From a Cursor of Void to a Paragraph of Satisfaction

    Prompt: HMC's collaborative community is guided by our mission statement. Through an intentional interdisciplinary curriculum our students seek to build a skillset adaptable to society's needs. How has your own background influenced the types of problems you want to solve, the people you want to work with, and the impact you hope your work can have? (500 words).

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    "Bruh, how am I gonna answer this prompt?", was my first reaction after reading the HMC prompt. I didn't even know where to begin. I didn't have a background! I don't know what problems I want to solve! I have no idea who I would want to work with and what my work would potentially do! And I have to write a total of 500 words!?! Believe me, it was a dreadful experience trying to think of any idea at all. The cursor on the top-left side of my document would blink second after second, each blink reminding me that my page was still completely blank and so was my mind. In fact, it became so painful to stare at the white void that I would hold my head down on the table praying for my mind to function through my thoughts. I just didn't want to write anymore, even though I knew I had to.

Me trying to think of a topic for my essay

My parents asked me one day where my hatred for writing college essays came from, and I carelessly replied that there was no clear instruction, and no clear answers. I like to consider myself as a "concrete" person, who would like to see all the answers in life and solve all the mysteries of college writing. That I've come to realize will unfortunately never happen so easily in college writing and that I would always be lost in the woods. 

However, I think that's where I'm not necessarily wrong that I would be lost in the woods, but I just didn't see it as a beautiful concept in disguise. After nearly thinking for an hour on the HMC prompt, I decided out of desperation to begin typing anything that popped into my head. Anything. At first, my thoughts were so unspecific and random that they did not make any logical sense. Seriously, my first line for "my background" was "I was canadian, moved to us, very nervous." But as I wrote more of these thoughts down, more connections of multiple ideas came to my mind. For example, my first line about my Canadian background led to the thought of my first experiences in middle school in the U.S. And that thought led to the memory of my creation lab project in 8th grade, which was finally a decent starting point for my prompt. As time went on, more and better ideas started to take place in my mind, like an exponential graph growing. My head was less often on the table and more often looking at my keyboard, my hands springing into life. At some point, I didn't even realize how much I hated the prompt - it became fun to write about myself and to select my ideas.  

When I finally finished writing, I looked up from my hands and decided to review my paragraph and the word count. 556 words. Too much. I decided to read through my paragraph anyway, and it was the most satisfying and rewarding feeling ever. I realize that in writing college essays, sometimes it is difficult to start because there are such a vast amount of ideas. But once ideas start narrowing down, and the writing process begins, it can really be something to be proud of once it is finished.

My outline for this blog  😭