If you're still typing, go ahead and keep typing and I'll just begin our discussion.

So, a lot of you said that you did think that this was effective in general because we do have some source information that we're dealing with here and we are tying that in to our personal experience. A few of you suggested having the evidence sort of earlier in the paragraph to help support the observations that the writer is making a little bit sooner rather than necessarily beginning with a personal, a sentence of personal experience. And you know, I think it really depends on what the assignment is, right, which is always the answer with personal experience. What is the assignment? This assignment is probably one that I've seen where you take some sort of, you know, assessment or quiz about your skills and then write a reflection about how you scored and what you can do to have kind of like an improvement plan, so that's what I'm guessing this is here.

And in that case, right, it probably is fine to have that personal experience right away in the paragraph because this is a more personal reflective type of assignment, but it's a good thing to keep in mind that you may want to start with an overall what is this paragraph really going to be about, what is the bigger kind of connection, think about your thesis, and then if there are personal details to add to have them a little bit later can be very effective as well.

So great observations, everybody. Thank you for participating.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Tips for Effectively Using Personal Experience

Audio: All right, so now we're going to go through some tips for effectively using that personal experience.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Effective Integration Tips

DO use the first-person point of view.

• Helps you avoid referring to yourself in the third person or passive voice.
• Unclear: In this writer’s role as an executive assistant, this writer compiles reports on financial transactions.
• Appropriate: In my role as an executive assistant, I compile reports on financial transactions.

Audio: All right, so as we sort of mentioned before with the questions about using "I," you use that first‑person point of view for your first‑person experience, right. It helps avoid referring to yourself in the third person or in passive voice, which can be very confusing for readers.

An example is in this writer's role an as executive assistant this writer compiles reports on financial transactions. That's not only repetitive, but it's a little confusing because in academic writing, right, we write about what other writers think all the time, so if I'm a reader and I'm seeing this, I'm thinking, okay, by this writer, do they mean the researcher they were just talking about in the last paragraph? Who do they mean? Who were they talking about exactly? So that can be really unclear. Whereas, in my role as an executive assistant I compile reports on financial transactions. There is nothing wrong with using first person in that way, right, because it's not biased, it's not opinionated, it's explaining what you do in your role so there is nothing inappropriate about that per APA.

This blog on including relevant details might be helpful!

DO stay on task.

• Ask yourself: Is this experience directly related to the assignment? How much does the reader really need to know?
• Too Much: I want to pursue a degree in social work at Walden. My stepfather kicked me out of the house when I was 14, and I became homeless. On the streets, I was scared and hungry and had to steal or beg to get by. I don’t want other teens to suffer like I did for many years.
• Appropriate: I want to pursue a degree in social work at Walden. The experience of being homeless as a teenager has made me empathetic toward other people in similar situations.

Audio: All right. You do want to stay on task, so what I see sometimes is even in those assignments that are asking for you to write about your own experience, I see some students get a little bit carried away and I know why because you're so excited to be able to write about that personal experience, to be able to share that you might end up getting kind of off topic and maybe sharing more than is strictly needed for the assignment, so you want to stay focused. You want to ask, is this experience directly related to the assignment? How much does the reader really need to know?

So here is an example. I want to pursue a degree in social work at Walden. My step‑father kicked me out of the house when I was 14 and I became homeless. On the streets I was scared and hungry and had to steal or beg to get by and I don't want other teens to suffer like I did for many years. So, do we need all of that information to understand why this person wants to pursue a degree at Walden?

We can probably cut it down, right. I want to pursue a degree in social work at Walden. The experience of being homeless as a teenager has made me empathetic towards other people in similar situations. So, we're taking the ideas and we're sort of paraphrasing ourselves, right. We're shrinking it down and we're focusing on what the point is, what's the importance of these personal details, what's the takeaway for the reader.

And I have a blog post on including relevant details that I wrote for these specific situations, so you can click that active link or if you're watching this as a recording, you can download the slides and you'll be able to review it there as well, so that has some more detailed examples if this sounds like something you maybe do.

DO Use an objective, formal, nonjudgmental voice (even if the content is very personal).

• Ask yourself: Is this voice appropriate for a professional context?
• Too casual: In my opinion, the students were behaving like brats. I couldn’t even get their attention to take attendance! I had to…
• Appropriate: One day at preschool, the students were particularly rambunctious. It was difficult to take attendance, so I …

Audio: Do remain objective, formal and nonjudgmental even if the content is very personal. Ask yourself, is this voice appropriate for professional context. And when I think of a professional context, I like to imagine that you are writing a letter to a person in your field who you greatly respect but have never met in person, so that might be a helpful visual for some of you, really thinking about that tone. You want to be formal, you want to be direct, you want to seem smart, right, so you want to avoid being overly emotional or, you know, judgmental potentially or opinionated.

Example is in my opinion; the students were behaving like brats. I couldn't even get their attention to take attendance, so here is that less appropriate use of "I" that we sort of talked about before, right. My opinion, so unless the prompt specifically asks for your opinion, then you shouldn't have statements like "in my opinion" or "I believe" and then we have, I couldn't even get their attention to take attendance, so we're just kind of complaining, right.

Instead, we can write one day at preschool the students were particularly rambunctious and so it was difficult to take attendance, so really, we're saying the same thing here but we just tweaked it. We made it more objective, more observable, and something you can think about is, if someone was watching you in your situation, would they find your description effective to paint the picture that they saw, right? Whereas like, students were behaving like brats, that's really subjective. Whereas, the students were energetic or rambunctious that's something that someone could easily observe if they were standing outside of the classroom and they could tell it was difficult for you to take attendance, but I couldn't even get their attention is very personal, that's drawing on not only your personal experience of what happened but you're sort of mental and emotional state while it was happening, so that's another thing to help you kind of focus in on remaining objective and clear, is to think about, am I portraying what happened or am I portraying my emotional response to what happened?

DO NOT wear “experience blinders.”

• Remain open
• Consult other sources and viewpoints, even contradictory ones
• Instead: Provide a citation for personal experience

Audio: All right. Don't wear those experience blinders. Remain open. Think about, you know, someone might say your experience just doesn't belong in this paper, you know, and that's not saying that your experience doesn't matter or isn't important or they're not informed and knowledgeable and intelligent about your topic. It's just, you know, it may not be for the assignment or it might just not match kind of that formal scholarly academic tone.

You can consult other sources and viewpoints, even contradictory ones on your topic, to help maintain that kind of neutral tone throughout even if you think you already have an opinion on it, and you can provide a citation instead of just your personal experience, right. You can provide a citation if you have written about it before, for example, or if you're drawing from your personal experience and you want to go look up something that mirrors what you experienced.

Chat: How would you pair personal

experience with this quote from an article?

Write 1-2 sentences.

“About 75% of the online students surveyed

indicated that they were more engaged in courses

that included images, video, and audio” (Sherman

& MacKenzie, 2015, p. 31).

Audio: All right. So here we have our last practice, so how would you pair personal experience with this quote from an article? And assume that this is appropriate, right, your assignment has asked you to pair personal experience, and so here is a quote. About 75% of the online students surveyed indicated they were more engaged in courses that included images, video, and audio. So, what's your personal experience that connects with this quotation? Write one to two sentences in the Chat Box and then we'll talk about some of them.

I'm seeing some great responses so far and I'm going to go ahead and give you guys another minute or so before we talk over these.

All right. I'm going to go ahead and start talking about a few of the examples that I pulled, but if you're still typing, please go ahead and continue typing.

All right, so one example is "I experience better engagement in courses when I start an online degree with Walden University, images, videos, and webinar and presentations helped me stay focused. So, that pairs nicely with our evidence because they found 75% of students were more engaged by this type of content, right, and so this person is adding to that by saying that they agree, right, and that they give some specifics as to what that looked like here at Walden, so that's a great use of personal experience.

All right. We have sort of an introduction, which was from teaching, information, literacy, and public speaking, my experience is that ‑‑ so that's a great introduction to kind of, what your experience was with that engaging content. I would caution you here to not then just have the quotation, right. Because your experience isn't that 75% of online students surveyed indicated their engagement, right. Your experience is that you also were more engaged by those image, video, and audio, right. You can only speak to your own experience and that's something that wasn't in this presentation, but which is important to think about. You don't want to pair a citation with an "I" statement because it doesn't make sense, right. That writer, Sherman and Mackenzie they didn't write about you. They wrote about subjects in their study. So, pairing with an "I" statement is confusing to readers and you want to make that statement separate from the evidence and show how it connects but you don't want to mash it together in the same sentence.

All right. In my experience as an online student, images, video, and audio have been beneficial in keeping me engaged in online courses. So that’s great, right? That's similar to the first one I read, having the nice specifics and they're agreeing with the statistics and supporting them with their own experience.

Personally, I find my attention is drawn to an attraction eye catching image or video, and right so again we're just kind of agreeing with that source information.

Here’s another one that kind of takes what is an "I" statement or personal statement and goes a little bit too far out from their own experience. From personal experience the use of video and images are imperative for effective learning. The only person you really have authority to say that about is yourself, right. So, from personal experience, the uses of videos are imperative for my learning to be effective is something that you are definitely qualified and should say, right, if that's true here, that would be a great use of personal experience. But you don't want to say, I also, like I agree and this is true for everybody. You don't want to go beyond yourself.

Research has proven that a good number of online students are engaged with video and audio learning experiences, and so that's more of a paraphrase of this quotation, right. That's not personal experience. It's not saying that I had this experience that is supported by this research, right, so there were so many great examples there and I really appreciate your input, and it just shows that this is a skill and it takes time and practice and it is way easier when it's an assignment you have in front of you and you know exactly what personal experience you want to use.

But I'm going to go ahead and move on so that we have time for questions at the end.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Additional Resources

• Avoiding Bias web page
• All About Audience podcast episode
• Why You Shouldn’t Wiki blog post
• APA blog post on personal experience
• Prior Learning Portfolio web page (UG students)

Audio: All right. So, I promise to use some additional resources at the beginning of this presentation and here are some great ones. We have an Avoiding Bias web page. We have all about audience podcast episode. We also have a podcast episode called Objectivity and Passion that is really good if you feel or if someone is saying that you are too emotional or too passionate about your topic, or you're getting a little opinionated, that's a good one too.

Why You Shouldn't use Wikipedia Blog Post we have an APA, APA has a blog post on personal experience, and for undergraduate students, there is a Prior Learning Portfolio web page to assist you.

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Questions: Ask Now or Later

[email protected] •  Live Chat Hours

Learn More:

Check out the recorded webinars “What Is Academic Writing?”

and “Writing Effective Academic Paragraphs”

Audio: And before I turn it over for questions, I also wanted to note that I think a paper review, which I don't think was linked on a previous page, but a paper review is a really great resource too when you're using this personal experience and you're not sure if you are telling too much or, you know, if you're being too passionate about your topic or how well you're integrating that personal experience with those resources. You can send in your paper for a paper review through our paper review system, My Pass, and a writing instructor like myself will read it, give you feedback, and then attach a draft with comments and links in it the day of or day after your scheduled appointment. So that can be really useful and just let us know on your appointment form that you're kind of nervous about using personal experience effectively or would like some assistance with that, and we will focus on that in your review.

All right. Do we have any lingering questions, Beth?

Beth: Yeah. Thanks so much, Claire. Thank you so much. That was all fantastic first off. But we did have a question from a student who was saying, you know, what if their assignment is asking for their personal experience but they're just not coming up with ideas, like they're kind of having writer's block in that area. Do you have any strategies to help students generate ideas from their own personal experience?

Claire: That's a good question. Yeah, it can certainly be challenging, you know, especially if you're being asked, for example, if you're changing career paths and then you're being asked to sort of write about your experience in that career area. Because I have seen some assignments that are like that so I can see why it would be hard to sort of come up with an experience.

If you're really struggling and your faculty has kind of asked you to talk through a scenario or a leadership situation and you're just not coming up with one, then I would definitely reach out to your faculty and see if maybe you can use a scenario from some reading or talk through something like that because that can happen, right, where you just don't really have an experience that fits the bill.

As far as where you definitely know you have experiences, but you're kind of struggling to figure out which one to talk about, or you feel like there are too many, or you just don't know where to start, I would definitely try free writing, which is where, you know, you ask yourself about the topic and you just write for a given amount of time, so I usually start with like 10 minutes, and you just write about that topic, everything you can remember, everything you can think about related to that topic and your experience, and that can really help like jog your memory and focus in on specific events that might be helpful, but definitely, you know, especially if you're coming back to school from a ‑‑ from a while outside of school, then you might not remember a really clear memory to use for a specific example, and in that case I would definitely just ask your faculty and let them know what's going on because they're not trying to trip you up with that. They're just playing on how a lot of Walden students have relevant, current kind of experiences in their field and they're not meaning for you to not be able to complete the assignment.

Beth: That's fantastic, Claire. Can I provide maybe one other idea? I was just thinking of something that's just something I was thinking about.

Claire: Yeah

Beth: Depending on your assignment too, it's also helpful to sometimes read, I don't know, like other more popular research or just like do a Google Search on a topic. Maybe you know, the theoretical peer review journal articles you're reading about a topic just don't help you connect that top wick your own experience, maybe it's like a leadership style or something, but reading an article about leadership styles in a more informal publication that you wouldn't cite in your paper but that could help you generate ideas, that can sometimes sort of make it more real for you. That's been helpful for me in the past sometimes. I don't know, I just wanted to throw that out there as well. I hope that's okay.

Claire: Yeah, no. That's a great idea too. It doesn't have to be research to like spark your ideas. Maybe you want to go watch a TED Talk or you know find an infographic, Beth loves infographics, so find an infographic or find, you know, a little like life hacker article that kind of breaks it down.

Beth: Something yeah. I like that, and I know this is like, it felt so blasphemous when I just read it but sometimes it will even say go to the Wikipedia page on the topic, you won't cite the Wikipedia page but you might generate ideas from it or find other research that's cited on the page too, so yeah.

Okay. No other questions, Claire, that are coming in. Do you have any last thoughts you want to leave everyone with before we kind of wrap up?

Claire: Just, you know, make sure you're looking over your assignment really carefully when you're deciding if you want to use personal experience or not. And if you are ever unsure, ask your faculty. It is their job and they will know if they want personal experience or not in that paper and they will be able to tell you really clearly if you're not sure.

Beth: Perfect. Thank you so much, Claire. I'm seeing lots of thanks coming into the Q&A Box. Thank you, thank you everyone for attending, if you have any more questions, make sure to reach out and we hope to see you at another webinar coming up soon. Thanks, everyone.

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100+ Personal Essay Topics For College And Writing Tips

Table of Contents

Looking for interesting personal essay writing ideas? We’ve got a bunch…

A personal essay is a typical assignment for high-school and college students. It’s a type of non-fiction that incorporates a variety of writing styles. Personal essay topics usually include real stories, experiences, and opinions of people.

Writers need to give an account of their own experience and express their thoughts on the subject of a paper. The key to success is to make an attempt to combine narration and opinion together. In this article, you will find a short writing guide and 100+ engaging personal essay topic ideas.

How to write personal essays?

Keep in mind that personal writing is always subjective. It is based on the writer’s observation, feelings, opinion, and experience. You are the speaker, so it’s quite natural to use such pronouns as I, my, me, we, and our.

First of all, most essay writing websites will say that you need to find a compelling topic. College personal essay topics include a lot of things.

Students may be asked to

• state their opinion about an issue
• document what they observed
• share a story
• give a description of an object, event, place, person
• relate a specific subject to their own life

Whatever theme you choose, it’s crucial to start an introduction of your paper with a strong hook to capture the audience’s attention. Introduce the subject in the first paragraph. Think about the main idea you want to communicate.

In the body of your paper, inform readers about the subject. It’s better to create an outline before to start writing. It will help you organize your thoughts, stay focused, and write clearly and concisely. Start each paragraph with a new idea. Show, don’t tell. Use strong verbs and include a lot of sensory details.

End with a thought-provoking conclusion. You need to explain what lesson you have learned, how your experience contributed to your development as a person and shaped your personality.

Why choose personal persuasive essay topics for writing

When writing on personal persuasive essay topics, writers must state their position or opinion on an issue and try to persuade people to accept their point of view, telling stories and appealing to their feelings and emotions.

That differs from elaborating on personal argumentative essay topics, when students have to support their point of view with strong arguments, reasons, relevant examples, appropriate illustrations, etc.

These types of papers are not easy to write as well as papers on personal cause and effect essay topics.

But there are important reasons why you may want to do that.

• You’ll improve communication and critical thinking skills .
• Challenging themes can help you stand out from the crowd.
• You will be able to demonstrate your creativity and ability to apply persuasive techniques.

… Can’t decide what idea to choose?

Here we have gathered a wide variety of moving ideas for your inspiration. Whether you need personal experience essay topics or personal narrative essay topics, we’ve got you covered.

Personal essay topics: what are they about?

You may write on any subject. Popular themes include hobbies, nature, childhood, illness, travel, making a difficult choice, learning something new, friends, family, and relationships.

You may use some personal challenge essay ideas and tell about overcoming an obstacle. Or you can buy argumentative essay if you don’t have time to work on college tasks tonight.

Actually, the subject is not as important as you think. Readers want to see your point of view that reveals your unique personality.

• How you met a special person in your life?
• A person you admire most.
• The best place in the local area.
• A place where you would like to live your whole life.
• Works of art you admire.
• The job of your dream.
• Your biggest disappointment.
• Books that made a great impression on you.
• What annoys you?
• Your family traditions.
• Are you addicted to technology?
• What modern songs inspire you?
• Could you live without money?
• Do you like commercials?
• What is your best method of studying?

Personal narrative essay topics

• Tell about your first trip abroad.
• The most unfortunate event ever happened to you.
• What happened during your first day at school?
• What is your first childhood memory?
• What is your most memorable family event?
• Did you experience failure?
• What games did you play when you were a child?
• The biggest challenge you have overcome.
• Do you remember your first birthday party?
• Tell how you learn something new.
• Have you ever encountered a wild animal?
• Tell about the first time you were home alone.
• How you cooked a meal for the first time?
• Tell how you helped someone.
• How you overcame fear?

Personal experience essay topics

• What things make you feel happy?
• How you came to healthy eating habits?
• How did you celebrate Christmas?
• Did you bring a stray animal home?
• How did you learn to drive?
• How you met a famous person?
• How did you learn something from enemies?
• Describe the accidents you witnessed.
• How you got hurt?
• Describe disastrous trips or vacations.
• Fantastic concerts you attended.
• Describe terrifying nightmares.
• Your reaction when provoked.
• Experience of being a leader.
• A friendship breakup experience.

Personal argumentative essay topics

• What could you live without?
• Why are you concerned about environmental issues?
• How much money do you need for happiness?
• What does your ethnic identity mean to you?
• Significance of personal growth.
• Male and female roles in your family.
• Your attitude to feminism.
• Explain what does it mean to be a Human.
• Most precious moments of your life.
• What is more critical: wealth or happiness?
• Your attitude to getting a tattoo.
• Is it important to be crazy about fashion?
• Your opinion on cosmetics surgery.
• Significance of healthy lifestyle choices.
• Your favourite holiday destinations.

College personal essay topics

• Have you been in love with someone?
• What is your life’s goal?
• What does success mean to you?
• How freedom matters in your life?
• How you leave the comfort zone?
• Things you appreciate in life.
• What things do you hate?
• How you met college roommates?
• Your plans on spending a gap year.
• How you got your first job?
• Describe intellectual challenges you would like to solve.
• What did you learn from failures?
• Outdoor activities you like most.
• Explain your commitments.
• What motivates you?

Personal persuasive essay topics

• Your opinion of distant learning and online education.
• Can listening to music help complete your homework faster?
• Can hobbies help in a future career?
• Is it ethical to buy products tested on animals?
• Why is volunteering important?
• Should drugs be banned?
• Your favourite restaurant everyone should visit.
• Things to do to help our world survive.
• How can we make the world a better place?
• Is it possible to avoid stress?
• Should zoos be forbidden?
• How online shopping makes me spend more money?
• Why I don’t smoke.
• Things I want to be doing when I become 85.
• Why do I recommend students to study abroad?

Personal cause and effect essay topics

• Why I don’t watch TV.
• Reasons I go in for sports.
• Effects of social media on the daily routine.
• How my failures make me stronger?
• Books that changed my world view.
• Reasons why I study computer science.
• Influence of my parents on my life choices.
• Importance of learning math for my future career.
• Effect of being a single child.
• How my pets make me a better person?
• Influence of regular exercise on my health and wellbeing.
• What makes me rebel against my parents?
• How did my parents help me to study?
• Why going to college made me an independent person?
• What caused my burn out?

Feel free to use our good personal essay topics for creating amazing pieces that will make a powerful impression on your readers and get you high grades.

Can’t grab your thoughts together and come up with a perfect personal essay? No worries! Our writers will do all the writing, while you enjoy your free time. Psst, it takes a few clicks only…

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How to Write a Personal Essay: Topics, Structure, & Examples

Even though a personal essay seems like something you might need to write only for your college application, people who graduated a while ago are asked to write it. Therefore, if you are a student, you might even want to save this article for later!

A personal essay is a first-person narrative that describes a writer’s life experience and its influence . You may think that writing such an essay is easy-peasy. There is so much freedom regarding the topic, isn’t it? However, soon enough, you realize that it’s more of a curse than a blessing. Custom-writing.org experts understand it’s super confusing as you don’t know where to start. But this simple yet comprehensive guide on how to write a personal essay is here to help you out!

❔ What Is a Personal Essay?

🚦 how do you start a personal essay.

• 🙋 Essay Topics
• 📑 Personal Essay Types

🔗 References

A personal essay is just what you think it is: a piece of writing that presents some experience from your perspective . It doesn’t need to be extraordinary, but it has to show how you changed thanks to the experience you got. Such an essay also creates a feeling of intimacy.

Long story short, it is a first-person narrative that describes a writer’s life experience and its influence. This type of essay allows you to use any writing style you want and usually has an informal tone. It helps the reader to gain a connection with you.

There is a wide variety of topic options: you may want your writing to be inspiring or, on the contrary, warning so that others could avoid your mistakes. However, the most important thing is sticking to the general guidelines.

The most popular personal essay outline would consist of three parts:

• Start with an introduction . It should include only one paragraph
• Continue with the main body . It should be at least three paragraphs long
• Write a conclusion . Don’t make it too long, one paragraph is enough

Let’s also note that typically you would write a personal essay as a part of the college application process. However, it’s not rare that this type of writing can help employers understand if the candidate meets the job requirements.

👀 Personal Essay Examples

To give you some inspiration, we included a list of excellent examples ranked as the most successful personal essays by The New York Times , The New Yorker , and America’s top universities.

The first and the most important thing you need to do when you are about to write a personal essay is to determine its purpose . When you know your audience, it becomes easier to find an appropriate topic for your writing. After that, you can draft an outline, which is the foundation of your future essay!

🙋 Personal Essay Topics

By now, you might have understood the idea of the personal statement. Your goal is to show off your personality from the good side. However, there is an endless amount of options on how to do it. The most popular way is to tell the story from the past. It can be either something you achieved or an obstacle you managed to overcome. Either way, it needs to highlight the lesson you learned.

Next, you can make your writing even more inspirational by revealing your future goals, showing that you have potential and determination. But remember to focus on things that the whole community can benefit from because just getting rich is a lame objective!

Last but not least, be yourself and use creativity! Show your potential employers and college administration how much you can contribute to their development. You should convince them that it can be a mutually beneficial experience.

Here, we prepared some of the best personal essay topics for you:

• How did the most significant loss of your life make you stronger?
• Who would you like to switch live with, and why?
• The time when you think you made the wrong choice.
• How would you spend a million dollars?
• Is there anything you have never shared with anyone?
• A special friend that influenced your life.
• One morning that has changed your life forever.
• The time when you had to deliver devastating news.
• A near-death experience and how it felt.
• Describe the longest minute of your life.
• Something you can’t resist and keep doing.
• A meaningful event that is hard to explain.
• Would you start a charity foundation if you could?
• The most precious gift you ever received.
• The wrong choice you never regret making.
• A secret place that gives you peace of mind.
• Something you’ve seen and wish you could forget.
• A hidden talent no one knows you have.
• A day when you felt like the unluckiest person in the world.
• The most beautiful thing you’ve seen.
• A skill you have that robots will never learn to do.
• What is the one thing you want to change about yourself?
• Where would you like to live?
• The most important discovery you made.
• What if you were a teacher?
• The most fantastic movie scene that changed the world.
• What would you like to change in schools?
• Describe something you love about yourself and why.
• Where do you see yourself in ten years?
• Time with your family that you cherish the most.
• The achievement you’re proud of.
• Describe the time when you learned something from a child.
• The words that made you hopeful again.
• Write about the time when you were at the bottom.
• A stranger that had an influence on you.
• What would you do if you could go back in time?
• Would you like to redo something in your life, would you?
• The superpower you wish you had.
• The person you would be grateful to at the end of your life.
• The time when you avoided danger.
• Family celebrations, and what do they mean to you?
• Write about the time when you saw your mother crying.
• Did you disappoint anyone?
• Is there anyone you are not fond of?
• A place that you try to keep away from.
• How did you overcome your fear?
• The most challenging choice you had to make.
• The time you felt like an outsider.
• When did you realize you’re not a child anymore?
• Why does your hobby interest you?

📑 Personal Essay about Yourself: Main Types

Personal essays on hobbies.

Writing an essay on a hobby is not as easy as it seems. Take a look at any hobbies essay sample, and you will be likely to see a widespread thing: these essays can be boring, which is an easy way to get a low grade.

Below are some common problems with hobby essays (and their solutions).

No matter what, make sure the focus is on you. When you are writing about a personal hobby, you should aim to make yourself the star by essentially telling your reader about yourself through an interest of yours.

Life-changing Experience Essays

The purpose of a life-changing experience essay is obvious: simply put, you need to tell the reader about a specific event that changed your life . Note that it also works for a closely related type of essay, the personal narrative essay .

Three essential elements should be clear to readers of any life-changing experience writing:

• The reader should understand the event — both what happened and how it made you feel at the time.
• The reader should understand what the event changed about you. It is best to tell the reader about your condition before the event and after it. However, this depends on the essay’s length.
• The reader should understand how you feel about the event now.

If you need personal experience essay ideas, focus on events that you can write about to meet the three above criteria. If your assignment is very free form, take a look at a list of prompts for personal writing.

Education Essays

As a student, you will be asked to write an education essay eventually. It is important to remember that personal writing is about setting yourself apart. Tell the reader what made your educational experience unique.

How can you make your educational essay stand out? First, go beyond generic stories of overcoming an academic weakness by avoiding essays that take the following form: “I was terrible at subject X, but through hard work, I became quite excellent at subject X!”

Instead, focus on an assignment or subject that captured your attention — the more unusual the situation, the better. Use storytelling to enhance your essay. The best education essays can be essays about life-changing education experiences; for example, many great educational stories focus on the teacher or class that changed the author’s life.

Biographies

Writing a short biography is easy. All you need to do is to use a very basic biography template. But first: remember that you need to keep the attention of your reader. Tell a good story about yourself ! Learning how to write a biography is about learning how to tell a good story .

A Biography Template

A solid biography is a solid story. For this reason, the biography template is essentially the template of a well-crafted story, which is typically divided into three specific parts:

• Establish the characters. In this case, these are people that play important roles in your life. For example, if your autobiographical essay includes family members, you need to describe them briefly before anything exciting happens.
• Build tension. If you write about your family, you can describe a problem that exists there.
• Describe a resolution. Not that it is not the same thing as a problem being solved. For example, when a loved one dies, there is no solution to that problem. Instead, you grieve and learn to live without that person in your life.

If your biography manages to achieve all three of these elements, you will indeed have one of the class’s strongest essays.

Personal Statements

The last type of personal writing is probably the most important. When faced with their first college application, most students go to the web to find a personal statement format.

If you learn from examples, the best thing to do is check out several strong personal statement examples. As mentioned in the second section, many universities post essays from accepted students. Or perhaps you should read a breakdown of portions of a personal statement. The point is, read what others have done for inspiration.

Sometimes colleges offer personal statement templates. However, they often use freeform personal statements to identify focused, articulate students. Thus, the top tip for these is to write a clear thesis statement . A thesis statement for an essay without a prompt should be so clear that it sounds like it addresses a writing prompt. When there is no prompt, this is the time you should specifically use the standard 5-paragraph essay . Your discipline will impress your readers, which is exactly what you want.

However, an open-ended essay prompt is sometimes just too much to handle in time, but that is alright. It happens to everyone, and our writing experts can help, luckily. You can work with one of their expert writers or editors to create the perfect personal essay.

• Personal Essays – Georgia Tech Admissions
• The Personal Statement // Purdue Writing Lab
• Application Essays – UNC Writing Center
• How To: Write Your Personal Essay
• Essays | Penn Admissions
• Writing the Personal Statement | Berkeley Graduate Division
• Personal Insight Questions – UCLA Undergraduate Admission
• Essay Topics | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions
• Complete Your Application: Indiana University Bloomington
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My Speech Class

Public Speaking Tips & Speech Topics

242 Personal Persuasive Essay Topics and Ideas

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

Personal essays are some of the most diverse assignments you can receive. Whether you’re a student in middle school or university, the best personal essay will highlight an individual’s personal views and unique experience. They’re not confined by the restrictions of literary essays and give plenty of opportunity for introducing the writer’s personality. The key here is selecting the right topics to talk about in a personal essay. Usually, this is the toughest part. After all, it’s the emotional core of your text. A lot of people also struggle to write about themselves and their experience as subjects of the text. Where does one start? Essay topics in general are frustrating to formulate so if you need help with some inspiration, take a look at some more ideas here ! And if you’re wondering what some good personal essay topics are, you’ll find a lot of sample ideas here as well as a guide on how to write a persuasive text.

In this article:

How to Write Personal Essays

Personal narrative essay topics, personal experience essay topics, personal argumentative essay topics, personal cause-and-effect essay topics, personal persuasive essay topics, personal essay topics for middle school, personal essay topics for high school students and college students.

Start by taking a trip down memory lane. The most gripping stories come from personal experience, especially if you’re thinking of writing a personal narrative essay. Think about a memory from your past that includes some inciting incident. If this is the first time you come across this phrase, inciting incidents are typically the metaphorical “ hooks ” of the story that have the audience interested in your text.

You could talk about your experience working as a volunteer, for example, or if you aren’t the volunteering type, you can write about some exciting memories from your childhood and summer vacations. Have you taken a trip abroad that has really left an impression on you? Are you drawn to different cultures because of that exotic trip? Maybe you went to visit a museum of your favourite artist, and this has inspired you to become an artist yourself. Perhaps you were immersed by the sound of a different language and decided to have a go at it. What have you enjoyed the most in the process? What did you hate about it? Perhaps you tried acquiring a new skill, but it went completely the wrong way for you. The list goes on and on.

There’s something there. Just remember the golden rule: always be honest in your personal essays . Trying to change your viewpoint on a subject so that it fits the masses’ opinion won’t make your personal essay enticing. The topic you’ll talk about in your personal essay is extremely important and so is the first sentence. Writing phrases such as “ever since I was a baby, I wanted to become a doctor” isn’t convincing or truthful. Try not to stick to clichés. You want to make an impression with your text, so ask yourself: What would grab your attention if you were reading your persuasive essay? I always think of Charles Dickens’ first sentence from A Christmas Carol : “Marley was dead: to begin with.” It begs for explanation and resolve, and it’s short and simple. The same should go for the personal essay entry sentence.

Why Choose Personal Persuasive Topics for Your Essay

If you’re wondering why you should choose personal persuasive topics for your essay, the answer lies in the question. We are a narrative-oriented society, and much of our relatability comes from convincingly expressing to others our individual, personal experience. What better way to let your personality shine than through conveying your emotions and adventures in a gripping story?

Personal experience essay topics vary depending on your age, and it’s quite likely that a story that worked for a high school assignment won’t have the same effect in your university days. That’s why in the sections below, we have divided the best personal essay topics into different categories. That way, you can easily navigate across all topics (and there’s quite a lot of them – a total of 242 ), but don’t let that restrict you. If you’re confident, you can always choose a topic from any of the categories.

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Of course, there are other important takeaways from writing a great personal essay. Usually, your teacher or admissions officer will look out that you have successfully done the following:

• Communicated and implemented your critical thinking skills
• Spoken convincingly and from experience about challenging themes that make you stand out from the crowd
• Demonstrated your creativity and unique voice all the while applying persuasive techniques in your writing

With all this in mind, you can now start by selecting the right type of personal essay topic from our categories. We have included everything from personal essay topics for middle school to personal essay topics for high school, as well as narrative essay topics and many more. Go on, what are you waiting for?

Personal narrative essays are a great way to tell your unique take on a personal story. You just have to choose a project you feel passionate about. Typically, choosing a story involving your success and personality growth is your best bet, but of course, always make sure to check that your topic is suitable for the task given by your tutors. If you’re wondering what topics are suitable for a great personal narrative essay, check out the following ideas:

• Starting your first job
• Volunteering for the first time
• A memorable teacher that made an impact on you
• A dangerous experience
• Your first journey abroad/to the countryside
• An experience that changed your behavior
• An experience that made you gain/lose religious faith
• A comedic situation based on some misunderstanding
• Events from your summer vacation that changed your life
• The first time you got a pet
• The experience of meeting your little sibling for the first time 
• A time when you decided what your future job will be 
• The change of a relationship with some you didn’t expect you’d like
• The first time you experienced a dangerous event of some kind 
• The first time you won something
• Your experience participating in a sport/political/environmental design
• A story about a teacher who inspired you
• A story about a family member who is dear to you
• Your experience of being in charge of something for the first time
• Your experience traveling on your own for the first time 
• How a book you read changed your life 
• How the most exciting subject in school changed your life
• How technology changed the way you access information
• The first time you experienced an earthquake or tornado
• A story about someone who has become your patron/idol 
• Your reaction/opinion on an event that influenced your country 
• A moment you caught someone in a lie
• An episode that changed your relationship with your parents
• An event which showed you taking responsibility and leadership 
• An event in which you face discrimination 
• An experience of successfully fighting procrastination 
• A time when you helped people in a crisis
• The experience of creating secret places in your childhood
• An experience playing your favorite game
• A time you got lost 
• Your first time going on a trip by yourself 
• The influence of technology on your younger siblings vs you
• What you would do if you won the lottery for the first time 
• Your best childhood memory
• Your experience of discovering a disability for the first time 
• A secret talent you have 
• Your experience learning a musical instrument
• Your experience with an inexplicable event that happened to you
• A story about the greatest fear you have 
• How your favorite work of art inspires you
• The best advice you have heard in your life 
• A place you would go to if you could travel in time 
• A story about the most beautiful place you have visited
• Something you witnessed in your lifetime that you will never forget
• Your favorite holiday experience 
• Your most awkward moment in college
• Your biggest fear
•  The most crucial lesson in your life 
• Your experience of being betrayed by someone and your response to it 
• An advice your parents gave you that wasn’t useful
• Describe your biggest moment of failure 
• Your biggest argument with a family member
• A difficult decision you have made 
• The day you realized you had made a best friend
• The most interesting dream you have had 

Personal experience essays aren’t that much different from personal narrative essays. They still have an element of narrative storytelling within them, but this time, they focus more on a level of experience you have gained because of a certain event. Usually, personal experience essay topics are focused around the theme of personal development. Many things can be described and included in a personal narrative essay, and you not only are given the opportunity to demonstrate your personal views on a subject, but you can also have your level of determination and ambition evaluated by a professional teacher or college admissions officer. Usually, personal narrative essay papers are written when submitting a college application, but it’s also possible to receive such an essay in school. In my personal experience, some of the greatest essays presenting an intellectual challenge are in fact the personal experience essays.

Let’s get straight into some essay prompts:

• How do you handle stress when attending an important exam?
• Which school subject motivated you to study hard?
• Did a teacher have a significant influence on your confidence in selecting a career?
• Is homework a waste of time?
• How would you go about doing research for an essay?
• What motivates you to study and pursue your dreams?
• Everyone has a plan “A” when it comes to choosing a career. What is your plan “B”?
• How has your biggest failure shaped your personality today?
• What is your biggest accomplishment outside of college/school, and how did you come to achieve it?
• What is the difference between female and male roles in your family? In what way would you change them?
• How did a book/film change your worldview?
• What role have teams and clubs had in your life?
• What role has television had in your life? 
• What is your relationship with social media?
• How have moments of racial or religious discrimination affected you?

Personal argumentative essay topics are generally given to college students or sometimes to people applying for a degree in Humanitarian Sciences. Such essays are a great way for admission officers to evaluate your knowledge of current events and relevant social discussions. Personal argumentative essay topics are usually considered more difficult than narrative essays, for example. For more argumentative ideas and speech topics , check the guide! Thus, if you’re planning on taking up this challenge, make sure you have enough time to prepare. If you have a whole term to prepare for this personal argumentative essay topic, you’ll surely be able to tackle it. Also, if that sounds too engaging, don’t worry, there are plenty of other, easier essay ideas on our lists!

Check out our example personal argumentative essay prompts for argumentative essay topics:

• Should prisons be abolished? If so, what is the negative and positive impact of this global decision?
• How does higher education affect the merit in meritocracy?
• Should artificial intelligence be applied actively in warfare?
• Does revolution go hand in hand with violence?
• Has the COVID-19 pandemic made us more prepared for the prevention of future epidemics occurring worldwide?
• In what way has the instant gratification of social media changed our relationship to technology?
• How has the digital age changed children’s relationship to empathy?
• What would the impact of a potential legalization of productivity drugs look like in current society?
• Is there a difference in work performance between Ivy League alumni and lower-ranking university students?
• Is obesity preventable?
• Is gun control a necessary method for the prevention of shootings?
• Should everyone have the right to vote?
• Should the right to vote be exclusively available to people with some form of education?
• Does the #metoo movement yield meaningful social change?
• Is knife control a necessary and sufficient method of knife crime prevention?
• How can the value of digital collectible art be accurately determined?
• Is fan fiction writing real writing?
• Do all students need to learn a foreign language?
• Should students take a gap year between high school and university?
• Why should universities teach financial literacy?
• Should students participate in the maintenance of school property?

Personal cause-and-effect essay topics are pretty self-explanatory. You’re aiming to express your opinion on a subject that has a cause, for example, supposedly, school uniforms are meant to cause discipline among students. Exercising and backing up your opinion on this essay idea will make it personal. Here is a detailed guide on how to write a great cause and effect essay . Think of a topic that excites you. It could be something you’re unhappy with or something you think is unjust.

Here are personal cause-and-effect essay topics we came up with:

• How can video games boost people’s IQ?
• Can a personal relationship in a family improve with phone use?
• Can going to college make for happier marriages?
• How can the involvement of a parent change a child’s education?
• How have smartphones impacted general communication?
• What is the effect of cookies, and does it make people shop more?
• What is the effect of tablets on young children?
• What is the effect of mobile usage during class?
• Why can’t another popular engine be established in place of Google?
• What is the effect of the financial success Disney has had in the last 30 years?
• Should dating in school be banned?
• Can living together before marriage make a relationship between partners stronger?
• Can a couple sleeping in separate beds have a healthy relationship?
• What is the effect of bullying on mental health?
• What is the cause of bullying behavior?
• Why shouldn’t women have to work after an abortion or miscarriage?
• What is the impact of smoking on a pregnant mother ?
• How can the presence of acne affect the life of a teenager? What about an adult?
• Why do some people avoid vaccines?
• What causes a lack of interest in sports?
• How can teenagers better protect themselves against cyberbullies?
• What causes certain social media apps to lose popularity?
• Can continuous sporting activities cause character development?
• Is “cancel culture” sparking meaningful change?
• What is the root cause of racism?
• Why is it essential to manage forest fires?
• What are the harmful effects of antill hunting on the ecosystem? 
• Why is it important for everyone to conserve water?
• What is the environmental impact of a single-use plastic ban?
• Can a long-distance relationship work?
• What are the causes and effects of cheating during exams?
• Is it a necessity to have an obligatory Sex Ed class ?
• How has the Internet changed the public’s sexual education?
• Should there be student bars on campus?
• Should work become mandatory for anyone over the age of 18?
• What causes some sports to be more popular among students than others?
• What are the effects of using computers and tablets in school? What about university?
• Have libraries become more popular over the last few years? 
• What caused the General Data Protection Regulation, and why is it necessary?
• What are the effects of online dating apps such as Tinder or Grindr?
• What are the effects of drugs and alcohol on people?
• Should people be allowed to drive after drinking a single unit of alcohol?
• What are the effects of a family structure on an individual?
• Does having a sibling make a person more responsible?
• Are siblings better at sharing?
• How has the golden child syndrome affected millennials?
• How can teachers positively and negatively affect student lives?
• What are the root causes of commitment phobia in men and women?
• What is the effect of social media on romantic relationships?
• How does eating fast food affect the energy levels of an individual?

Unlike personal cause-and-effect essay topics, personal persuasive essay topics aim to convince the reader that your opinion is right. This type of academic writing assignment explains a particular problem and uses research combined with personal experience in order to end up with a powerful persuasive conclusion. Through logic and convincing evidence, as well as always keeping in mind the goal of persuasion, you can write a powerful assignment.

Here are some personal persuasive essay ideas to choose from for your next writing assignment:

• Is chess considered a sport or a game?
• How is modern music not as well-composed as music from the past, such as the 1970s?
• Is it important to put PG labels on music tracks or films?
• Elaborate on the importance of the right education when playing professional music.
• Is animal hunting an immoral hobby?
• Is it a good idea to keep pets indoors?
• The cruelty behind testing beauty products on animals
• Is it ethical to breed animals for sale?
• Schools have to reduce the amount of homework assigned to students.
• SATs and ACTs are not effective ways of examining the knowledge of students.
• There should be an Emotional Intelligence mandatory class for all years.
• Vaccines can lead to autism.
• Astrology isn’t an effective way of predicting future events.
• All transport vehicles should be automatic or electric.
• Can distant online learning replace traditional classes?
• Working from home is better for finance but worse for mental health.
• The current taxation system is unfair.
• Listening to music when writing homework is an effective way of sparking productivity
• Hustle culture has taxing effects on mental health.
• People volunteer for their personal benefit, instead of kindness
• People who have survived a near-death experience have a newfound appreciation for life.
• Is “fake it until you make it” a healthy way of progressing?
• Why do people lie on their resumes?
• Why book reading during summer vacations should become mandatory.
• Weekends should change from 2 days to 3 days.
• Why we should be making selective school sports mandatory in school.
• Cooking and body health classes should be mandatory subjects in school.
• Can e-books and Kindles replace physical books?
• Should the death penalty exist?
• Why should children have chores?
• Why should it be made mandatory for children to contribute to the overall maintenance, cleanliness, and gardening of schools?

When choosing a personal essay topic, it’s important to take on subjects and ideas related to your age. Some topics require a lot more research, while others can be a little too sensitive for a younger writer. Selecting the right one for you will leave you with less workload and can guarantee you a better grade. Of course, if you feel confident and knowledgeable enough, you can try your skills with a more difficult essay idea. Paper writing can be a difficult intellectual challenge, but we’re sure that with these essay ideas, you’ll be able to tell your personal story and write a great essay:

• How did you make a best friend?
• A special top-secret place you have.
• A story of a time a friend let you down.
• A time when you disappointed someone.
• What is your happiest memory?
• Your first time receiving a pet.
• Your bravest moment.
• A time you felt embarrassed.
• What would you do if you were omnipotent? 
• What would you do if you could switch lives with someone? Who would it be?
• How did a book change your life?
• What would you do if your pet could talk?
• If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
• If you could shapeshift into an animal, what would you be? What would you do?
• If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Would you change anything?
• What’s your secret talent?
• The first time you fell in love.
• An accident that changed your life.
• Talk about the ugliest thing you have seen.
• Talk about the most influential family member.
• Talk about your favorite gift.
• Talk about something you can’t resist.
• Talk about a guest you had in your house that you’ll never forget.
• Talk about the hardest news you’ve had to deliver.
• Talk about a special gift you have received.
• Talk about something that if your mum knew, you’d be in a lot of trouble. A lot.
• If you could volunteer anywhere, where would it be?
• If you won a million dollars, how would you spend them?
• What is an unexplained event that stuck with you?
• The one thing you can’t resist.
• If you could be a superhero, what power would you have? Why?
• If you could teleport anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?

This list of personal essay topics for high school students will definitely inspire you to practice your personal essay skills. Covering topics like communication, ethical consumption, personal experience and more, you’ll be able to gain new ideas and express your deepest thoughts within the confines of the page. These personal essay topics for high school students are also a great way of reflecting on your growth and personal opinion, while expressing your thoughts and opinions.

• What inspires you?
• What inanimate object best embodies you?
• What’s one thing your parents don’t understand about you?
• What is the one quality a good person must have?
• Describe the best decision you ever made
• What is one thing you would change that you know will make a great difference in your life?
• How do you respond to criticism? Talk about a time you were critiqued.
• Do you feel the impact of peer pressure in your life? How is it manifested?
• Are you religious, an atheist, or agnostic? Why and why not?
• Do you feel comfortable in your body? Do you feel pressure from the media about how you “should” look?
• What are your views on ethical consumption? Does it matter to you?
• What are your views on veganism? 
• Do you feel like your friends are honest with each other? Why and why not?
• When you look back on your time in high school, what part will you remember with fondness?
• If you could tell your 12-year-old self something, what would it be and why?
• Do you have a dream profession? What is it?
• If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
• Do you believe in “soulmates”? Why and why not?
• What is your dream goal? Do you feel like you’ll ever achieve it?
• Do you believe in the concept of “best friends”? Why and why not?
• Do you believe in astrology? Why and why not?
• What do you think the world will look like in 100 years?
• If you could bring to life any famous historical figure and spend the day with them, who would you pick, and what would you do?
• If you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler? 
• What TV series you saw recently made an impression on you? Why?
• What part of high school do you wish you could get rid of?
• If you could start your own business, what would you do?
• What issues truly motivate you and why?
• If you were an admissions officer, what positive qualities would you look for in students?
• What period of school do you think is most important? 
• What is your dream profession? What are it’s positives and negatives?
• Do you think the world can function without money? What would that alternative universe look like?
• Do you think all students should go to college? Why?

Writing essays is a great way to showcase your writing skills, as well as clearly communicate your views and ideas. Personal essay writing improves your debating, logical, and deductive skills, so it’s important that you select a topic you’re passionate about and inspired by. This will give you enough fuel to power through the most difficult essay topics while at the same time enjoy what you’re writing about. We hope you enjoyed our personal persuasive essay topics! Make sure to bookmark and come back to this personal essay ideas list in the future when you’re given an assignment! Here are some more college essay topics , check them out!

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Narrative Essay Topics: TOP 200 Choices for Students

Imagine yourself facing a blank page, ready to fill it with your memories and imagination. What story will you tell today?

As students, you often have to write narratives that capture people's attention. But with so many stories to choose from, where do you start? How do you find the perfect topic that will grab our readers' interest and make them think?

Join our essay service experts as we explore 200 topics for college where stories are waiting to be told, and experiences are ready to be shared. From everyday events to unforgettable moments, each topic is a chance to connect with your readers and make them feel something.

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Ideas for Narrative Essay Topics

After exploring how students write narrative paragraphs, we've put together a list of narrative essay topics designed specifically for college and school students. This list covers a wide range of subjects, so pick one that speaks to you!

Literacy Narrative Essay Topics for College Students

How about delving into captivating literacy narrative essay topics designed specifically for college-level writing? Exciting, isn't it?

• How did a childhood book shape your view of the world?
• What challenges did you face when learning to read in a second language?
• How has storytelling within your family influenced your literacy journey?
• Can you recall a pivotal moment that ignited your love for reading?
• How did a specific teacher inspire your passion for literature?
• Have you ever encountered a character in a book who profoundly impacted your perspective on life?
• What role did writing play in helping you navigate a difficult period in your life?
• How has your relationship with technology affected your reading habits?
• What cultural or historical event sparked your interest in a particular genre of literature?
• How has poetry shaped your understanding of language and emotion?
• Have you ever experienced a breakthrough moment in your writing process?
• How has reading aloud impacted your comprehension and enjoyment of literature?
• Can you recall a time when a book challenged your beliefs or worldview?
• How has participating in a book club enriched your reading experience?
• What strategies have you developed to overcome reading difficulties or distractions?

Personal Narrative Essay Topics on Relationships

Take a moment to reflect on your past experiences and craft compelling personal narratives with these essay ideas.

• How did a specific friendship shape who you are today?
• Can you recount a moment that strengthened your bond with a family member?
• What challenges have you faced in maintaining a long-distance relationship?
• How has a mentor influenced your personal and professional development?
• Have you experienced a betrayal in a relationship? How did it impact you?
• Can you describe a memorable conflict resolution process within a relationship?
• How has your relationship with a pet affected your emotional well-being?
• What lessons have you learned from navigating a romantic relationship?
• How has your relationship with a sibling evolved over time?
• Can you recall a time when you had to set boundaries in a friendship?
• How has volunteering or community involvement enriched your relationships?
• What cultural differences have influenced your relationships with others?
• Can you share a moment when you felt truly understood by someone?
• How has technology affected the dynamics of your relationships?
• Have you ever experienced a reconciliation that transformed a strained relationship?

Best Narrative Essay Topics on Education and Learning

Consider the beauty of sharing your personal experiences and emotions in a captivating manner through these ideas for personal narrative essays.

• What was the most valuable lesson you learned outside of the classroom?
• Can you recount a moment when a teacher's unconventional method transformed your understanding of a subject?
• How has a field trip or experiential learning opportunity impacted your education?
• What challenges have you faced in balancing extracurricular activities with academics?
• Have you ever had a "Eureka!" moment while studying? Describe it.
• How has learning a new skill outside of school influenced your academic performance?
• Can you recall a time when a peer's perspective challenged your own understanding of a topic?
• How has technology enhanced or hindered your learning experience?
• What role does creativity play in your approach to learning?
• Have you ever experienced a setback that ultimately propelled you forward academically?
• How has your cultural background influenced your learning style?
• Can you describe a time when you had to advocate for yourself within an educational setting?
• How has mentorship shaped your educational journey?
• What strategies have you employed to overcome academic challenges or obstacles?
• Can you reflect on a time when failure taught you a valuable lesson about learning?

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Personal Narrative Essay Ideas on Reflection on Life

Why not ignite your creativity with a range of narrative essay topics, from extraordinary moments to everyday experiences?

• How has a moment of failure ultimately led to personal growth and resilience?
• Can you recount a pivotal decision that significantly altered the course of your life?
• What lessons have you learned from navigating a crossroads or major life transition?
• How has your perspective on success evolved over time?
• Can you reflect on a time when you had to confront and overcome a deeply held fear?
• What role has gratitude played in shaping your outlook on life?
• How have your values and beliefs been influenced by significant life experiences?
• Can you describe a moment when you found clarity and purpose amidst chaos or uncertainty?
• What impact has traveling to a new place had on your understanding of the world and yourself?
• How has adversity strengthened your character and determination?
• Can you recall a time when a random act of kindness profoundly impacted your life?
• What lessons have you learned from embracing vulnerability and authenticity in relationships?
• How has practicing mindfulness or self-reflection enhanced your well-being and happiness?
• Can you reflect on a period of personal transformation or self-discovery?
• How have you found meaning and fulfillment in pursuing your passions and interests?

Ideas for a Narrative Essay on Culture and Society

Engaging your readers with narrative essays on culture and society is a great way to spark interest, offering captivating ideas for exploration.

• How has your family's unique culinary heritage influenced your cultural identity?
• Can you reflect on a specific cultural artifact or heirloom that holds deep significance for your family?
• What challenges have you faced in preserving traditional customs while adapting to modern societal expectations?
• How has a local festival or celebration revealed the intricacies of your community's cultural tapestry?
• Can you recount a moment when you navigated a cultural clash between your upbringing and the dominant culture?
• How has your experience as a first-generation immigrant shaped your understanding of cultural assimilation?
• What lessons have you learned from participating in intercultural exchange programs or initiatives?
• Can you describe a unique cultural practice or tradition within your community that outsiders might find intriguing or misunderstood?
• How has the revitalization of indigenous languages contributed to the preservation of cultural heritage in your region?
• Can you reflect on a personal journey of reconnecting with your cultural roots after a period of assimilation or disconnection?
• What role does storytelling play in passing down cultural wisdom and values within your family or community?
• How has the portrayal of your culture in mainstream media affected your sense of belonging and self-perception?
• Can you recount a moment when you challenged cultural stereotypes through creative expression or advocacy?
• How has the migration of a specific cultural group enriched the social fabric and economic landscape of your community?
• What initiatives or grassroots movements are currently underway to promote cross-cultural understanding and cooperation in your society?

Since you're working on essays, we think it's suitable to suggest you learn more about the case study format , which is another common college assignment.

Narrative Writing Topics on Hobbies and Interests

Wow your readers by turning your passions and hobbies into compelling narrative essay topics that will get them thinking.

• How has your passion for urban gardening transformed neglected spaces in your community?
• Can you recount a thrilling adventure from your hobby of urban exploration?
• What lessons have you learned from restoring vintage motorcycles in your spare time?
• How has your fascination with birdwatching deepened your connection to nature and conservation efforts?
• Can you describe a memorable moment from your hobby of foraging wild edibles in the wilderness?
• What unique skills have you developed through your hobby of beekeeping, and how have they impacted your daily life?
• How has your interest in historical reenactment brought the past to life in unexpected ways?
• Can you reflect on a transformative experience from your hobby of landscape photography?
• What insights have you gained from practicing the art of bonsai cultivation and nurturing miniature ecosystems?
• How has your passion for stargazing inspired awe and wonder in the vastness of the universe?
• Can you recount a challenging project from your hobby of woodworking and the satisfaction it brought upon completion?
• What cultural connections have you discovered through your hobby of traditional folk dancing?
• How has your interest in sustainable fashion influenced your consumer habits and environmental awareness?
• Can you describe a moment of serenity and mindfulness experienced while practicing the art of tea ceremony?
• How has your hobby of letterpress printing preserved the tactile beauty of handmade craftsmanship in a digital age?

Narrative Essay Titles on Life-Changing Moments

Life is full of unexpected twists that can lead to life-changing moments. Take a look at these narrative essay titles for stories that have had a lasting impact on your life.

• How did surviving a natural disaster reshape your perspective on life?
• Can you recall a single conversation that drastically altered the course of your life?
• What was the pivotal moment that inspired you to pursue your dreams against all odds?
• How did a chance encounter lead to a life-changing friendship or partnership?
• Can you reflect on the decision that transformed your career trajectory?
• What profound lesson did you learn from facing a life-threatening illness or injury?
• How did traveling to a new country open your eyes to new possibilities and opportunities?
• Can you recount the moment when you discovered your true passion or calling in life?
• What was the turning point that allowed you to break free from a toxic relationship or environment?
• How did experiencing failure or rejection ultimately lead to personal growth and resilience?
• Can you describe the moment when you found the strength to overcome a deep-seated fear or insecurity?
• What life-changing realization did you have while experiencing a period of solitude or introspection?
• How did a profound act of kindness from a stranger restore your faith in humanity?
• Can you reflect on the moment when you forgave someone who had deeply hurt you, and how it changed your perspective on forgiveness?
• What pivotal decision did you make that allowed you to reclaim control over your own happiness and destiny?

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Good Narrative Topics on Travel and Adventure

Consider creating intriguing titles for your narrative essay ideas by exploring thrilling travel adventures.

• Can you recount a memorable encounter with wildlife during your solo hiking adventure?
• How did a spontaneous decision to explore an unfamiliar city lead to unexpected discoveries?
• What lessons did you learn from navigating a foreign country with only a map and your instincts?
• Can you describe the exhilaration of conquering a challenging mountain peak for the first time?
• How did immersing yourself in a local culture during your travels broaden your perspective on the world?
• What unexpected obstacles did you encounter while embarking on a backpacking journey through rugged terrain?
• Can you reflect on the transformative experience of volunteering abroad in a community-driven project?
• How did getting lost in a labyrinthine city alleyway lead to serendipitous encounters and newfound friendships?
• What was the most memorable meal you had while sampling street food in a bustling market abroad?
• Can you recount the adrenaline rush of participating in an extreme sports activity in a foreign land?
• How did witnessing a breathtaking natural phenomenon during your travels leave a lasting impression on you?
• What cultural traditions or rituals did you participate in during a homestay experience with a local family?
• Can you describe the sense of wonder and awe you felt while exploring ancient ruins or historical sites?
• How did navigating a language barrier challenge and ultimately enrich your travel experience?
• What valuable life lessons did you learn from the mishaps and misadventures encountered during your journey off the beaten path?

Narrative Essay Topic Ideas on Career and Work Experience

College students can uncover captivating narrative essay ideas by exploring potential career paths or reminiscing about past job experiences.

• How did a challenging project at work showcase your problem-solving skills and resilience?
• Can you reflect on a pivotal mentorship experience that guided your career trajectory?
• What valuable lessons did you learn from a career setback or failure, and how did it shape your future success?
• How did a workplace conflict lead to personal growth and improved communication skills?
• Can you recount a moment when taking a professional risk paid off in unexpected ways?
• What insights did you gain from transitioning to a new industry or career path?
• How did participating in a cross-functional team project enhance your collaboration and leadership abilities?
• Can you describe the satisfaction of achieving a long-term career goal after years of hard work and perseverance?
• What impact did a meaningful recognition or award have on your motivation and sense of accomplishment?
• How did volunteering or pro bono work contribute to your professional development and sense of purpose?
• Can you reflect on the decision to leave a stable job in pursuit of passion or fulfillment?
• What strategies did you employ to navigate a toxic work environment and maintain your well-being?
• How did a career setback lead to unexpected opportunities for personal and professional growth?
• Can you describe a moment when mentorship or sponsorship played a crucial role in advancing your career?
• What lessons did you learn from a challenging client or customer interaction, and how did it shape your approach to customer service and relationship-building?

Interesting Narrative Essay Topics about Challenges and Obstacles

If you're not sure what to write about for your narrative essay, think back to the tough times you've had and how you managed to get through them.

• How did you conquer a once-paralyzing fear to chase your dreams?
• What new strengths did you discover while adapting to a physical challenge?
• Can you recall a creative solution you used during a tough financial period?
• When did you bravely stand against injustice, despite opposition?
• How did overcoming a language barrier broaden your horizons?
• What key lessons did you learn from a major setback in your life?
• How did you manage overwhelming stress and responsibilities?
• What inner reserves of resilience did you draw upon after personal loss?
• Describe a time when you defied societal norms to pursue your goals.
• Reflect on a moment when failure fueled your determination for success.
• When did you find the courage to leave your comfort zone behind?
• How did community support bolster you through a challenging time?
• Share a time when self-doubt led to newfound confidence.
• Can you recount a tragedy that spurred your personal growth?
• What insights did overcoming a monumental obstacle reveal about life?

Best Narrative Essay Topics: How to Choose the One That Resonates 

A narrative essay is a type of writing that tells a personal story, including characters, plot, setting, and the order of events. Its main goal is to connect with readers emotionally and share a specific message or insight through the retelling of a meaningful experience.

Students write narrative essays as part of their studies for several reasons. Firstly, it allows them to express themselves creatively by sharing their unique experiences, thoughts, and feelings. Secondly, it helps them develop important writing skills like organizing ideas and thoughts effectively.

Choosing good narrative essay ideas involves looking at personal experiences, interests, and the potential for engaging storytelling. Here's a simple guide to help you pick the right topic:

• Think about significant moments in your life that had a lasting impact, such as personal growth or overcoming challenges.
• Choose topics related to your hobbies, interests, or areas of expertise to make your story more engaging.
• Consider what your audience would be interested in and choose topics that resonate with them.
• Focus on a specific event or detail to make your narrative more focused and impactful.
• Look for universal themes like love or personal transformation that connect with readers on a deeper level.
• Brainstorm ideas and write freely to uncover compelling topics.
• Decide on storytelling techniques like flashbacks or foreshadowing and choose a topic that fits.
• Get feedback from friends, peers, or instructors to see if your topics are interesting and impactful.
• Choose topics that evoke strong emotions for a more compelling narrative.
• Select a topic that you personally connect with to make your story authentic.

Once you've chosen a topic, brainstorm ideas and create an outline for your essay. Follow your professor's instructions carefully and consider seeking help from our narrative essay writing service if needed.

Bring your stories to life with EssayPro. Select from a vast array of narrative essay topics and let our professionals help you weave your tales into captivating essays. Whether it's adventure, reflection, or imagination, we're here to assist.

Final Remarks

As we wrap up, our list of 200 narrative essay topics is here to fuel your creativity for your next writing project! Whether you're sharing a memorable event, reliving a childhood memory, or expressing a profound insight, crafting a narrative essay can be an uplifting experience that resonates deeply with readers.

And if you're gearing up for college admissions, why not check out our admission essay writing service ? We've already assisted countless students in securing their spots at their dream colleges, and we'd love to help you, too!

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Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

Related Articles

Personal Experience - List of Essay Samples And Topic Ideas

Essays on personal experience often take the form of narrative or reflective essays, sharing personal stories, insights, and lessons learned from particular life events or challenges. They might explore the growth and transformation of the author, the impact on their relationships or worldviews, or the broader social, cultural, or philosophical insights derived from the personal experience. These essays often aim to evoke empathy, understanding, or introspection, and might also delve into the processes of memory, identity, and storytelling. A substantial compilation of free essay instances related to Personal Experience you can find at Papersowl. You can use our samples for inspiration to write your own essay, research paper, or just to explore a new topic for yourself.

My Personal Experience of PTSD

Post traumatic stress disorder also known as PTSD is one of the most common mental illnesses in the world.  Anyone that is faced with trauma and shock can develop PTSD. Someone diagnosed with PTSD can show no outward signs of mental illness until they are triggered, so you should never assume who has PTSD and who does not. People who have experienced war combat, rape, natural disasters, serious accidents, acts of terrorism, and personal violence can all develop PTSD. "While […]

My Personal Experience

Money is one of the most important things in our lives, next to food, a home to live in, transportation, amongst many other things, but of course you wouldn't be able to have these things without money. I understand many people believe money can buy happiness because without money we wouldn’t have the many things we appreciate in life now. I believe money can’t buy us happiness. Money gives us instant gratification, will never be enough, and I believe in […]

My Love for Mathematics Since Childhood

It all started from my childhood, I loved mathematics to the extent that I used to teach pupils like me. At primary 3, I became the best student in mathematics and was given six books as a prize. Many parents usually strongly urge their children to choose medicine, pharmacy, and the like as their preferred courses at the end of secondary school, but my parents realized early on that I will thrive in a mathematics and logical thinking related course. […]

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A Personal Experience Narrative on Racism

Experiencing Racism and Stereotyping Racism is still very much instilled in society, whether direct, subconsciously, or indirectly is still present in all our lives, every day, whether we notice it or not. I, as a Dominican American woman, have experienced racism personally, and I've seen it very much active and in ways that shouldn't be socially acceptable. As early as the 5th grade, I experienced prejudice indirectly. I attended "All Saints Regional Catholic School," where the students were predominately white. […]

Personal Experience Essay about Love: the Ignition of my Soul

Childhood Memories: The Black Piano in My Youth A cool, summer breeze air was blowing in through a window of our five thousand square foot house that day. The sky was a clear, baby blue, with the fluffiest white clouds as I followed my parents into our living room. In the corners of my memory, a black piano takes up space on one side. In the corners of the house of my youth, a black piano lay. I remember that […]

Personal Narrative about my Education

It was not until college when I realized I was considered or called an English language learner (ELL) back in elementary school. When I was young I always knew I was bilingual but never heard the negative term of ELL or students with English as a second language (ESL) until middle school. My first language was Spanish, and English did not get introduced into my life until I was 3 years old. As soon as I heard my older brother […]

A 16-Year-Old Child does not have the Personal Experience to Influence the Future of the Country

Have you ever wanted to do something but couldn't? Well, that's how most 16- and 17-year-olds feel. In 1776, when the United States was formed, only certain people could vote. These people were white men who were over 21 and owned land. Nearly a century later, the 15th amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment eliminated racial barriers, but some states didn't like this and continued to discriminate against people. In 1920, women nationwide gained the ability to […]

Personal Experience Helps to Understand the Depth of the Poem

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet born in San Francisco. Although he lived a few years in England, he spent most of his life in the United States. He was known for writing about the beauty of nature, with the exception of the poem, “Acquainted with the Night.” This poem was first published in the “Virginia Quarterly Review” in 1927, and soon after it was published in Frost's book “Running Brook” in 1928 (Shmoop Editorial Team). It is written […]

My Favorite Toys as a Child

Reflecting on my childhood, I remember how a marker and a whiteboard used to be my favorite plaything. I recall myself pretending to be a teacher and scribbling words on the whiteboard to teach my imaginary students. Little did I know what a teacher was and how they impacted the lives of so many young people. But as I grew up, went to school and earned my educational experiences, I began to appreciate the immense contribution they made in molding […]

My Personal Experience that Led to Success

I understand why common core is an issue for some people and students. From personal experience, the state tests that I had to take were difficult, but they helped me learn how to deal with failure and disappointment. Just because I did not do as well as I wanted to, it did not stop me from achieving my goals and bettering myself for the future. As I already said, failure leads to success. CCS was put together by men and […]

My Personal Experience of Getting to Know Asperger’s Syndrome

The beginning of this paper covers the history of Asperger’s Syndrome, followed by an explanation of what Asperger’s is. The history provides detailed insights into Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner, and their relationship to each other. Their work has significantly enriched our understanding of the research surrounding Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome. The paper also discusses the process leading to Asperger’s becoming a recognized diagnosis, including the contributions of Lorna Wing and Ulta Frita. Furthermore, it traces Asperger’s entry into the […]

Dancing as my Passion

Dance is an art, in my word. Art is the window of my soul, is the tool for the communications with others, and the magic thing about dance is you can use the beauty of your body language to express your feeling and convey your message to the audience. Dance is the language hidden in the soul, every movement is a word, and it combine the dance to this beautiful poem. In fact, I have several years of dance experience […]

Personal Experience, Intuition, Spontaneous Emotions that Romantic Music Helped to Develop

Romantic music emerged in the 18th century, emphasizing personal experience, intuition and spontaneous emotion. There are four principal ideals of Romanticism: individualism, love of nature, fascination with the supernatural and nationalism. Individualism pertains to distinguishing oneself from the masses. In the context of Musical Romanticism, individualism places emphasis on originality and distinctiveness; in other words, personal emotional expression. Essentially, Romanticism in music was of two kinds - romantic idealists and romantic realists. The idealists maintained that music must exist for […]

How the Personal Experience of Nurses Helps to Care for the Elderly

 Introduction This paper will discuss, analyze, and reflect on the different types of professions which involve aging. The first section of this paper will explore the top three commonly known careers that care for the elderly. These three main careers include a Certified Nursing Assistant, a Registered Nurse, and a Geriatric Social Worker. Following the descriptions of these careers, an interview was also organized. The professional who consented to being interviewed is Micah Gultom, 43. Micah has been living in […]

Personal Experience that Changed my Life: a Journey of Resilience and Discovery in South America

Life is full of unexpected twists and turns. These events can lead us into unknown territories, redefining our purpose and identity. I once had a profound encounter that did just that. It reshaped my life's trajectory and taught me the power of resilience and adaptability. In this narrative, I share that personal experience. I want to highlight the lessons I've learned and how my perspective has changed forever. Unveiling New Horizons As I embarked on a solo backpacking expedition through […]

Personal Development Plan is very Important

Identify sources of support for your own learning and development. Sources of support for my learning and development include attending all my study days and getting help to finish my apprenticeship program on time. Also, attending all my trainings to stay up-to-date with my role is very important. I can also get support from my mentor, team meetings, conversations with my colleagues, research, appraisals, supervisions, and observations with my mentor or manager. Describe the process for agreeing on a personal […]

My Fox Experience with how i Studied Mathematics

Before expressing my admiration for the University and stating the reasons limit and my choice, I would like to give you some personal information. My name is Semen Borisov. I finished high school in Russia, and I am strongly planning to link myself with China. I am extremely enthusiastic about my decision to study mathematics, economics, business at university. As for as long as I can remember these disciplines have been an inseparable part of my life since the middle-school. […]

My Career Benefiting from the Intersection of Nutrition and Mental Health

I want to pursue a Master of Public Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School because I want to extend my career interests to the intersection of nutrition and mental health. I will be focusing on age-associated conditions which influence the development of disabilities such as poor mobility and dementia. After earning my PhD in Public Health on the relationship of nutritional biochemistry and epigenetics of vitamin D metabolism and cancer, I turned my interests to broader associations of nutrition and […]

My Experience in Helping People with the Help of Psychology

Since I was first introduced to the subject science, I was very passionate about it. I often sit there and observe people wondering, why they are so diverse? Struggling with attention or eating disorders? As well as finding out the answers to these questions, I want to help people and I am confident that Psychology will allow me to do that. At high school, my favourite subject was science and thus I came to the decision of studying BTEC Applied […]

My Health Behavior Led me to Take up Sports

Personal health behaviors encompass any activities an individual undertakes that impact their wellbeing. These health behaviors may help to prevent underlying medical conditions (Baranowski, Perry, and Parcel, 2012). Although some personal health behaviors are deliberate, others are entirely unintentional. My health behavior is a gradual shift to frequent exercising, especially taking morning or evening walks, and running. The transition from not exercising to regularly exercising came about due to the benefits it brought to my life, which are related to […]

Practice of Working with Medical Professionals

“Frozen!” Yelled the OR nurse, while rapidly transporting what appeared to be a simple cystic ovary to the surgical pathology lab. We locked eyes and I immediately got to work. Dr. Sutherland punctured the specimen and fluids came flowing out, but this time there was hair and teeth inside! The rush from seeing my first teratoma was incredibly exhilarating and piqued my curiosity. Yet, while my foray into Pathology played a distinct and remarkable role in my life direction, I […]

Personal Narrative: Trouble Whith my Education

On December 21, 2018, I received news from my university’s honor board that I had been accused of plagiarizing an assignment. I, in turn, spent the entire winter break thinking about the extent of plagiarism committed and the subsequent consequences of this incident. Later, I learned that it was very minor and that I had accidentally ignored to put proper references ('insufficient citations'). I consider it a lesson well-learned in that even such a minor mistake will have a strong […]

My Volunteering Experience in the Medical Field

“Aaaaaah”, I heard a loud scream coming from downstairs as I ran down to the kitchen and saw my mom standing over my grandpa lying on the floor. She had tears running down her cheeks. I held her hand and shook her. “Go call 911,” I said. As, he gasped for breath and struggled to speak, I knelt down and put my hand on his heart. I loosened his shirt, bent his knees, and put a pillow under his head […]

A Caribbean Cruise Changed the Trajectory of my Career and Lifestyle

Like most people, I enjoy traveling. I immerse myself in the excitement of exploring new destinations. Regardless of how many vacations I went on, there was always a feeling of post vacation blues on the flights back home. It was because I knew it would be at least another year before I would be on a plane again heading off to some new or a favorite destination. That’s about how long it would take my husband and I to save […]

About me and my Sister Future Plans and how they did Throughout the Lifespan and what God Intended for me

Personally I have always had a strong belief that God sends people to us all for specific reasons. When I walked into the room waiting to find my sister to interview I was incredibly nervous. I had concerns of having nothing to discuss or having difficulty relating to my sister’s life experiences. However, as soon as sister Regina sat down with Lauren and I all my worries had gone away completely. The warmth and love sister Regina gives off is […]

Importance of Personality and the Characteristics of Personality

"What is personality and how does it shape who I am?" This is a question someone may ask themselves. While there is no simple answer, it can certainly be addressed. Just like fruit, all things can be compared and analyzed. Personality supposedly defines who we are. It determines whether we like attending parties, how we tolerate uncomfortable situations, and how much we procrastinate. Dissecting the concepts of determinism and free will, depending on which one you believe in, can give […]

Research Related to the Personality Styles

I would like to start off by saying that I scored relatively low in the majority of the personality styles. The book states, however, "A low score in any style does not indicate a deficiency in personality." (Oldham, J., & Morris, L.B., 2012). The traits I scored the lowest in were solitary, idiosyncratic, mercurial, sensitive, devoted, leisurely, aggressive, and serious. The trait in which I scored the highest was the conscientious-style, followed by (still marked by a low score), self-sacrificing, […]

About my High School Experience

My name is Arizona Poole, and I am a junior at Cornerstone. I have attended Cornerstone since 5th grade. I've wanted to be a teacher all my life. Since I was a young child, I've known that teaching is what I want to do. The only thing that has changed is the grade I want to teach. I am an extremely responsible and hardworking student. I am a part of the Beta Club and Community Service Club. In 10th grade, […]

Personal Narrative about New Year’s Day where Personal NarrativeMy Birthdays

It was at Buffalo Wild Wings, where a spicy wing on the menu was described by the waiter as "as spicy as a ghost pepper" due to their very own mango habanero sauce. My uncle challenged me to eat the wings for the stake of 300 dollars. I didn't want to appear timid in front of all my older cousins either. Unfortunately, one had to be at least 14 years old to eat the wing, but I had just turned […]

The Story of how i Chose Medicine

My reasons for choosing medicine was a gradual process, rather than the result of one watershed moment in my life. I was born in Ghana and was adopted in 2010, along with my older brother by our now American parent, when our mother died. For as long as I could remember, my biological mother sold “used clothing” from a tiny table near the entrance of one of the few Hospitals in Accra, Ghana. She was one of seven children and […]

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Everyone has a unique story to tell, whether it is an unforgettable moment, an embarrassing or a valuable experience. Though these events in life can be positive or negative, the uptake is that they are worth remembering.

Every person has been in a challenging or memorable situation that meant dealing with hardships and making tough choices. The critical thing is whether you learned something from this life experience. Overwhelming events teach lessons about overcoming obstacles and reaching your goals. They can also help you discover your inner self and strength.

Writing about a personal experience in life is not always straightforward. In practice, you will explore and read several essay examples on personal experience. You must also have profound knowledge of writing a thought-provoking introduction and conclusion.

Typical storytelling won’t do the job. Ideally, you’d hook your readers by revealing a sorrow you overcame, a failure that sharpened your character, or an incredible transformation fueled by a misfortune. These types of essay topics about personal experience show triumph over adversity and are a compelling read.

If you feel reluctant about your thesis statement or the outline, don’t hesitate to check the numerous free narrative essays about life experience at PapersOwl. The stories available on this top-notch writing platform will inspire you to create a real masterpiece. You can also get practical assistance from an expert who will craft a unique personal experience in research paper example in a few hours.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, using personal experiences in college essays.

Hey everyone, just wondering how much I should focus on personal stories or experiences in my college essays. Got any examples of personal essays that really stood out and got someone accepted to a top school?

When it comes to writing college essays, incorporating personal stories and experiences can be incredibly effective in highlighting your unique qualities and demonstrating your personality and perspective.

Admissions officers want to get to know the person behind the application, so it's essential that you showcase elements of your life that shaped who you are today. Here are a few tips on how to effectively use personal experiences in your college essays:

1. Focus on a meaningful event: Choose an experience or situation that left a significant impact on you. This could be a specific challenge you faced, a time when you grew personally, or an instance when you demonstrated tremendous resilience.

2. Reflect on your growth: It's crucial to showcase not only the experience itself but also how you've grown, changed, or learned from it. Reflect on the lessons you took away from the event and how they've influenced your life or mindset.

3. Be authentic: Don't feel pressured to write about something extravagant or dramatic. Sometimes, the most meaningful experiences come from everyday moments, so it's essential to stay true to your personal narrative.

4. Show, don't tell: When describing your personal experience, paint a vivid picture for the reader by using descriptive language and including specific details. This will make your story more engaging and help the reader feel more connected to your narrative.

One well-known example of an effective personal essay comes from a student who was admitted to Stanford University. The essay featured an engaging story about the student's love for Costco stores. Rather than just stating their fascination with Costco, the applicant wove an entertaining narrative detailing their visits to the store and connected the experience to their curiosity and desire to learn.

The essay was successful because it showcased the student's unique perspective, genuine enthusiasm, and relatability through an otherwise mundane experience. By focusing on a personal anecdote and connecting it to their own intellectual curiosity, the applicant was able to convey their authentic personality and stand out from the competition.

To sum up, using personal experiences in your college essays can be an effective way to demonstrate your personality, growth, and unique perspective. Make sure to focus on a meaningful event, reflect on your growth, be authentic, and show rather than tell to craft a memorable and engaging essay.

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