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Essay on Myself: 100 Words, 250 Words and 300 Words

• Updated on  
• Mar 12, 2024

We are all different from each other and it is important to self-analyze and know about yourself. Only you can know everything about yourself. But, when it comes to describing yourself in front of others many students fail to do so. This happens due to the confusion generated by a student’s mind regarding what things to include in their description. This confusion never arises when someone is told to give any opinion about others. This blog will help students and children resolve the confusion and it also includes an essay on myself. 

While writing an “essay on myself” you should have a unique style so that the reader would engage in your essay. It’s important to induce the urge to know about you in the reader then only you can perform well in your class. I would suggest you include your qualities, strengths, achievements, interests, and passion in your essay. Continue Reading for Essays on myself for children and students!

Quick Read: Essay on Child Labour

Table of Contents

• 1 Long and Short Essay on Myself for Students
• 2 Tips to Write Essay on Myself
• 3 100 Words Essay on Myself
• 4 250 Words Essay on Myself
• 5 10 Lines on Myself Essay for Children
• 6 300 Words Essay on Myself

Quick Read: Trees are Our Best Friend Essay

Long and Short Essay on Myself for Students

Mentioned below are essays on myself with variable word limits. You can choose the essay that you want to present in your class. These essays are drafted in simple language so that school students can easily understand. In addition, the main point to remember while writing an essay on myself is to be honest. Your honesty will help you connect with the reader.

Tell me about yourself is also one of the most important questions asked in the interview process. Therefore, this blog is very helpful for people who want to learn about how to write an essay on myself.

Tips to Write Essay on Myself

Given below are some tips to write an essay on myself:

• Prepare a basic outline of what to include in the essay about yourself.
• Stick to the structure to maintain fluency.
• Be honest to build a connection with the reader.
• Use simple language.
• Try to include a crisp and clear conclusion.

Quick Read: Speech on No Tobacco Day

100 Words Essay on Myself

I am a dedicated person with an urge to learn and grow. My name is Rakul, and I feel life is a journey that leads to self-discovery. I belong to a middle-class family, my father is a handloom businessman, and my mother is a primary school teacher .

I have learned punctuality and discipline are the two wheels that drive our life on a positive path. My mother is my role model. I am passionate about reading novels. When I was younger, my grandmother used to narrate stories about her life in the past and that has built my interest towards reading stories and novels related to history.

Overall I am an optimistic person who looks forward to life as a subject that teaches us values and ways to live for the upliftment of society.

Also Read: Speech on Discipline

250 Words Essay on Myself

My name is Ayushi Singh but my mother calls me “Ayu”. I turned 12 years old this August and I study in class 7th. I have an elder sister named Aishwarya. She is like a second mother to me. I have a group of friends at school and out of them Manvi is my best friend. She visits my house at weekends and we play outdoor games together. I believe in her and I can share anything with her.

Science and technology fascinate me so I took part in an interschool science competition in which my team of 4 girls worked on a 3-D model of the earth representing past, present, and future. It took us a week to finish off the project and we presented the model at Ghaziabad school. We were competing against 30 teams and we won the competition.

I was confident and determined about the fact that we could win because my passion helped me give my 100% input in the task. Though I have skills in certain subjects I don’t have to excel in everything, I struggle to perform well in mathematics . And to enhance my problem-solving skills I used to study maths 2 hours a day. 

I wanted to become a scientist, and being punctual and attentive are my characteristics as I never arrive late for school. Generally, I do my work on my own so that I inculcate the value of being an independent person. I always help other people when they are in difficult situations. 

Also Read: Essay on the Importance of the Internet

10 Lines on Myself Essay for Children

Here are 10 lines on myself essay for children. Feel free to add them to similar essay topics.

• My name is Ananya Rathor and I am 10 years old.
• I like painting and playing with my dog, Todo.
• Reading animal books is one of my favourite activities.
• I love drawing and colouring to express my imagination.
• I always find joy in spending time outdoors, feeling the breeze on my face.
• I love dancing to Indian classical music.
• I’m always ready for an adventure, whether it’s trying a new hobby or discovering interesting facts.
• Animals are my friends, and I enjoy spending time with pets or observing nature’s creatures.
• I am a very kind person and I respect everyone.
• All of my school teachers love me.

300 Words Essay on Myself

My name is Rakul. I believe that every individual has unique characteristics which distinguish them from others. To be unique you must have an extraordinary spark or skill. I live with my family and my family members taught me to live together, adjust, help others, and be humble. Apart from this, I am an energetic person who loves to play badminton.

I have recently joined Kathak classes because I have an inclination towards dance and music, especially folk dance and classical music. I believe that owing to the diversity of our country India, it offers us a lot of opportunities to learn and gain expertise in various sectors.

My great-grandfather was a classical singer and he also used to play several musical instruments. His achievements and stories have inspired me to learn more about Indian culture and make him proud. 

I am a punctual and studious person because I believe that education is the key to success. Academic excellence could make our careers shine bright. Recently I secured second position in my class and my teachers and family members were so proud of my achievement. 

I can manage my time because my mother taught me that time waits for no one. It is important to make correct use of time to succeed in life. If we value time, then only time will value us. My ambition in life is to become a successful gynaecologist and serve for human society.

Hence, these are the qualities that describe me the best. Though no one can present themselves in a few words still I tried to give a brief about myself through this essay. In my opinion, life is meant to be lived with utmost happiness and an aim to serve humanity. Thus, keep this in mind, I will always try to help others and be the best version of myself.

Also Read: Essay on Education System

A. Brainstorm Create a format Stick to the format Be vulnerable Be honest Figure out what things to include Incorporate your strengths, achievements, and future goals into the essay

A. In an essay, you can use words like determined, hardworking, punctual, sincere, and objective-oriented to describe yourself in words.

A. Use simple and easy language. Include things about your family, career, education, and future goals. Lastly, add a conclusion paragraph.

This was all about an essay on myself. The skill of writing an essay comes in handy when appearing for standardized language tests. Thinking of taking one soon? Leverage Live provides the best online test prep for the same. Register today and if you wish to study abroad then contact our experts at 1800572000 .

Kajal Thareja

Hi, I am Kajal, a pharmacy graduate, currently pursuing management and is an experienced content writer. I have 2-years of writing experience in Ed-tech (digital marketing) company. I am passionate towards writing blogs and am on the path of discovering true potential professionally in the field of content marketing. I am engaged in writing creative content for students which is simple yet creative and engaging and leaves an impact on the reader's mind.

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15 Tips for Writing a College Essay About Yourself

What’s covered:.

• What is the Purpose of the College Essay?
• How to Stand Out Without Showing Off
• 15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself
• Where to Get Free Feedback on Your Essay

Most students who apply to top-tier colleges have exceptional grades, standardized test scores, and extracurricular activities. How do admissions officers decide which applicants to choose among all these stellar students? One way is on the strength of their college essay .

This personal statement, along with other qualitative factors like teacher recommendations, helps the admissions committee see who you really are—the person behind the transcript. So, it’s obviously important to write a great one.

What Is the Purpose of the College Essay? 

Your college essay helps you stand out in a pool of qualified candidates. If effective, it will also show the admissions committee more of your personality and allow them to get a sense of how you’ll fit in with and contribute to the student body and institution. Additionally, it will show the school that you can express yourself persuasively and clearly in writing, which is an important part of most careers, no matter where you end up. 

Typically, students must submit a personal statement (usually the Common App essay ) along with school-specific supplements. Some students are surprised to learn that essays typically count for around 25% of your entire application at the top 250 schools. That’s an enormous chunk, especially considering that, unlike your transcript and extracurriculars, it isn’t an assessment of your entire high school career.  

The purpose of the college essay is to paint a complete picture of yourself, showing admissions committees the person behind the grades and test scores. A strong college essay shows your unique experiences, personality, perspective, interests, and values—ultimately, what makes you unique. After all, people attend college, not their grades or test scores. The college essay also provides students with a considerable amount of agency in their application, empowering them to share their own stories.

How to Stand Out Without Showing Off 

It’s important to strike a balance between exploring your achievements and demonstrating humility. Your aim should be to focus on the meaning behind the experience and how it changed your outlook, not the accomplishment itself. 

Confidence without cockiness is the key here. Don’t simply catalog your achievements, there are other areas on your application to share them. Rather, mention your achievements when they’re critical to the story you’re telling. It’s helpful to think of achievements as compliments, not highlights, of your college essay.  

Take this essay excerpt , for example:

My parents’ separation allowed me the space to explore my own strengths and interests as each of them became individually busier. As early as middle school, I was riding the light rail train by myself, reading maps to get myself home, and applying to special academic programs without urging from my parents. Even as I took more initiatives on my own, my parents both continued to see me as somewhat immature. All of that changed three years ago, when I applied and was accepted to the SNYI-L summer exchange program in Morocco. I would be studying Arabic and learning my way around the city of Marrakesh. Although I think my parents were a little surprised when I told them my news, the addition of a fully-funded scholarship convinced them to let me go. 

Instead of saying “ I received this scholarship and participated in this prestigious program, ” the author tells a story, demonstrating their growth and initiative through specific actions (riding the train alone, applying academic programs on her own, etc.)—effectively showing rather than telling.

15 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself 

1. start early .

Leave yourself plenty of time to write your college essay—it’s stressful enough to compose a compelling essay without putting yourself under a deadline. Starting early on your essay also leaves you time to edit and refine your work, have others read your work (for example, your parents or a teacher), and carefully proofread.

2. Choose a topic that’s meaningful to you 

The foundation of a great essay is selecting a topic that has real meaning for you. If you’re passionate about the subject, the reader will feel it. Alternatively, choosing a topic you think the admissions committee is looking for, but isn’t all that important to you, won’t make for a compelling essay; it will be obvious that you’re not very invested in it.

3. Show your personality 

One of the main points of your college essay is to convey your personality. Admissions officers will see your transcript and read about the awards you’ve won, but the essay will help them get to know you as a person. Make sure your personality is evident in each part—if you are a jokester, incorporate some humor. Your friends should be able to pick your essay from an anonymous pile, read it, and recognize it as yours. In that same vein, someone who doesn’t know you at all should feel like they understand your personality after reading your essay. 

4. Write in your own voice 

In order to bring authenticity to your essay, you’ll need to write in your own voice. Don’t be overly formal (but don’t be too casual, either). Remember: you want the reader to get to know the real you, not a version of you that comes across as overly stiff or stilted. You should feel free to use contractions, incorporate dialogue, and employ vocabulary that comes naturally to you. 

5. Use specific examples 

Real, concrete stories and examples will help your essay come to life. They’ll add color to your narrative and make it more compelling for the reader. The goal, after all, is to engage your audience—the admissions committee. 

For example, instead of stating that you care about animals, you should tell us a story about how you took care of an injured stray cat. 

Consider this side-by-side comparison:

Example 1: I care deeply about animals and even once rescued a stray cat. The cat had an injured leg, and I helped nurse it back to health.

Example 2: I lost many nights of sleep trying to nurse the stray cat back to health. Its leg infection was extremely painful, and it meowed in distress up until the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t mind it though; what mattered was that the cat regained its strength. So, I stayed awake to administer its medicine and soothe it with loving ear rubs.

The second example helps us visualize this situation and is more illustrative of the writer’s personality. Because she stayed awake to care for the cat, we can infer that she is a compassionate person who cares about animals. We don’t get the same depth with the first example. 

6. Don’t be afraid to show off… 

You should always put your best foot forward—the whole point of your essay is to market yourself to colleges. This isn’t the time to be shy about your accomplishments, skills, or qualities. 

7. …While also maintaining humility 

But don’t brag. Demonstrate humility when discussing your achievements. In the example above, for instance, the author discusses her accomplishments while noting that her parents thought of her as immature. This is a great way to show humility while still highlighting that she was able to prove her parents wrong.

8. Be vulnerable 

Vulnerability goes hand in hand with humility and authenticity. Don’t shy away from exploring how your experience affected you and the feelings you experienced. This, too, will help your story come to life. 

Here’s an excerpt from a Common App essay that demonstrates vulnerability and allows us to connect with the writer:  

“You ruined my life!” After months of quiet anger, my brother finally confronted me. To my shame, I had been appallingly ignorant of his pain. 

Despite being twins, Max and I are profoundly different. Having intellectual interests from a young age that, well, interested very few of my peers, I often felt out of step in comparison with my highly-social brother. Everything appeared to come effortlessly for Max and, while we share an extremely tight bond, his frequent time away with friends left me feeling more and more alone as we grew older.

In this essay, the writer isn’t afraid to share his insecurities and feelings with us. He states that he had been “ appallingly ignorant ” of his brother’s pain, that he “ often felt out of step ” compared to his brother, and that he had felt “ more and more alone ” over time. These are all emotions that you may not necessarily share with someone you just met, but it’s exactly this vulnerability that makes the essay more raw and relatable. 

9. Don’t lie or hyperbolize 

This essay is about the authentic you. Lying or hyperbolizing to make yourself sound better will not only make your essay—and entire application—less genuine, but it will also weaken it. More than likely, it will be obvious that you’re exaggerating. Plus, if colleges later find out that you haven’t been truthful in any part of your application, it’s grounds for revoking your acceptance or even expulsion if you’ve already matriculated. 

10. Avoid cliches 

How the COVID-19 pandemic changed your life. A sports victory as a metaphor for your journey. How a pet death altered your entire outlook. Admissions officers have seen more essays on these topics than they can possibly count. Unless you have a truly unique angle, then it’s in your best interest to avoid them. Learn which topics are cliche and how to fix them . 

11. Proofread 

This is a critical step. Even a small error can break your essay, however amazing it is otherwise. Make sure you read it over carefully, and get another set of eyes (or two or three other sets of eyes), just in case.

12. Abstain from using AI

There are a handful of good reasons to avoid using artificial intelligence (AI) to write your college essay. Most importantly, it’s dishonest and likely to be not very good; AI-generated essays are generally formulaic, generic, and boring—everything you’re trying to avoid being.   The purpose of the college essay is to share what makes you unique and highlight your personal experiences and perspectives, something that AI can’t capture.

13. Use parents as advisors, not editors

The voice of an adult is different from that of a high schooler and admissions committees are experts at spotting the writing of parents. Parents can play a valuable role in creating your college essay—advising, proofreading, and providing encouragement during those stressful moments. However, they should not write or edit your college essay with their words.

14. Have a hook

Admissions committees have a lot of essays to read and getting their attention is essential for standing out among a crowded field of applicants. A great hook captures your reader’s imagination and encourages them to keep reading your essay. Start strong, first impressions are everything!

15. Give them something to remember

The ending of your college essay is just as important as the beginning. Give your reader something to remember by composing an engaging and punchy paragraph or line—called a kicker in journalism—that ties everything you’ve written above together.

Where to Get Free Feedback on Your College Essay 

Before you send off your application, make sure you get feedback from a trusted source on your essay. CollegeVine’s free peer essay review will give you the support you need to ensure you’ve effectively presented your personality and accomplishments. Our expert essay review pairs you with an advisor to help you refine your writing, submit your best work, and boost your chances of getting into your dream school. Find the right advisor for you and get started on honing a winning essay.

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how do i write a good essay about myself.

I'm struggling with writing my college essay. How can I write a compelling and genuine essay about myself without it sounding boring or braggy? Any tips would really help!

First, I understand that writing a personal essay can be challenging, but with a little guidance and practice, you can create a compelling piece. Here are some steps to help you write a strong essay:

1. Choose a unique angle: Instead of providing a broad overview of your life, focus on a specific experience, interest, or aspect of your personality that has shaped who you are. This will make your essay more focused and memorable.

2. Show, don't tell: Instead of simply stating your qualities, provide concrete examples of how you've demonstrated those characteristics. Use vivid details, anecdotes, and sensory language to bring your story to life.

3. Be authentic: Be genuine in your writing and don't try to present yourself as someone you're not. Admissions officers want to get to know the real you, so let your personality shine through.

4. Reflect on your experiences: Point out the lessons you've learned and how those experiences have influenced your growth and decision-making. This will show maturity and self-awareness, which are traits that colleges value.

5. Avoid clichés: Steer clear of overused phrases, ideas, or experiences. Make sure your essay stands out by giving it a fresh and original perspective.

6. Edit and revise: Once you have a draft of your essay, review it for clarity, grammar, punctuation, and flow. Make sure that each paragraph supports the central theme of your essay and that your writing is concise and engaging.

7. Get feedback: Share your essay with teachers, family members, or friends to gain different perspectives. Incorporate their feedback to help refine your essay and ensure it's an accurate representation of yourself.

For example, if you have a passion for community service, you might write about a specific volunteer experience that had a significant impact on you. Talk about the challenges you faced, the people you helped, and the lessons you learned. Make sure to incorporate personal stories and reflections to give your essay depth and substance.

Remember, a good college essay showcases your personality, values, and growth. By following these steps, you can create a compelling and genuine essay that will leave a lasting impression on admissions officers. Good luck!

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How to Write an Essay About Yourself

Gabriel Jimenez-Ekman is a content editor and writer at Scholarships360. He has managed communications and written content for a diverse array of organizations, including a farmer’s market, a concert venue, a student farm, an environmental NGO, and a PR agency. Gabriel graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in sociology.

Learn about our editorial policies

Bill Jack has over a decade of experience in college admissions and financial aid. Since 2008, he has worked at Colby College, Wesleyan University, University of Maine at Farmington, and Bates College.

Writing an essay about yourself is no easy feat — although you may know yourself better than anyone, it can be tough to get the perspective needed to write about yourself in essay form. Despite its challenges, writing essays about yourself is one of the most crucial skills in the college application process, and we have some key tricks to make it easier. Keep on reading to learn about some of our best techniques to write about yourself naturally!

• Outline your experiences

Ask friends and family for input

• Don’t be too humble…
• Let your personality shine!

Try journaling

Read more: How to start a scholarship essay (with examples)

Outline your impactful experiences

Before you dig into prompts, try writing out a bullet-point list of meaningful experiences you’ve had. Underneath each bullet point, reflect on what they might demonstrate. Here’s an example:

• Working as part of a team
• Learning to balance school and work responsibilities
• Honing communication skills
• Developing writing skills
• Fostering a passion for my school community
• Learning to meet deadlines and balance responsibilities
• Learning to balance school and volunteer responsibilities
• Gaining an attention to detail

This is a little different than a typical resume — rather than focusing on your specific duties, try to focus on how the experience shaped your character. If you notice a lot of overlap between the experiences, that’s perfect! You can point out these recurring themes to make for an effective essay with a strong overarching point. Making lists like this early on in your writing stage can be helpful, and you may find yourself coming back to consult the list for many future essays.

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When writing about yourself, it is important to reflect on your strengths, and who is better to do that than a supportive team of family and friends?

Consulting family and friends is a great way to learn about strengths that you might not even know you had. Your friends choose to hang out with you for a reason, and they often notice your good qualities that you take for granted. Having your friends point these out can be useful for an essay, as well as a general pick-me-up!

And if you’re looking for a perfect anecdote to answer a prompt like “How have you demonstrated a commitment to your community ,” who better to remember your past acts of kindness than your parents? 

Also recommended: Top essay & writing scholarships

Is it okay to ask friends and family to read my essay and offer feedback?

Some students may be wondering, is it okay to ask for additional help from friends and family? And the short answer is: absolutely. Additional essay reviewers can offer valuable feedback as you write your essay. With this said, students should make sure that they are maintaining their own voice in the essay. Outside reviewers should not be rewriting the essay or having a heavy hand in changing the written voice.

Don’t miss:  How to respond to the Common App essay prompts

Don’t be too humble

There is a time and a place for humility. But don’t worry if you feel like your essay is verging on the braggadocios. These essays are an opportunity to showcase your best qualities, and you should not be worried about putting your best foot forward and telling the reader all the reasons why they should be impressed by you.

What makes these essays effective is that they both include your relevant experiences and demonstrate why they are so significant. You may feel as though you are making mountains out of molehills, but it’s important to emphasize the importance of your experiences. This is the main objective of writing about yourself.

Also recommended: How to write a 500 word essay

Let your personality come through

Most essays written about yourself will be written in first-person. This provides a perfect opportunity to add some flair to your writing. While your first priority is to include impactful examples and communicate your points effectively, it is also important to leave a lasting impression on the reader.

If you see an opportunity to show off your sense of humor or use a more personal tone, don’t be afraid to do it. As long as your remarks are appropriate, on-topic, and not too frequent, they can help put you ahead of the pack.

Recommended:  How does an admissions officer read your application and essays?

A great trick for becoming comfortable writing essays about yourself is to try keeping a journal. Journaling helps eliminate the pressure of writing an essay while helping you become comfortable writing about yourself in an informal setting. Spending 10 or 15 minutes every night writing about your day, or answering some informal prompts can help you to get more in touch with yourself and jog your memory about past events that could be useful for an essay. 

Don’t miss:  Scholarships360’s free scholarship search tool

Next steps for students

Now you’ve learned about the goals and techniques for writing an essay about yourself. Your next step should be to focus on making your writing effective and efficient. Make sure that your conclusion ties everything together impactfully . And once you’ve finished your draft, ask family members, friends, or college counselors to read over it and provide suggestions. Good luck, writers!

Related:  Overview of common scholarship essay prompts

Frequently asked questions about how to write an essay about yourself

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9 Tips for Writing an Essay About Yourself

You know yourself better than anyone else, but writing about yourself can still be tough! When applying for scholarships or to college, essay prompts  can feel so general (and yet so specific!) that they leave us stumped.  So we’ll show you 8 tips to write an essay about yourself, so that you can land more scholarships. (Psst – Going Merry makes applying easy .)

1. Create a List of Questions

2. brainstorm and outline, 3. be vulnerable, 4. use personal examples, 5. write in the first person, 6. don’t be afraid to show off…but stay on topic, 7. show personality , 8. know your audience, 9. proofread and edit.

Let’s start with some examples of personal essay prompts:

• Tell me about yourself.
• Describe a challenge or event that made you who you are today.
• What are your short and long-term goals, and how do you plan to achieve them?
• Write about a time you failed at something. How did it affect you?

These are just a few of many scholarship essay prompts that require you to look internally, to answer a question, solve a problem, or explain a scenario in your life.  

We get it. You might not be a big fan of bragging about yourself, or you might want to keep your personal stories to yourself. But by opening up and sharing your story, you can show scholarship providers, colleges and universities who you are, and why you’re deserving of their scholarship.

(Don’t just take our word for it – check out our scholarship winners page full of students like you who were brave enough to share their stories with us).

To get started, check out these 9 tips on how to write an essay about yourself:

After reading through the scholarship essay prompt, breathe, and make a list of smaller questions you can answer, which relate to the big essay prompt question. 

Let’s say the main essay prompt question asks you, “What were challenges or barriers you had to work to overcome?” Then the smaller questions might be something like:

• What is your background? Family, finances, school.
• What was challenging about that background?
• What’s your greatest accomplishment? How did you get there? How have previous challenges influenced your goals?

Think of these questions as mini-prompts. They explain your story and help you answer the main essay prompt with more details than if you just answered it without a plan in place.

After considering smaller questions, it’s time to brainstorm your answers.  Take out a pen and paper – or open up a document on a computer – and take your time in answering each mini-prompt. Organize your responses in order:

• Intro to main essay prompt.
• Answer about 3 mini-prompt questions.
• Conclude by rewriting the answer to the main essay prompt with a summary of your mini-prompt answers.

This organization will help you stay on topic and answer the prompt directly. (Or check out these 6 scholarship essay examples for alternative essay structures.)

Don’t be afraid to let your strengths, challenges, and personal stories shine through in your essay! Scholarship and admissions committees love to see that you’re self-aware how you can improve as a person, or how you’ve grown because of your experiences. Honest writing can help tell the best stories (in this case, YOUR story).

Since this essay is all about you , you should make your answer as specific as possible! Avoid using generalizations (e.g., “I’m really good at music). Instead, go for more personalized statements (e.g., “My fourth-grade teacher Ms. Matay really inspired me to pursue my interest in the clarinet”). Your personal examples are what will help your scholarship essay stand out among the thousands of applicants..

 You’re telling your story, so write from your perspective! You can narrate your story. You can provide an overview of what you learned from your experiences. However you choose to answer the prompt, we recommend writing in an active tone, and using “I” and “me” throughout your essay.

Most students worry about bragging in their essay, but we say go for it! This is your time to shine, so highlight your accomplishments and strengths.  Review your essay to make sure that you’re keeping the tone informative and that you’re still on topic. (Brag while answering the essay prompt; don’t just mention random, unrelated but impressive facts about yourself!)You can use this brag sheet where you can brainstorm your accomplishments. While the worksheet is geared toward requesting letters of recommendation , you can still use it to write out your hobbies, interests, college list , and strengths to help you answer your scholarship essay prompt.

Just because it’s an essay doesn’t mean it has to be dry and boring. This essay is all about you, so let your personality shine through. If you’re the class clown, you can use a bit of humor. If you wear your heart on your sleeve, don’t be afraid to show emotion. Trying your best to express who you are as a person will have a huge effect on the admissions or scholarship committee!

If you’re applying for a scholarship, research the scholarship provider. If you’re applying to college, research the school. Understanding what makes the provider/college unique and what their motivations are, will allow you to incorporate that information in your essay. For example, many scholarships are funded by private companies that sell products. You might want to reference those products in your essay. A good example of this is Emily Trader’s essay for the Life Happens organization , where she uses her personal narrative to explain the importance of insurance planning, since that is the mission of the organization (which is funded by insurance companies).

The last step in answering your essay prompt is to double-check your work! One typo can be distracting and cause scholarship providers to scratch their head while reading the essay. ( Psst, humble brag: Going Merry’s application platform includes spellcheck because we’ve got your back .) In addition to proofreading for typos and grammatical errors, also consider whether the sentence or paragraph structure makes sense. Are you breaking paragraphs in the right place? Are you using topic sentences well to signpost your main ideas? Does the essay flow? Consider these “bigger” structural questions too.  You might also want to ask a friend, family member, teacher, or guidance counselor to review your essay. They might catch something you didn’t see the first time around, and that can really help your essay! In fact, that is scholarship winner Daniel Gill ’s #1 tip. (Another tip is to apply for scholarships using Going Merry !)

Also, check out this helpful list of the 10 most common scholarship essay topics while you’re brainstorming!

Now that you know how to write an essay about yourself, it’s time to start applying for scholarships! Remember: You’ve got this. 

Sign up for your free Going Merry profile . From there, you can easily upload and submit your essay for thousands of scholarships. We make it easy so you’ll only need to enter your profile information once! And then, you can apply away. In fact, we even have some bundled scholarships so that you only enter your essay once, to apply for multiple scholarships at the same time.

Or if you’re not ready to register, simply sign up to receive an email with 20 new scholarship opportunities each week. Just enter your email address below:

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How to Write About Yourself

Last Updated: July 31, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Lucy Yeh . Lucy Yeh is a Human Resources Director, Recruiter, and Certified Life Coach (CLC) with over 20 years of experience. With a training background with Coaching for Life and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) at InsightLA, Lucy has worked with professionals of all levels to improve the quality of their careers, personal/professional relationships, self marketing, and life balance. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 5,711,930 times.

Whether you're writing an essay about yourself for a scholarship, a self-introduction, or a personal bio for a job application, coming up with the right words to capture what makes you unique can feel challenging. Fortunately, there are tips and tricks that can make writing about yourself a breeze. Want some help getting across just how impressive, interesting, and skilled you really are? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know about putting yourself into words effectively, complete with examples.

Writing of the Autobiographical Nature

• Who are you?
• What is your background?
• What are your interests?
• What are your talents?
• What are your achievements?
• What challenges have you faced?

• What is your most interesting or unique quality? What word(s) describes you the best? Choose that topic.

• Bad: I like sports.
• Ok: I'm a fan of basketball, football, tennis, and soccer.
• Good: My favorite sport is football, both to watch and to play.
• Better: When I was growing up, I would watch Big Ten football with my dad and brothers every Saturday, before we'd go outside and toss the football around. I've loved it ever since.

• Braggy: I'm the best and most dynamic worker at my company right now, so you should want to hire me for my talents.
• Humble: I was lucky enough to be awarded three employee of the month awards at my current job. Turns out it was a company record.

Writing Personal Essays for School

• Common themes or prompts for autobiographical essays include overcoming obstacles, great successes or spectacular failures, and what you learned about yourself.

• Depending on the assignment, you may need to connect a personal anecdote to a reading or an idea from class. Start brainstorming topics that are connected to that idea, to give yourself a variety of options to choose from.

• Common autobiographical essay cliches include sports stories, mission trips, and dead grandmothers. While these can all make for excellent essays if done well, it is difficult to stand out when telling the story of how your lacrosse team lost a big game, then practiced hard, then won. It has been written before.

• If you want to tell the story of your nasty break-up, start with the break-up, do not start with the star-crossed way you met. You have got to get immediately to the tension in the story.

• When you have an idea of your topic, start writing a "memory list" of specific things that you remember about the event. What was the weather like? What did it smell like? What did your mother say to you?
• Your opening paragraph will set the tone for the rest of the essay. Rather than telling the dull biographical details (your name, your place of birth, your favorite food), find a way to express the essence of the story you are going to tell and the themes you are going to explore in your essay.

Writing a Cover Letter for an Application

• Outline your qualifications and highlight your talents in a cover letter.
• Write about who you are.
• In a cover letter, describe how your education and experience qualifies you for this position.
• Explain how this opportunity will benefit your career goals.

• When in doubt, keep it brief and serious. If you are unsure whether or not telling an amusing anecdote about your friend's bachelor party is appropriate in a cover letter, it is probably best to leave it out.

• "I'm writing to apply for the entry-level position with Company Inc. advertised on your website. I think my experience and training makes me an ideal candidate for this position."
• Contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to include your name in the body of the letter: "My name is John Smith and I am applying...." Your name will be included in the signature , as well as the header of a cover letter, so there is no need to put it in the text itself.

• Who you are and where you come from.
• Where you want to go.
• How this opportunity would potentially help you get there.

• Be as specific as possible. It is alright to note that you are "A passionate leader in all walks of life" but it would be much better to write about an example of a time you lead in a surprising way.
• Stay focused on skills and talents that connect specifically to the thing you are applying for. Extracurricular involvement, leadership roles, and other types of outstanding achievement may be important to you personally, but it may be totally extraneous. If you include something, ensure to connect it specifically to the goal of the cover letter.

• Be as specific as possible. If you are writing a university cover letter, it is obvious that you have to have a degree to get a job as a doctor, but how did you come to choose this field? Why did you choose this school? What, specifically, do you want to take away from the experience?

• Be careful about using a cover letter to critique a business. It is not the time to describe the suffering of a particular brand over the previous fiscal quarter, then promising that you will be able to turn it around with your ideas. That might not go over well if you are hired, and then you are unable to live up to the promise.

• Even if it is impressive, a high GPA or class ranking does not belong in a cover letter. Highlight it on your resume, but do not include it in two different places of the application.

• Mailing address
• Telephone and/or fax number

Expert Trick : Save time and effort by creating one generic format that you can use for many different job applications by tweaking the specific content for each one. Start with a general introductory paragraph , then a section or two fleshing out your resume and expertise as it relates to the job, and finish it off with a closing paragraph and a note of thanks.

Writing a Short Biography Note

• Pretend you are writing about someone else. Write your name and start describing that person like a character or a friend: "John Smith is the Executive Vice President of Company Inc..."

• If you are a jack of all trades, say so. Do not be afraid to list "actor, musician, mother, motivational speaker, and professional rock climber" if they all apply equally.

• It is common to list degrees that you have received. Pay particular attention to anything that ties into the work you are writing about. If you have special training, include it here.

• "John Smith is the Executive Vice President of Company Inc., in charge of marketing and overseas acquisitions. He received an MBA with distinction from Harvard and lives in Montauk with his cat Cheeto."
• Do not overshare. It can seem funny to immediately start with "John Smith loves rafting and hates eating Cheetos. He's a total boss" and such bio notes can be appropriate for some venues, however be careful to avoid awkward oversharing. Telling everyone about your killer hangover might be best left for after work talk.

• Stephen King, who is one of the most successful and popular authors in recent history, has a bio note that just lists the name of his family members, his hometown, and his pets. Consider leaving out the self-congratulation entirely.

Community Q&A

• Remember that you’re supposed to talk about yourself, it’s the main topic. Don’t talk about your friends or family, even though you may feel tempted to. Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0
• If you are having a difficult time writing about yourself, search online for examples of personal writing, in order to get some ideas and inspiration. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0
• Don't think about how others feel about you. Everyone thinks from a different perspective. Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/how-to-write-about-yourself
• ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/brainstorming/
• ↑ https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/choosingsources/chapter/narrowing-a-topic/
• ↑ https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/essay-about-self-writing
• ↑ https://writingcommons.org/article/using-first-person-in-an-academic-essay-when-is-it-okay/
• ↑ https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/6-unconventional-ways-start-cover-letter/
• ↑ https://english.washington.edu/writing-cover-letter
• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/career-goal-statement-examples
• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/resume-vs-cover-letter
• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/whats-the-ideal-cover-letter-length
• ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/how-to-format-a-cover-letter-example
• ↑ https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/first-vs-third-person
• ↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-write-bio/

About This Article

If you have to write an autobiographical description of yourself, write down a list of your talents, interests, and accomplishments. Use this list to help you choose one specific topic for your description, such as your academic achievements or your leadership qualities. Use specific, unique details to support your topic, such as being awarded an academic scholarship or the fact that you were president of the newspaper in high school. You can list bits of your personal life, but be careful not to overshare. If you want to write about yourself a cover letter or personal essay, keep reading the article! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Frequently asked questions

How do i write about myself in a college essay.

Most importantly, your essay should be about you , not another person or thing. An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability.

Your essay shouldn’t be a résumé of your experiences but instead should tell a story that demonstrates your most important values and qualities.

Frequently asked questions: College admissions essays

When writing your Common App essay , choose a prompt that sparks your interest and that you can connect to a unique personal story.

No matter which prompt you choose, admissions officers are more interested in your ability to demonstrate personal development , insight, or motivation for a certain area of study.

The Common App essay is your primary writing sample within the Common Application, a college application portal accepted by more than 900 schools. All your prospective schools that accept the Common App will read this essay to understand your character, background, and value as a potential student.

Since this essay is read by many colleges, avoid mentioning any college names or programs; instead, save tailored answers for the supplementary school-specific essays within the Common App.

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding your message and content. Then, check for flow, tone, style , and clarity. Finally, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors .

If your college essay goes over the word count limit , cut any sentences with tangents or irrelevant details. Delete unnecessary words that clutter your essay.

If you’re struggling to reach the word count for your college essay, add vivid personal stories or share your feelings and insight to give your essay more depth and authenticity.

If you’ve got to write your college essay fast , don’t panic. First, set yourself deadlines: you should spend about 10% of your remaining time on brainstorming, 10% on outlining, 40% writing, 30% revising, and 10% taking breaks in between stages.

Second, brainstorm stories and values based on your essay prompt.

Third, outline your essay based on the montage or narrative essay structure .

Fourth, write specific, personal, and unique stories that would be hard for other students to replicate.

Fifth, revise your essay and make sure it’s clearly written.

Last, if possible, get feedback from an essay coach . Scribbr essay editors can help you revise your essay in 12 hours or less.

Avoid swearing in a college essay , since admissions officers’ opinions of profanity will vary. In some cases, it might be okay to use a vulgar word, such as in dialogue or quotes that make an important point in your essay. However, it’s safest to try to make the same point without swearing.

If you have bad grades on your transcript, you may want to use your college admissions essay to explain the challenging circumstances that led to them. Make sure to avoid dwelling on the negative aspects and highlight how you overcame the situation or learned an important lesson.

However, some college applications offer an additional information section where you can explain your bad grades, allowing you to choose another meaningful topic for your college essay.

Here’s a brief list of college essay topics that may be considered cliché:

• Extracurriculars, especially sports
• Role models
• Dealing with a personal tragedy or death in the family
• Struggling with new life situations (immigrant stories, moving homes, parents’ divorce)
• Becoming a better person after community service, traveling, or summer camp
• Overcoming a difficult class
• Using a common object as an extended metaphor

It’s easier to write a standout essay with a unique topic. However, it’s possible to make a common topic compelling with interesting story arcs, uncommon connections, and an advanced writing style.

Yes. The college application essay is less formal than other academic writing —though of course it’s not mandatory to use contractions in your essay.

In a college essay , you can be creative with your language . When writing about the past, you can use the present tense to make the reader feel as if they were there in the moment with you. But make sure to maintain consistency and when in doubt, default to the correct verb tense according to the time you’re writing about.

The college admissions essay gives admissions officers a different perspective on you beyond your academic achievements, test scores, and extracurriculars. It’s your chance to stand out from other applicants with similar academic profiles by telling a unique, personal, and specific story.

Use a standard font such as Times New Roman or Arial to avoid distracting the reader from your college essay’s content.

A college application essay is less formal than most academic writing . Instead of citing sources formally with in-text citations and a reference list, you can cite them informally in your text.

For example, “In her research paper on genetics, Quinn Roberts explores …”

There is no set number of paragraphs in a college admissions essay . College admissions essays can diverge from the traditional five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in English class. Just make sure to stay under the specified word count .

Most topics are acceptable for college essays if you can use them to demonstrate personal growth or a lesson learned. However, there are a few difficult topics for college essays that should be avoided. Avoid topics that are:

• Overly personal (e.g. graphic details of illness or injury, romantic or sexual relationships)
• Not personal enough (e.g. broad solutions to world problems, inspiring people or things)
• Too negative (e.g. an in-depth look at your flaws, put-downs of others, criticizing the need for a college essay)
• Too boring (e.g. a resume of your academic achievements and extracurriculars)
• Inappropriate for a college essay (e.g. illegal activities, offensive humor, false accounts of yourself, bragging about privilege)

To write an effective diversity essay , include vulnerable, authentic stories about your unique identity, background, or perspective. Provide insight into how your lived experience has influenced your outlook, activities, and goals. If relevant, you should also mention how your background has led you to apply for this university and why you’re a good fit.

Many universities believe a student body composed of different perspectives, beliefs, identities, and backgrounds will enhance the campus learning and community experience.

Admissions officers are interested in hearing about how your unique background, identity, beliefs, culture, or characteristics will enrich the campus community, which is why they assign a diversity essay .

In addition to your main college essay , some schools and scholarships may ask for a supplementary essay focused on an aspect of your identity or background. This is sometimes called a diversity essay .

You can use humor in a college essay , but carefully consider its purpose and use it wisely. An effective use of humor involves unexpected, keen observations of the everyday, or speaks to a deeper theme. Humor shouldn’t be the main focus of the essay, but rather a tool to improve your storytelling.

Get a second opinion from a teacher, counselor, or essay coach on whether your essay’s humor is appropriate.

Though admissions officers are interested in hearing your story, they’re also interested in how you tell it. An exceptionally written essay will differentiate you from other applicants, meaning that admissions officers will spend more time reading it.

You can use literary devices to catch your reader’s attention and enrich your storytelling; however, focus on using just a few devices well, rather than trying to use as many as possible.

To decide on a good college essay topic , spend time thoughtfully answering brainstorming questions. If you still have trouble identifying topics, try the following two strategies:

• Identify your qualities → Brainstorm stories that demonstrate these qualities
• Identify memorable stories → Connect your qualities to these stories

You can also ask family, friends, or mentors to help you brainstorm topics, give feedback on your potential essay topics, or recall key stories that showcase your qualities.

Yes—admissions officers don’t expect everyone to have a totally unique college essay topic . But you must differentiate your essay from others by having a surprising story arc, an interesting insight, and/or an advanced writing style .

There are no foolproof college essay topics —whatever your topic, the key is to write about it effectively. However, a good topic

• Is meaningful, specific, and personal to you
• Focuses on you and your experiences
• Reveals something beyond your test scores, grades, and extracurriculars
• Is creative and original

Unlike a five-paragraph essay, your admissions essay should not end by summarizing the points you’ve already made. It’s better to be creative and aim for a strong final impression.

You should also avoid stating the obvious (for example, saying that you hope to be accepted).

There are a few strategies you can use for a memorable ending to your college essay :

• Return to the beginning with a “full circle” structure
• Reveal the main point or insight in your story
• Look to the future
• End on an action

The best technique will depend on your topic choice, essay outline, and writing style. You can write several endings using different techniques to see which works best.

College deadlines vary depending on the schools you’re applying to and your application plan:

• For early action applications and the first round of early decision applications, the deadline is on November 1 or 15. Decisions are released by mid-December.
• For the second round of early decision applications, the deadline is January 1 or 15. Decisions are released in January or February.
• Regular decision deadlines usually fall between late November and mid-March, and decisions are released in March or April.
• Rolling admission deadlines run from July to April, and decisions are released around four to eight weeks after submission.

Depending on your prospective schools’ requirements, you may need to submit scores for the SAT or ACT as part of your college application .

Some schools now no longer require students to submit test scores; however, you should still take the SAT or ACT and aim to get a high score to strengthen your application package.

Aim to take the SAT or ACT in the spring of your junior year to give yourself enough time to retake it in the fall of your senior year if necessary.

Apply early for federal student aid and application fee waivers. You can also look for scholarships from schools, corporations, and charitable foundations.

To maximize your options, you should aim to apply to about eight schools:

• Two reach schools that might be difficult to get into
• Four match schools that you have a good chance of getting into
• Two safety schools that you feel confident you’ll get into

The college admissions essay accounts for roughly 25% of the weight of your application .

At highly selective schools, there are four qualified candidates for every spot. While your academic achievements are important, your college admissions essay can help you stand out from other applicants with similar profiles.

In general, for your college application you will need to submit all of the following:

• Your personal information
• List of extracurriculars and awards
• College application essays
• Transcripts
• Standardized test scores
• Recommendation letters.

Different colleges may have specific requirements, so make sure you check exactly what’s expected in the application guidance.

You should start thinking about your college applications the summer before your junior year to give you sufficient time for college visits, taking standardized tests, applying for financial aid , writing essays, and collecting application material.

Yes, but make sure your essay directly addresses the prompt, respects the word count , and demonstrates the organization’s values.

If you plan ahead, you can save time by writing one scholarship essay for multiple prompts with similar questions. In a scholarship tracker spreadsheet, you can group or color-code overlapping essay prompts; then, write a single essay for multiple scholarships. Sometimes, you can even reuse or adapt your main college essay .

You can start applying for scholarships as early as your junior year. Continue applying throughout your senior year.

Invest time in applying for various scholarships , especially local ones with small dollar amounts, which are likely easier to win and more reflective of your background and interests. It will be easier for you to write an authentic and compelling essay if the scholarship topic is meaningful to you.

You can find scholarships through your school counselor, community network, or an internet search.

A scholarship essay requires you to demonstrate your values and qualities while answering the prompt’s specific question.

After researching the scholarship organization, identify a personal experience that embodies its values and exemplifies how you will be a successful student.

A standout college essay has several key ingredients:

• A unique, personally meaningful topic
• A memorable introduction with vivid imagery or an intriguing hook
• Specific stories and language that show instead of telling
• Vulnerability that’s authentic but not aimed at soliciting sympathy
• Clear writing in an appropriate style and tone
• A conclusion that offers deep insight or a creative ending

While timelines will differ depending on the student, plan on spending at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing the first draft of your college admissions essay , and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Don’t forget to save enough time for breaks between each writing and editing stage.

You should already begin thinking about your essay the summer before your senior year so that you have plenty of time to try out different topics and get feedback on what works.

Your college essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s weight. It may be the deciding factor in whether you’re accepted, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurricular track records.

In most cases, quoting other people isn’t a good way to start your college essay . Admissions officers want to hear your thoughts about yourself, and quotes often don’t achieve that. Unless a quote truly adds something important to your essay that it otherwise wouldn’t have, you probably shouldn’t include it.

Cliché openers in a college essay introduction are usually general and applicable to many students and situations. Most successful introductions are specific: they only work for the unique essay that follows.

The key to a strong college essay introduction is not to give too much away. Try to start with a surprising statement or image that raises questions and compels the reader to find out more.

The introduction of your college essay is the first thing admissions officers will read and therefore your most important opportunity to stand out. An excellent introduction will keep admissions officers reading, allowing you to tell them what you want them to know.

You can speed up this process by shortening and smoothing your writing with a paraphrasing tool . After that, you can use the summarizer to shorten it even more.

If you’re struggling to reach the word count for your college essay, add vivid personal stories or share your feelings and insight to give your essay more depth and authenticity.

Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit to write a developed and thoughtful essay.

You should aim to stay under the specified word count limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, don’t write too little, as it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a detailed and insightful narrative about yourself.

If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.

In your application essay , admissions officers are looking for particular features : they want to see context on your background, positive traits that you could bring to campus, and examples of you demonstrating those qualities.

Colleges want to be able to differentiate students who seem similar on paper. In the college application essay , they’re looking for a way to understand each applicant’s unique personality and experiences.

You don’t need a title for your college admissions essay , but you can include one if you think it adds something important.

Your college essay’s format should be as simple as possible:

• Use a standard, readable font
• Use 1.5 or double spacing
• If attaching a file, save it as a PDF
• Stick to the word count
• Avoid unusual formatting and unnecessary decorative touches

There are no set rules for how to structure a college application essay , but these are two common structures that work:

• A montage structure, a series of vignettes with a common theme.
• A narrative structure, a single story that shows your personal growth or how you overcame a challenge.

Avoid the five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in high school.

Campus visits are always helpful, but if you can’t make it in person, the college website will have plenty of information for you to explore. You should look through the course catalog and even reach out to current faculty with any questions about the school.

Colleges set a “Why this college?” essay because they want to see that you’ve done your research. You must prove that you know what makes the school unique and can connect that to your own personal goals and academic interests.

Depending on your writing, you may go through several rounds of revision . Make sure to put aside your essay for a little while after each editing stage to return with a fresh perspective.

Teachers and guidance counselors can help you check your language, tone, and content . Ask for their help at least one to two months before the submission deadline, as many other students will also want their help.

Friends and family are a good resource to check for authenticity. It’s best to seek help from family members with a strong writing or English educational background, or from older siblings and cousins who have been through the college admissions process.

If possible, get help from an essay coach or editor ; they’ll have specialized knowledge of college admissions essays and be able to give objective expert feedback.

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding message, flow, tone, style , and clarity. Then, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors.

Include specific, personal details and use your authentic voice to shed a new perspective on a common human experience.

Through specific stories, you can weave your achievements and qualities into your essay so that it doesn’t seem like you’re bragging from a resume.

When writing about yourself , including difficult experiences or failures can be a great way to show vulnerability and authenticity, but be careful not to overshare, and focus on showing how you matured from the experience.

First, spend time reflecting on your core values and character . You can start with these questions:

• What are three words your friends or family would use to describe you, and why would they choose them?
• Whom do you admire most and why?
• What are you most proud of? Ashamed of?

However, you should do a comprehensive brainstorming session to fully understand your values. Also consider how your values and goals match your prospective university’s program and culture. Then, brainstorm stories that illustrate the fit between the two.

In a college application essay , you can occasionally bend grammatical rules if doing so adds value to the storytelling process and the essay maintains clarity.

However, use standard language rules if your stylistic choices would otherwise distract the reader from your overall narrative or could be easily interpreted as unintentional errors.

Write concisely and use the active voice to maintain a quick pace throughout your essay and make sure it’s the right length . Avoid adding definitions unless they provide necessary explanation.

Use first-person “I” statements to speak from your perspective . Use appropriate word choices that show off your vocabulary but don’t sound like you used a thesaurus. Avoid using idioms or cliché expressions by rewriting them in a creative, original way.

If you’re an international student applying to a US college and you’re comfortable using American idioms or cultural references , you can. But instead of potentially using them incorrectly, don’t be afraid to write in detail about yourself within your own culture.

Provide context for any words, customs, or places that an American admissions officer might be unfamiliar with.

College application essays are less formal than other kinds of academic writing . Use a conversational yet respectful tone , as if speaking with a teacher or mentor. Be vulnerable about your feelings, thoughts, and experiences to connect with the reader.

Aim to write in your authentic voice , with a style that sounds natural and genuine. You can be creative with your word choice, but don’t use elaborate vocabulary to impress admissions officers.

Admissions officers use college admissions essays to evaluate your character, writing skills , and ability to self-reflect . The essay is your chance to show what you will add to the academic community.

The college essay may be the deciding factor in your application , especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.

Some colleges also require supplemental essays about specific topics, such as why you chose that specific college . Scholarship essays are often required to obtain financial aid .

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• Legacy Projects

How to Write a Short Essay About Yourself: Step-By-Step

Updated 06/4/2022

Published 06/19/2020

Yvonne Bertovich

Contributing writer

Cake values integrity and transparency. We follow a strict editorial process to provide you with the best content possible. We also may earn commission from purchases made through affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Learn more in our affiliate disclosure .

Writing or even talking about yourself may not come easily to you. However, for professional or educational reasons, it’s often a necessity. There are other instances when writing about yourself may make more sense, as you can provide the rawest and most honest perspective.

Jump ahead to these sections:

Steps for writing about yourself, tips for writing about yourself creatively or confidently.

• Examples of Things to Write About Yourself

You should feel empowered—not intimidated—in taking on a writing project about yourself. Use it as a way to challenge how you view your own experiences, talents, and more. We’ll discuss some steps for writing about yourself as well as provide a few examples.  

Writing isn’t for everyone, especially when it’s required. As much as you may dislike it, following the steps below can help the process go that much more smoothly.

If you find that following a different order than what we’ve recommended for you works better for your process, feel free to adjust accordingly. 

Step 1: Determine your purpose 

What’s causing you to write this “thing” about yourself? What exactly are you writing? It may surprise you that people write all kinds of pieces for themselves—even writing your own obituary isn’t out of the question anymore. 

The more specific you can get with yourself about your purpose will help the rest of the process. If it’s something stressful, like a college admission essay or a cover letter, try to frame the project in a different light. 

For example, “I’m writing this essay to show people my heart and how passionate I am about removing disparities and barriers in healthcare. I believe in my abilities, and I want to further my education, so I can help heal people.”

Step 2: Ask yourself some questions 

For any good piece of writing, there has to be fact behind it (if even these facts are abstract in narrative or fiction). The best way to gather facts about any subject is to ask a variety of questions, both soft- and hard-hitting. 

You may ask these questions internally, during research, or directly and literally. Treat this question step as a self-interview.

Here are some questions to ask yourself . You may also ask yourself:

• What is my goal of writing this piece?
• What themes or ideas do I want to focus on?
• What are my strengths and weaknesses?
• What are some important lessons I’ve learned?
• What do I want others to know or understand about me?

Step 3: Organize your answers 

After asking yourself the example questions above as well as others, you should be sure to write down your answers and begin organizing them if you haven’t already. 

It may be tempting to just answer your own questions in your head as you go—but don’t. This will just make the writing step more difficult. You may think that you’ll remember every good point or profound thought you come up with, but memory is a tricky thing. 

If you’re working through your questions during a time when you’re not ready or able to sit down and type or scribble them out, at least make some notes in your phone or in a journal so you can have some descriptive hints for later. No matter how big of an epiphany you may have, it’s possible you’ll forget it. 

Step 4: Write a draft 

If your ideas are already fairly organized, writing your draft should come fairly easily to you. The draft process, however, is when you can start spicing things up with anecdotes, your own personal voice, themes, metaphors—all that fun stuff. The point in you writing something about yourself for yourself is for the very reason that you can make it unquestionably you .

Dull, watered-down words or even over-hyped language from a thesaurus plug-in isn’t going to impress anyone. Writing something about yourself (unless the assignment is creative or unorthodox) isn’t the time to act like something you’re not.

All of this being said, don’t stress yourself out too much. Letting your ideas flow freely and then editing or revising them later is how you should approach the process anyway. You don’t want to put too many restrictions on your ideas from the get-go. Warring with yourself about your ideas while writing is only going to tire you out sooner. 

Think about it—you may spend hours trying to write a piece while overthinking that’s no better than a draft you could have written in 30 minutes on the fly. Not being totally in love with your first draft is normal. It just allows you that much more room to improve. 

Step 5: Put your progress aside

Much like during the draft process, it’s very possible to overthink your work after it’s mostly done. If you constantly keep re-reading it or rehashing your ideas in your head, they may start to sound odd, or you may try to add where you need to trim. 

For example, the same concept applies to repeating the same word over and over aloud — it’ll likely start to sound strange or even wrong the more you hear it. This also applies to music — ever play a song you love over and over till you hate it? 

You need to give your words and your brain some time to rest away from each other until you try to make any drastic edits or changes. That being said, you may love what you’ve written already and decide you don’t need to change a thing—that’s great!

Step 6: Review and edit

After your break, you can pick up your writing once again. Read it with a critical eye. Go back and think deeply about your purpose and any provided prompts. Have you answered everything you intended to or are required to?

It’s not uncommon—though devastating—to write an entire piece only to realize you wrote from the wrong frame of reference or focused on the wrong issue. For example, if you were asked to write about a challenge you overcame in your life by following an important virtue, but you only wrote about winning a basketball championship and not the struggle behind it, this may miss the mark. 

If you find a good number of issues in your work, don’t feel tempted to scrap the entire thing. What may work instead is to copy and paste your writing line-by-line into a new document. This way, you can save as much as possible while being sure to resolve even small discrepancies.

Step 7: Finalize your work

After you’ve undergone the brutal process of self-editing (or enlisting help from someone else you trust) you can prepare yourself for the home stretch. Finalizing your work shouldn’t take very long.

Y our process may differ; however, it’ll likely come down to reading over your work a few more times just to make sure you haven’t missed words, punctuation, or proper grammar. 

It’s OK to use this step to feel proud of yourself, too. You may not take a lot of time to reflect on your life and everything you’ve been through—it’s important to practice self-love in this way and celebrate your accomplishments.

Talking or writing about yourself may not be everyone’s cup of tea. For example, did you need to provide a fun fact recently but draw a blank? You’re not alone. In fact, many people have a false assumption that they’re boring. 

On the flip side, perhaps you’re used to talking about yourself, or, at least you’ve got the “fake it till you make it” type of confidence down-pat. However, you too can only benefit from adding a bit more razzle-dazzle to your spiels and writing assignments. Here are a few tips for writing about yourself creatively or confidently.  

Allow yourself space

If you have an upcoming project or writing assignment that has you on edge, consider stepping away. Even if you don’t consider yourself an outdoorsy person, a walk around the block may help you breathe and get your creativity flowing. Naturally, the more sound your idea or angle, the more confident you’ll feel about your upcoming performance.  

Keep that ego in check

An underinflated ego is just as bad as an overinflated one. Pay close attention to your internal dialogue when approaching new projects or writing tasks (or, honestly anything that comes up during your day). How much of what swirls around in your mind is fact? How much of it is just fleeting thoughts or opinions? You are not your thoughts, and you always have choices. Make good ones and be kind to yourself. 

Try this: Instead of thinking to yourself, “Wow, this is a really complex writing assignment. I can’t do this.” Or, “How am I ever going to get into my dream school with this essay? I’m not a strong writer.” 

Change your internal dialogue to, “I have good ideas. I may not have my plan figured out right now, but I’ll get it done,” or, “I have so many great skills to bring to the table and I am very passionate about what’s brought me here. I will convey this the best I can.”

Crowdsource

Sometimes an outside opinion can give us much-needed perspective. Ask your friends, family, loved ones, or coworkers to describe you in a few words or even in abstract ways. Don’t view this as you’re fishing for compliments. Ask your loved ones for honesty, as this insight can only help you when writing about yourself. 

Build up a fuel bank

Pulling inspiration out of thin air may not always be possible. However, if you build up a few reliable sources of inspiration, the next time a project hits, you’ll be prepared. You can fuel your creativity and confidence in a variety of ways. 

For example, you can create certain playlists for different moods, save favorite art or graphics in a digital folder or keep printed versions in your home or office, write down affirmations or notes-to-self in a journal or app, and so on. 

Reflect on past accomplishments and setbacks

Even if you aren’t a fan of journaling, writing about yourself is far easier if you take the time to reflect, if only mentally. If you know you have a deadline to write about yourself in the near future, you may want to physically or mentally jot down a few real-life examples or experiences that come to mind. 

But how do you get in the right headspace to reflect? What if you only witness recurring thoughts about past events while trying to fall asleep? Be sure to practice the first tip in this section: Give yourself some space to think. For once, limit the distractions, keep all other screens put away or turn on your "do not disturb" feature.

Now, think about some past accomplishments or setbacks that may not even seem relevant to the topic of the assignment. You may have an epiphany about unrelated things or discover something about how you operate. For example, you might realize that you feel less nervous in social and professional settings if you call out your anxiety as being excited. 

Examples of Writing About Yourself

Even if you feel super confident about writing about yourself now, we wanted to provide a few short examples to help you get started. Your tone, word choice, and more may differ depending on which piece you’re working on.

Here are some tips for writing or publishing your life story you may also find helpful. 

In a memoir or essay

Those were probably the best and the worst days of my life. I had never felt more happy and never felt more sad. I felt as though I were so close to having everything I had ever wanted, yet it seemed with every step forward, I had to take two steps back. It was exhausting. How did I get through it? To be quite honest, I have no damn idea. 

Perspective helped. I knew I could have had it way worse; I knew that my struggle wasn’t unique. I knew, too, that even when the small wins would come they’d have yet another loss right on their tails. I paid dearly for having too much heart and optimism, so I regularly had to hose myself down with logic and pessimism. 

On your blog or website

If you’re reading this, it’s too late. Just kidding! That’s just a really good Drake album. I wanted to take some time to talk about what’s been going on in my life lately for those of you who are nosey enough to care. Again, kidding, I know some of you really care. I’m so grateful to have even this small following that I have. It’s wild, really. Who would have thought that people want to know what’s going on in my head at any given time? Joke’s on you guys, though, because I don’t fully know all the time. 

I guess I’ll start off by saying that work has been a whirlwind. As you all know, it isn’t an easy time for anyone, so please don’t take this declaration as a complaint. I’m thrilled to still have a job despite everything going on. However, leaving this reflection at just that would be doing both myself and you all a disservice. It’s weak. It doesn’t really describe what’s been going on. Allow me to continue.  

In a college essay

When I was young, my grandmother told me I couldn’t please everyone — that some people just wouldn’t like me for no reason at all. This was very hard for me to swallow at times. What does this have to do with who I am today and why I plan to attend your university? 

Well, this early lesson demonstrates that in order for this world to keep spinning, we all have to be unwavering in our own pursuits. We are ourselves. We can’t be anyone else. In that, we all have the responsibility to bring our unique talents, wisdom, and heart to the table — even when we’re seated across from people who may not like us. 

Sometimes Only You Can Do It

Writing about yourself may always be challenging for you, but who better to do so than who knows you best? If you work through the process in every situation and give yourself some patience, there’s no question that you can’t craft something amazing. You may also be interested in this article about how to write family stories .

Your written words mean more than you think. This becomes a part of your legacy when you're gone, and it's one of the ways you'll be remembered. While many families choose custom urns from Foreverence or even to craft memorial diamonds from Eterneva , your words are something that live after you're gone.

While it might not seem natural at first, learning to write about yourself, your perspective, and your experiences carries a lot of significance. Who knows who might read these words when you're gone?

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• Condolences & What To Say

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Essay Papers Writing Online

How to craft a compelling essay about yourself and capture your reader’s attention from the start.

When it comes to crafting a compelling essay about yourself, it can be both challenging and rewarding. Your personal narrative is a unique opportunity to showcase your experiences, personality, and aspirations in a way that captivates the reader. Whether you are writing a college application essay, a scholarship essay, or simply want to share your story with others, there are several key tips to keep in mind to ensure your essay stands out.

First and foremost, be authentic and genuine. Your essay should reflect your true self and values. Avoid embellishing or inventing stories to make yourself appear more impressive. Readers can typically spot insincerity, so it’s important to be honest and transparent in your writing. Share your genuine thoughts, feelings, and experiences to create a compelling and relatable narrative.

Furthermore, focus on a clear and cohesive storyline. Your essay should have a central theme or message that ties everything together. Consider structuring your essay around a specific event, challenge, or accomplishment that has shaped you as a person. By providing a cohesive narrative arc, you can engage the reader and keep them interested from beginning to end.

Techniques for Crafting a Compelling Personal Essay

When crafting a personal essay, it is important to start with a strong and engaging introduction. Use an anecdote, a surprising fact, or a provocative question to grab the reader’s attention from the beginning.

One effective technique for making your personal essay compelling is to be honest and authentic. Share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a genuine and meaningful way. This will help readers to connect with you on a deeper level.

Another important tip is to focus on a specific theme or message in your essay. Whether it’s a life lesson you’ve learned, a personal challenge you’ve overcome, or a significant event in your life, having a clear and coherent theme will make your essay more impactful and memorable.

• Use vivid and descriptive language to paint a picture for your readers. Show, don’t tell, by using sensory details and concrete examples to bring your story to life.
• Consider the structure of your essay. Organize your thoughts in a logical and coherent manner, with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. This will help to guide your readers through your story and keep them engaged until the end.
• Finally, don’t be afraid to revise and edit your essay multiple times. Revision is an essential part of the writing process, and taking the time to fine-tune your essay will help you to craft a compelling and polished piece of writing.

Strategies to Capture Readers’ Interest in Your Story

When writing an essay about yourself, it’s important to capture the readers’ interest from the very beginning. Here are some strategies to make your story engaging:

1. Start with a hook: Begin your essay with a compelling hook that grabs the readers’ attention. This could be an interesting anecdote, a thought-provoking question, or a shocking statement.

2. Show, don’t tell: Instead of simply listing your accomplishments or qualities, show the readers through vivid descriptions and concrete examples. Paint a picture that allows them to visualize your experiences.

3. Be authentic: Readers are drawn to authenticity, so don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and share your true feelings and thoughts. This will create a connection with your audience.

4. Use descriptive language: Utilize descriptive language to bring your story to life. Add details that engage the readers’ senses and immerse them in your narrative.

5. Keep it concise: While it’s important to provide enough detail, make sure to keep your essay concise and to the point. Avoid rambling or including unnecessary information that may bore your readers.

6. Show growth and reflection: Demonstrate how you’ve grown and evolved through your experiences. Reflect on key moments that have shaped you and share insights that can inspire or resonate with the readers.

Ways to Infuse Personality and Authenticity in Your Writing

1. Be Yourself: The key to writing an engaging essay about yourself is to be authentic and true to who you are. Don’t try to paint a picture of someone you think others want to see. Instead, share your unique perspective and experiences.

2. Use Personal Anecdotes: One effective way to infuse personality into your writing is to include personal anecdotes or stories that showcase your character and values. This helps readers connect with you on a deeper level.

3. Show Vulnerability: Don’t be afraid to show vulnerability in your writing. Sharing your insecurities or struggles can make your essay more relatable and emotionally resonant.

4. Be Specific: Details matter when it comes to writing about yourself. Instead of using general statements, provide specific examples and details that paint a clear picture of who you are and what matters to you.

5. Use Your Voice: Let your personality shine through in your writing by using your own voice. Avoid overly formal language and instead, write in a way that feels natural and true to who you are.

6. Seek Feedback: Before finalizing your essay, consider seeking feedback from others who know you well. They can provide valuable insights and help ensure that your writing truly captures your personality and authenticity.

Tips for Showcasing Your Unique Experiences and Perspectives

1. Be Authentic: When writing about your personal experiences and perspectives, it’s important to be authentic and honest. Share your true thoughts and feelings to create a genuine connection with your readers.

2. Use Concrete Examples: To make your essay more engaging, provide specific examples of your experiences and views. Use vivid descriptions and details to paint a clear picture for your readers.

3. Highlight Your Growth: Reflect on how your experiences have shaped you and contributed to your personal growth. Showcasing your evolution over time can add depth and interest to your essay.

4. Share Unique Insights: Use your essay as an opportunity to share unique insights and perspectives that set you apart from others. Offer fresh perspectives or alternative viewpoints to spark curiosity and intrigue.

5. Engage Your Audience: Consider your audience and tailor your writing to capture their interest. Use storytelling techniques, humor, or emotional appeal to keep your readers engaged from start to finish.

Methods to Conclude Your Essay with Impact and Reflection

1. Summarize Your Main Points: In your conclusion, briefly summarize the key points you’ve made throughout the essay. This reinforces the main ideas and leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

2. Offer a Thought-Provoking Insight: Leave your reader with a thought-provoking insight or a question that encourages further reflection. This can prompt the reader to think about your essay’s themes long after they’ve finished reading.

3. Connect to the Beginning: Consider bringing your essay full circle by referring back to the introduction. This can create a sense of closure and unity in your writing.

4. Reflect on Personal Growth: If your essay is about personal experiences or growth, take the opportunity to reflect on how you’ve evolved or learned from your experiences. This adds depth and meaning to your conclusion.

5. End with a Powerful Quote or Anecdote: Conclude your essay with a powerful quote, anecdote, or statement that encapsulates the main message of your writing. This can leave a strong impact on the reader and make your essay memorable.

By employing these methods, you can craft a conclusion that not only wraps up your essay effectively but also leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

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Essay About Yourself: Tell an A+ Story

• Icon Calendar 22 June 2024
• Icon Page 4305 words
• Icon Clock 20 min read

Essays are essential in demonstrating student’s proficiency in producing academic texts. Basically, this proficiency includes writing creatively and without notable mistakes and errors. By considering writing essays about themselves, students should follow the same approach that they use when doing other types of documents, including research papers. To effectively introduce yourself in writing, authors start with a compelling fact or story that highlights their key attributes and sets a particular tone for the rest of their narratives. In essence, people should focus on preparation, stage set up, writing process, and perfecting their compositions. Moreover, these steps are essential in ensuring a writer’s essay is of high quality. In turn, such papers on yourself do not rely on external research to strengthen the main arguments but include personal anecdotes to make them authentic and original. Hence, students need to learn how to write an essay about yourself correctly and introduce a high-quality story to their readers.

General Guidelines

Essay writing is one of the activities that students engage in to develop their creative skills. In this case, learners are assigned papers about themselves to encourage self-reflection, develop personal narrative skills, and help educators to gain a deeper understanding of their students’ backgrounds and perspectives. Unlike a research paper, an essay that a student writes about yourself does not rely on external research. Basically, one can argue that this type of article is exploratory. Moreover, this composition explores a writer’s life across different settings, such as school life, home life, and social life. While such compositions may differ from a research document in content, they follow the same structure: introduction, body, and conclusion. Besides, a standard research paper utilizes external research to make it relevant, but a personal essay that a student writes about yourself uses only personal experiences to create relevance. In other words, since such a piece explores a student’s life, it is only prudent for a person to include one or several stories that give readers a glimpse into his or her personality.

What Is an Essay About Yourself and Its Purpose

According to its definition, an essay about yourself, often referred to as a personal or autobiographical paper, is a narrative where authors explore and reflect upon their own life experiences, thoughts, and feelings. The primary purpose of writing an essay about yourself is to provide more insights into writers’ identities, backgrounds, and significant life moments that shaped their characters and worldviews (Tipler, 2024). This type of composition is commonly used in educational settings for various assignments, college applications, or scholarship submissions, as it helps admission communities and readers to understand applicants beyond their academic achievements and test scores. Beyond academic or professional settings, complting such papers also serves as a valid tool for self-reflection and self-analysis, allowing authors to examine their own growth, challenges, and achievements (Danvas, 2018). Hence, an essay about yourself is both a self-expressive exercise and a means of communication, being a way to express one’s inner world. In terms of pages and words, a typical length of an essay about yourself varies significantly depending on academic levels and specific assignment requirements, and general guidelines are:

High School

• Pages: 1-2 pages
• Words: 300-600 words
• Comment: High school essays are typically shorter and simpler, focusing on a brief overview of personal experiences and reflections.
• Pages: 2-3 pages
• Words: 600-900 words
• Comment: College essays tend to be more detailed, exploring personal experiences in greater depth and often relating them to the applicant’s future goals and aspirations.

University:

• Pages: 3-5 pages
• Words: 900-1500 words
• Comment: University-level essays require more comprehensive reflection and analysis of personal experiences, often incorporating a more sophisticated narrative structure and deeper insights.

Master’s:

• Pages: 5-7 pages
• Words: 1500-2100 words
• Comment: Essays at the master’s level are more extensive and analytical, expecting a thorough exploration of personal and professional experiences, demonstrating how these aspects have prepared a particular writer for advanced studies.
• Pages: 7-10 pages
• Words: 2100-3000 words
• Comment: Ph.D. essays are the most detailed and in-depth papers, requiring a rigorous and reflective examination of a writer’s academic and professional journey, including specific achievements, challenges, and future research interests.

Note: Numbers of paragraphs and words provided in a table above reflect a minimum for writing a good essay about yourself for any academic level. As such, some sections can be added, deleted, or combined depending on assignment instructions, including other length requirements.

Writing an Essay About Yourself: A Step-by-Step Guide

To start an essay about yourself, writers begin with an engaging introduction that captures a reader’s attention and includes a thesis statement summarizing the main points they will cover. In this case, a typical hook effect in an essay about yourself is a compelling opening statement designed to grab a reader’s attention and encourage people to continue reading (Sawyer, 2016). Moreover, a fascinating introduction sentence for a paper about yourself should capture a reader’s attention with a surprising fact, unique experience, or provocative statement that sets an engaging tone for an entire narrative. On the other hand, the strategy of writing academic texts is almost the same, regardless of the kind of the type of text (Duarte, 2019). In particular, whether an academic assignment involves a research essay, report, thesis paper, dissertation, or personal story, writers must engage in some activities that are similar across these types of works. Basically, these activities include preparation, stage set up, writing process, and a final wrap up. In turn, some examples of sentence starters for beginning an essay about yourself are:

• From my young age, I have always been captivated by the world of [specific interest], and this passion has shaped many aspects of my life, including … .
• One of the most transformative experiences I have had was when I [describe the event], which taught me the importance of … .
• Growing up in [your hometown], I was surrounded by [describe environment], which instilled in me a deep appreciation for … .
• My family has always placed a strong emphasis on [value or tradition], and this has significantly influenced my belief in … .
• I believe my greatest strength is my ability to [specific skill or trait], which has helped me to overcome challenges, such as … .
• A significant challenge I faced was [describe this challenge], and it profoundly impacted my personal growth by teaching me … .
• Throughout my academic journey, I have developed a passion for [subject or field], which has inspired me to pursue … .
• My cultural background, being [describe your background], has deeply influenced my perspective on [specific topic], allowing me to … .
• A significant experience that taught me a real life lesson was when I [describe the experience], leading me to understand the value of … .
• Looking ahead, my goals include pursuing a career in [field], where I hope to contribute to [specific aspiration or impact], driven by my experiences in … .

Step 1: Preparation

Preparation is the first step in making an essay of any type. Basically, this stage has several components, including defining a specific topic, preparing ideas, and considering a target audience (Cho et al., 2021). To write an essay about yourself, authors choose an engaging topic, create an outline, start with a captivating introduction, develop detailed body paragraphs, and conclude with a summary and reflection on their personal growth. Concerning a specific topic, a person who writes about yourself can use an instructor’s theme or choose one if none is provided (Sawyer, 2016). In the latter case, authors should settle for a topic that interests them, one that they can find information to back up claims and arguments easily. When it comes to writing all about me essay, students should choose topics that allow them to capture a broad perspective about their lives. In preparation for ideas, students need to reflect on their lives, including positive and negative experiences and strengths and weaknesses (Tipler, 2024). In particular, to write about your achievements and qualities, authors highlight specific accomplishments and the skills or attributes that enabled them to succeed, illustrating their impact and significance. About a target audience, they should write with specific expectations of instructors in mind.

Step 2: Setting Up the Stage

After preparation, the next step in academic paper writing is to set up the stage. Basically, components of this step include making notes, creating an essay outline, and creating an annotated bibliography (Sawyer, 2016). In this case, a student should make notes when reflecting on his or her own experiences. For example, to start a narrative essay about yourself, writers begin with an engaging anecdote or vivid description that sets a particular scene and introduces the main themes of their stories (Danvas, 2018). In this case, a good personal anecdote comes into play. Then, authors should use a personal account, highlighting a positive or negative experience and areas of strength or weakness. When it comes to creating an outline, students should use academic standards of essay outlines – introduction, body, and conclusion (Tipler, 2024). Although it is unnecessary to write down these headings, authors must ensure that those reading all about me essays can identify where each of these sections begins and ends. In turn, there is no need for an annotated bibliography since no external research is required.

Step 3: Writing Process

After preparing and setting up the stage, students start organizing their essays about themselves. Basically, components of this step include making a first draft, ensuring an entire paper captures everything that authors intend to share with readers, has a thesis statement, includes necessary body sections, and captures the writer’s concluding thoughts. In this case, first drafts are essential because they allow people to have an opportunity to perfect their papers through revisions and editions (Sawyer, 2016). Then, a central thesis statement is a writer’s guide. Besides, it dictates what authors should focus on in essay body parts. Further on, to start a paragraph about yourself, writers begin with a specific detail or experience that highlights a key aspect of their personalities or backgrounds (Tipler, 2024). When writing about yourself, authors focus on their backgrounds, experiences, strengths, values, and goals to provide a comprehensive picture of who you are. In turn, concluding thoughts are the writer’s words that summarize lessons learned. Hence, each of these components is essential in an essay about yourself.

Step 4: Wrapping Up

After completing a first version of a paper, students begin to write a final draft. However, before they start, they should read and reread their first drafts to ensure their documents are free of any grammatical mistakes and other errors, such as inconsistent arguments and illogical flow of ideas. For example, if writers identify such mistakes and errors, they should revise and edit an essay about yourself accordingly (Danvas, 2018). In turn, revisions help authors to eliminate inconsistencies in arguments and illogical flow of ideas, while editions help them to fix grammatical mistakes, such as a lack of punctuation or wrong use.

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All About Me Characteristics for Essays

Main Features of Writing All About Me Essay

1️⃣ topic and concluding sentences.

To start all about me essay, writers begin with a captivating opening that highlights a unique aspect of their personalities, an intriguing anecdote, or a meaningful life event to immediately engage readers. Moreover, students should begin each body section as they would do in any other article – start with a topic sentence (Sawyer, 2016). Basically, this sentence captures a single idea that people interrogate in a particular essay section, meaning that it offers an insight into a paragraph’s content. On the other hand, a concluding sentence is a final thought about what writers have said in a specific section (Sawyer, 2016). Finally, standard academic rules for essays dictate that a concluding sentence links a single topic sentence with a central thesis statement. In other words, it is the part of a single paragraph that creates sense for readers regarding a topic sentence and its place in an author’s main argument.

2️⃣ Transition, Peer Review, and Final Draft

To write all about me essay, authors introduce themselves with a compelling opening, organize their personal experiences, achievements, and values in well-structured paragraphs, and conclude with reflections on their growth and aspirations. Essentially, people need to ensure that, as they talk about themselves, they create a logical flow of ideas from the beginning paragraph to the end (Faccio et al., 2019). Such elements may be transition words, like “consequently,” “furthermore,” “nevertheless,” and “hence.” To ensure that students do not miss identifying errors in their essays, they should subject their works to a peer review. For example, this aspect involves giving ta first draft to a mentor who reads through it to make sure it is perfect (Sawyer, 2016). When mentors are satisfied with a paper’s quality, students start writing a final draft. However, they should also read through it at least twice and subject it to peer review before submitting it to a specific department.

3️⃣ Specific Information

As indicated, writing an essay about yourself differs from a research paper because it does not rely on external research to back up claims and arguments. Instead, authors utilize a personal story to shed light on their experiences and attributes (Tipler, 2024). In this sense, such personal anecdotes are the specific information necessary for an essay about yourself. Further on, to write about your challenges and mistakes, authors focus on describing a specific situation, how they addressed it, and the lessons they learned from this experience (Tipler, 2024). Basically, this information is specific to a person provided through reflective writing. Hence, a personal essay that a student writes, which is about yourself, should be exploratory, descriptive, and thoughtful.

Common Mistakes

Like any other academic text, writing an essay about oneself is often prone to mistakes. For example, some of the common mistakes that writers or students make when doing an essay about yourself include writing about things that do not help readers to have a proper grasp of their personality and using exaggeration (Tipler, 2024). Basically, making a paper about yourself should enhance the readers’ understanding of authors – their life experiences, attributes, likes and dislikes, and strengths and weaknesses. In turn, exaggeration involves using information that is likely to be untrue to impress readers. For instance, authors need to focus on personal anecdotes, as they help to highlight instances of an author’s life that is worth noting (Danvas, 2018). To avoid exaggeration, students must desist from trying to impress and seek to be authentic in their essays. Finally, people should avoid the next common mistakes:

• Lack of focus: Jumping between unrelated topics without a clear narrative.
• Being too vague: Providing general statements without specific examples.
• Overly formal or informal tone: Writing about yourself in a tone that is too stiff or too casual.
• Ignoring a target audience: Failing to consider who will be reading your essay.
• Focusing too much on negatives: Overemphasizing failures or challenges without showing how you overcame them.
• Excessive self-praise: Coming across as arrogant by excessively highlighting achievements.
• Lack of reflection: Simply listing events without reflecting on their significance.
• Poor structure: Writing an essay about yourself without a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.
• Grammar and spelling errors: Submitting an essay with numerous grammatical mistakes and typos.
• Overuse of clichés: Relying on clichés and overused phrases.

Example of an Essay About Yourself

My First Year of School by Zac

I walked into the classroom, shaking in terror. The class was full of howler monkeys, but I was not with howler monkeys. I was with a bunch of five and six-year-old kids. I acted as if I was watching a horror movie until I met the super lovely Mr. Keig. Mr. Keig was the best teacher in the universe.

Mr. Keig was like a giant to us, and he still is. At first, I was scared of Mr. Keig, but I found out he was super friendly. He taught me how to read and write. Add and subtract. He even taught me how to make school fun. At the beginning of school, I was horrified by math and reading. I was soon shown that those subjects were not formidable opponents, but I had yet to meet my match.

Writing. I hated writing. I had met my match, my enemy, my formidable opponent. The reason I hated writing was that I wrote slowly.  It took too long for me to write, and I was always the last one to finish my newest story. It was also ever boring for me. It was hard to find inspiration or the urge to take a step up. Math and reading, on the other hand, I sped through like Speed Racer. I was still shy, and I only had a few friends in the first couple of weeks of kindergarten. I figured out making friends was not a piece of cake. I eventually made friends. Thank God that problem was over.

Even though we got to play and create our own art, sometimes, school days were dull. Sometimes days felt like they were two million years long. There were other times when I was terrified about a test, and it seemed like the paper was laughing at me, and my pencil was dodging my paper. I was sweating, shaking, and FREAKIN’ out. I eventually pulled it together and got my test done. Relieved, relaxed, and incredibly calmed down. Tranquil and thrilled I was. It felt like I was soaring through the sky a million miles per minute.

What I learned from my year in kindergarten was to face your fears.  If you are scared, don’t run away from your worries. Another lesson I learned was not to judge a book by its cover. I assumed the school was going to be extremely hard, and tests were going to be impossible. I assumed wrong. The school (kindergarten) was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. While kindergarten was a bit challenging, I knew I could succeed if I set my mind to it and worked hard.

Writing an essay about yourself involves selecting a meaningful topic and preparing an outline. In this case, writers start with an engaging introduction that includes a thesis statement. Then, they develop body paragraphs that provide detailed insights into their experiences, strengths, and reflections, ensuring a logical flow. Finally, people conclude with a typical summary of key points and a reflection on personal growth. However, they should avoid common mistakes, such as a lack of focus, excessive self-praise, and insufficient reflection (Danvas, 2018). Besides, to make a cliché topic unique, authors incorporate their personal experiences and perspectives to provide a fresh and individualized angle. In the end, they should revise and edit their papers thoroughly to ensure clarity and correctness. Hence, when writing an essay about yourself, a student should master the following tips:

• Be thoughtful, but not fretful. Writers should, through reflection, highlight areas of their lives that provide an insight into their personality. In this case, they should do it without fear of what readers might think about them.
• Keep an essay personal. The majority of a composition’s information should be about an author. Basically, such elements involve talking about life experiences, attributes, strengths, and weaknesses. In turn, the use of personal anecdotes is essential in achieving this goal.
• Do not guess what readers want to hear. Students should not seek to impress readers, but they need to inform them.
• Feel free to be creative. Without exaggeration, authors should use personal stories creatively to keep readers interested in reading entire essays.
• Tell readers something that they do not already know. The best way to keep readers interested is to use stories that people have probably never shared publicly. In turn, such stories or experiences inject all about me essays with an aspect of amazement.
• Ask for input from close ones. Students can ask parents, friends, mentors, counselors, coaches, and teachers to provide ideas, as they know about personally.
• Polish a paper about yourself. Essays should not be about a writer’s story only. In turn, it should demonstrate a writer’s proficiency in writing by lacking grammatical mistakes and other notable errors.

Essay about yourself writing is an essential activity in a student’s life, as it exposes one to the dynamics of creative aspects. When doing such a composition, authors learn how to use personal stories to highlight their positive and negative experiences, including strengths and weaknesses. In essence, these stories must replace external evidence that writers use in documents. Then, the guide to effective organizing of such a paper includes several components, including preparation, stage set up, starting the writing process, and wrapping it up. In turn, these aspects of writing an essay about yourself allow a person to build her own thoughts, organize documents properly, and perfect academic texts. As a result, perfection involves revising any inconsistent ideas and illogical arguments and fixing any grammatical mistakes, such as punctuation errors.

Cho, M., Kim, Y.-S. G., & Olson, C. B. (2021). Does perspective taking matter for writing? Perspective taking in source-based analytical writing of secondary students. Reading and Writing , 34 (8), 2081–2101. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10136-7

Danvas, K. (2018). How to write an essay: Ultimate guide to best essay writing techniques that work . Independently Published.

Duarte, F. (2019). My theory of writing. WRIT: Journal of First-Year Writing , 2 (2), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.25035/writ.02.02.01

Faccio, E., Turco, F., & Iudici, A. (2019). Self-writing as a tool for change: The effectiveness of a psychotherapy using diary. Research in Psychotherapy: Psychopathology, Process and Outcome , 22 (2), 256–264. https://doi.org/10.4081/ripppo.2019.378

Sawyer, E. (2016). College essay essentials: A step-by-step guide to writing a successful college admission essay . Sourcebooks, Inc.

Tipler, E. (2024). Write yourself in: The definitive guide to writing successful college admissions essays . Simon and Schuster.

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Essay on My Self for Students and Children

500+ words essay on my self.

Seven billion people are on this Earth, and everybody is different from the rest of others. There is nothing without purpose in this world. Everything has some purpose. Humans are the best creation, and each person is exclusive. Thus, writing about myself, I’m here to express myself that what I see, what I experience and what I plan for my life. I try myself to be modest, passionate, devoted, hardworking and honest.

My Family and My Childhood

I’m from a middle-class family of Bihar, I am Naresh Shukla. Nobody comes in this world, without the support of family and friends. Actually, whatever you will be, it is just because of your family. My father is a respectable businessman in our community.

My mother is a doctor. They both love their occupation. That’s I have learned from my parents the value of time, honesty, hard work and commitment to the purpose.

We are three brothers and sisters. Being the eldest I am the most liable from my brothers and sisters. I am wanted to guide and take care of my other siblings. We all are in the same school. Reading is my passion.

I am a keen reader of novels and history books as I have a strong interest in Indian History and classical architecture. I love to read books that refer to the rich history and civilization of ancient India.  At my pre-childhood, I used to listen to stories from my grandmother, and this has a long-lasting effect on me.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

My Education

I am studying at the best school in my city. I am presently in class 10th. I feel happy to be a part of this great school with the good friends, helpful and loving teacher and sound school administration. I have extraordinary skills in some subjects whereas I am very weak in the few.

My Strengths

In compare to studies, I am good at sports. so I am the captain of my class football team. I am the best football player at my school. Besides this, I am a fast runner also and I love athletics. I am in expert swimming.

The advice of my parents had a keen effect on my habits. I believe to speak the truth and try my best not to lie. My parents always advised me that if I commit a mistake, I should admit it. I try my best to do so. I know how to remain happy in every condition. Because I believe that: “Happiness is not out there; it’s in you.”

I am a very adventurous person too and like to take the risk. I like to do a creative thing besides doing old stuff again and again. Learning new things is one thing which I always enjoy. I always update myself with the news.

Along with this, I fond of reading a few children magazines in which different motivational stories are there. They taught me a high moral lesson. I am a very confident person and know how to talk. I always try to speak to every person according to his requirement so I understand people.

My Weaknesses

As every man have weaknesses, so have also. I am a little bit lazy at some places which I do not like. While playing time, I pass my lot of time there which is not a good habi t, but I try my best to overcome my weaknesses.

My Ambitions in Life

Everybody has an ambition in life . Aim or ambition is the inner aspiration of man. No man can do anything in the world without aim. So, all of us should be very determined about our aim in life.

Without good career planning, right from the start, one can’t be on the right track. One has to set the goals in accordance with his or her broad career goals.

I have studied biology and I will seat for the competitive entrance exam for admission to reputed medical college. I shall try to be a good and honest student. Then I shall be a qualified doctor. I will do all that to be a good doctor and will be sincere to it.

These are all the things which express me. Though nobody can be described in a few sets of sentences. One needs to have yet command of oneself before going to write something about his life. Life is meant to be lived avidly and with visualization to do good for your fellow beings. Keeping this aim in mind, I have always desired to serve my people in whatever capacity I can.

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Home Essay Samples Life

Essay Samples on Myself

A message to myself: reflections, encouragement, and self-compassion.

Within the depths of our thoughts lies a space where we can have a heartfelt conversation with the most familiar person of all—ourselves. This message to myself encapsulates a journey of introspection, offering reflections, encouragement, and a reminder of the importance of self-compassion. In this...

Me, Myself, and I: The Triad of Identity in 500 Words

In the intricate mosaic of human existence, the triad of "Me, Myself, and I" forms the cornerstone of identity—a fusion of experiences, thoughts, emotions, and aspirations that intertwine to create a unique narrative. In this essay, we delve into the complex interplay of these three...

How I Learned to Love Myself

The odyssey of self-love is a deeply personal and transformative one—a journey that I embarked upon with uncertainty and emerged from with a profound sense of how I learned to love myself. In this essay, I delve into the layers of this voyage, exploring the...

Expectations for Myself as a Student

The journey through academia is a pursuit of growth, knowledge, and self-discovery. As I step into this realm, I am guided by expectations for myself as a student—goals that encompass not only academic achievements but also personal development and a commitment to lifelong learning. In...

Introducing Myself: Uniqueness Within and Self-Presentation

Stepping onto the stage of self-presentation, I embark on the journey of introducing myself—an endeavor that requires delicacy, authenticity, and an appreciation for the intricacies that define my identity. In this essay, I navigate the nuances of self-introduction, exploring the essence of who I am,...

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Knowing Myself: Unraveling the Self

The pursuit of knowing myself is an intricate voyage—a path that winds through the labyrinth of thoughts, emotions, and experiences that comprise the essence of who I am. In this introspective essay, I delve into the significance of self-awareness, the layers of identity, and the...

Understanding Myself: the Complexities of Self-Discovery

Embarking on the quest of understanding myself is an odyssey of introspection—a journey that delves into the intricacies of thoughts, emotions, and experiences that shape the unique tapestry of my identity. In this reflective essay, I delve into the significance of self-awareness, the layers of...

The Place I Can Be Myself: a Haven of Authenticity

Amid the bustling rhythms of life, there exists a sanctuary—a refuge where pretenses fade, and authenticity flourishes. In this introspective essay, I delve into the place I can be myself, reflecting on the significance of finding solace in an environment that embraces my true identity,...

Myself as a Writer: Crafting Words, Weaving Worlds

Embracing the identity of a writer is a journey of words and wonder—an odyssey that unfolds through the art of crafting narratives and evoking emotions. In this introspective essay, I delve into the essence of myself as a writer, reflecting on the power of storytelling,...

• Being a Writer

Myself as a Counselor: My Journey as a Compassionate Guide

Stepping into the role of a counselor is an embodiment of empathy, guidance, and a commitment to fostering mental well-being. In this introspective essay, I delve into the realm of myself as a counselor, reflecting on the qualities that define my approach, the significance of...

Discovering Myself: Inner Exploration

The journey of discovering myself is a profound odyssey—a quest that delves into the intricacies of identity, purpose, and the essence of being. In this introspective essay, I embark on an expedition through the inner landscape, unraveling the layers of my character, aspirations, and the...

How I Value Myself: Nurturing Self-Worth

At the core of a fulfilling and empowered life lies the practice of self-worth—a journey of recognizing, appreciating, and embracing one's intrinsic value. In this reflective essay, I embark on an exploration of how I value myself. From acknowledging my strengths to embracing my vulnerabilities,...

History of Myself: Chronicles of Identity and Transformation

The history of myself is a narrative that unfolds across time, encompassing a tapestry of experiences, emotions, growth, and transformation. In this reflective essay, I embark on a journey to trace the history of myself—from the origins that shaped my identity to the chapters of...

Being Myself: Embracing Authenticity and Finding Inner Harmony

In a world often shaped by expectations and comparisons, the journey of being myself emerges as an exploration of authenticity, self-acceptance, and the pursuit of inner harmony. In this reflective essay, I delve into the intricacies of embracing my true self—the challenges, revelations, and rewards...

Describing Myself: Narrative of Self-Discovery

Every individual is an intricate tapestry of stories, experiences, and emotions. In this narrative essay, I embark on a reflective journey to unveil the layers that compose the canvas of my identity. Through the art of storytelling, I delve into the myriad experiences that contribute...

How Do I Define Myself: Unraveling the Layers of My Identity

The essence of being human lies in the intricate tapestry of individuality that weaves together experiences, beliefs, aspirations, and values. In this introspective essay, I embark on a journey to explore the profound question of how do I define myself. From the colors that paint...

• Self Identity

A Letter to Myself: Life's Journey with Reflection and Wisdom

Life is a tapestry woven with moments of joy, challenges, growth, and self-discovery. In this introspective essay, I embark on a journey of a letter to myself. As the author and recipient of this heartfelt correspondence, I delve into the wisdom gained from experiences, the...

Where I See Myself in the Future

The journey of life is akin to an artist's canvas, awaiting the strokes of dreams, ambitions, and actions to paint a masterpiece of the future. In this essay, I embark on a reflective journey to explore where I see myself in the future. From the...

Where Do I See Myself in 5 Years

Life is a journey that unfolds with each passing day, offering us the opportunity to set our sights on the horizon and envision where our efforts will lead us. In this essay, we embark on a voyage of introspection to explore the question: Where do...

Mapping the Future: Where Do I See Myself in 20 Years

Introduction Projecting oneself two decades into the future is a thought-provoking exercise that conjures up a mix of excitement and uncertainty. As I contemplate where I see myself in 20 years, I envision a life marked by personal and professional growth, a harmonious family life,...

• About Myself

Reflections: How Do I See Myself as a Person

Introduction Self-perception is a complex, multifaceted topic, and can be influenced by many factors including our upbringing, our experiences, and our relationships. In this essay, I will explore the topic of self-perception, delving into the various aspects of how I see myself as a person,...

The Person I Am Today: A Reflection on My Experiences and Beliefs

Humans are the most superior creatures amid all the creatures in the entire universe. Being a part of this universe makes me feel small and minuscule in a world where there millions of humans like myself. Although everyone is quite unique in their own way....

• Personality

How I Freed Myself From Diabetes: Strategies and Action Plan

Diabetes has become a nightmare for diabetic patients. This menace is making its roots strong in todays world. This disease has been taking colossal amount of national health budget. With the passage of time the number of diabetics are increasing. According to a report, an...

• Believe in Myself

What Does It Mean to Be Successful: a Change in My Mindset

Can you ever call yourself if you don't have desires to obtain and work for it? And can you even call your self as profitable sitting without problems in your residing room except doing anything? These mindset make a character pick between being failure and...

• Personal Strengths

Discovering My True Self: Embracing Confidence, Self-Belief, and Personal Growth

Before I understand myself, I started believing in myself. I started to think clearly and analyze what's my purpose in this world then I took the risk to study harder to achieve my dreams. I move forward and think positive so that I can concentrate...

Best topics on Myself

1. A Message to Myself: Reflections, Encouragement, and Self-Compassion

2. Me, Myself, and I: The Triad of Identity in 500 Words

3. How I Learned to Love Myself

4. Expectations for Myself as a Student

5. Introducing Myself: Uniqueness Within and Self-Presentation

6. Knowing Myself: Unraveling the Self

7. Understanding Myself: the Complexities of Self-Discovery

8. The Place I Can Be Myself: a Haven of Authenticity

9. Myself as a Writer: Crafting Words, Weaving Worlds

10. Myself as a Counselor: My Journey as a Compassionate Guide

11. Discovering Myself: Inner Exploration

12. How I Value Myself: Nurturing Self-Worth

13. History of Myself: Chronicles of Identity and Transformation

14. Being Myself: Embracing Authenticity and Finding Inner Harmony

15. Describing Myself: Narrative of Self-Discovery

• Perseverance
• Personal Experience
• Role Models

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•    How to Write an About Myself Essay With Example

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How to write an about myself essay with example.

• Chloe Daniel
• Published On: July 09 ,2021

Getting Started

When you may have to write about yourself.

• Career advancement opportunities
• Internship inquiry letters
• Biographies
• Graduate school applications
• Cover letters
• Grant proposals

How to Write an Essay About Myself?

• Introduce yourself.
• Make sure to include your most important professional experience.
• Talk about significant awards or personal achievements.
• Introduce details about your personal life.
• Use a friendly and casual tone unless stated otherwise. 

What Else Do You Need to Include in Your Self Introduction Essay? 

• The things you want to learn.
• Your aspirations and dreams.
• The things you are good at.
• Your hobbies.

A Sample About Myself Essay

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Detail from Female Artist (1910) by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Courtesy the Brücke Museum, Berlin

Me versus myself

I work against myself through procrastination, distraction and addiction. why do i consistently sabotage my own life.

by Eliane Glaser   + BIO

Some years ago, I sat in a BBC boardroom facing a panel of senior editors interviewing me for a promotion. After treading water in a junior role for years, I wanted the job more than anything. One of the editors asked me a question about teamwork but, as I reached for my anecdote and started to speak, something strange began to happen inside my head. A song started to play on repeat. The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. I’d sung the song to my children as toddlers. But now its cheery tones were an exacting demand. I chanted it in my head – round and round, round and round – feeling compelled to grind my teeth together in time. I also needed to blink.

I wasn’t fully aware of doing this extra hidden work as I recounted my story of the late guest and the impatient presenter: just vaguely conscious that telling it felt really hard, like trying to have an in-depth conversation in a nightclub. Meanwhile, the tyrannical one-man band in my head kept on going. I was determined the panel should see none of it. But then I found myself blinking madly and caught the head of department eyeing me. I was rumbled.

Over the years, my obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has manifested in a panoply of painful and punitive habits. Scraping my tongue over my teeth, performing complex eye movements, peeling the skin off my lips until they bleed. It’s worse when the stakes are high: when I am trying to do something prestigious, or with someone I want to please. It’s also bad when I’m trying merely to exist in the moment. Also, when I’m trying to let go and have fun. My OCD is insidious and shape shifting, evading conscious awareness or control. It seems to have a will of its own. Except that, of course, it is a part of me.

OCD is only one of the ways in which I work against myself. I am a procrastinator. When writing, I constantly break my focus by scrolling, and I experience an urge to check email when I want to spend quality time with my children. I am also an addict. Not a pathological addict, but a normalised everyday addict. I’m hooked on screens (though I don’t own a smartphone) and use alcohol to switch off in the evenings (though I drink less than the recommended weekly allowance). I’m addicted to producing and achieving, too; to ticking things off to-do lists, to busyness, to filling every second – even as I crave time and space to reflect.

Procrastination, distraction, addiction and OCD are all forms of self-sabotage. It is a curious fact of life that we harm ourselves, even when times are hard; even when we need all the help we can get.

Self-sabotage takes many forms. If you’re anything like me, you will mess things up when you’re put on the spot, blanking when asked a question in public or blurting idiotic lines when you’re out to impress. If you’ve made space in your day to do something you really want, you too might find yourself frittering away those precious hours on life admin and social media. Perhaps you’ve criticised a long-suffering partner about stupid, trivial things, to the point you worry they may actually pack up and leave. Or you criticise yourself endlessly, so it actually stops you making progress. Self-sabotage is about deferring our stated goals and – when we are given a shot – blowing it, or subtly hindering our chances. The puzzle is why so many of us perpetually find ourselves getting in our own way and disrupting our best-laid plans.

I n the Phaedrus , Plato uses the metaphor of a chariot to describe how the human psyche is divided in two. The charioteer is guiding two winged horses, one light and one dark. The light horse symbolises our high moral intentions. The dark horse refuses to obey the whip. The light horse pulls the chariot upwards towards truth, beauty and wisdom. The dark horse is irrational and undermining, pulling the chariot down to earth.

This model of a split self has echoed through history, in the work of thinkers as diverse as Friedrich Nietzsche and the psychiatrist R D Laing. In recent years, neuroscience has come to dominate the field of human psychology; and it has some useful things to say about why we subvert our own ‘better self’. Tobias Hauser, professor of computational psychiatry at University College London, leads a project to investigate what is going on in the brains of people with OCD, identifying, for example, imbalances in those neurotransmitters that prevent the brain from regulating intrusive thoughts.

Pattern-forming behaviours are also in play. When I spoke online with Piers Steel, a leading expert in the science of motivation at the University of Calgary in Canada, he took me on a dizzying screen-share tour of software he’s designed to collate the existing research on procrastination (including fMRI studies that observe the process in the brain) in order to identify underlying patterns. This meta-analysis reveals that the biggest drivers are impulsive pleasure-seeking behaviours, and the delay of procrastination itself, which renders completing something offputtingly distant. ‘What makes procrastination particularly interesting is that it’s an irrational delay,’ Steel said (although, as I’ll suggest later, there may be a silver lining to forms of apparent self-sabotage such as procrastination). ‘We do it despite knowing we’ll be worse off. We know we want to do something, but when we look inside ourselves for the motivation, it evaporates. And we wonder what is wrong with me; why can’t I do this?’

Most of us are addicted to instant gratification, even if we are not ‘classifiable’ as addicts

Addiction arguably occupies the sharp end of procrastination. It is a perplexing phenomenon that’s been explored by the philosopher of mind Gabriel Segal, who favours an approach grounded in cognitive science, albeit with nods to Stoicism and Zen Buddhism. ‘There’s a good neurological theory of addiction now,’ Segal told me: ‘it’s called incentive sensitisation of the dopamine system.’ Normally, a rewarding experience produces a dopamine spike that leads us to desire another reward; in addicts, this desire becomes a craving. ‘That’s the fundamental way in which addiction relates to self-sabotage,’ Segal said. ‘You’re intending to do something, but then you feel you need to do this other thing first. It’s like becoming very hungry. You drop everything else and get food. And if that becomes a dominant feature of your life, you just end up sabotaging everything.’

The psychiatrist Anna Lembke believes that most of us are addicted to instant gratification, even if we are not ‘classifiable’ as addicts. Lembke, professor of psychiatry at Stanford University in California, a specialist in addiction and the author of Dopamine Nation (2021), told me that whenever we do something pleasurable we get a hit of dopamine, followed by the brain’s counter-response, which is to reset dopamine levels back to the baseline; but in order to do that, the brain overshoots in a downward direction, putting us in a ‘dopamine deficit state’. That’s the danger zone, ‘the state of real urgency or craving’, Lembke told me, and ‘we’ll do a lot of work – broadly defined as how much the organism is willing to sacrifice to get to a certain goal – to bring ourselves back to that homeostatic baseline.’

‘Addicts often behave in ways that are quite destructive to their own purposes: health, wellbeing, jobs and relationships,’ said Segal, like the alcoholic who has a job interview, but gets drunk and doesn’t turn up. ‘Humans generally – and addicts in particular – have different sub-characters inside them,’ Segal continued. ‘So there could be an element of sabotaging the mature person who wants a job, but serving the purpose of the inner teenager who wants to go out and have fun.’

The anxiety of achievement felt by many self-saboteurs is especially acute for addicts. Another interpretation of the job interview debacle is that the addict fears success. ‘If you succeed, then you come under threat – other people want to throw rocks at you; knock you off your pedestal,’ Segal said. ‘You may be aware that, if you succeed, somebody else fails as a result, and you don’t want other people to be upset. If success brings power, you might be afraid of what you would do with the power.’

Self-sabotage – particularly its common manifestations in addiction, eating disorders and self-harm – raises complex questions about the extent to which we are in control of ourselves and our lives. ‘Addiction is a spectrum disorder, from mild to moderate to severe,’ Lembke told me. ‘Along that continuum, there is a gradual increase in loss of agency and self-determination.’ Classifying self-sabotage as a malady beyond the hard border of ‘the normal’ means we avoid thinking about these grey areas of choice and control: territory that psychoanalysis has traditionally been happy to inhabit.

For Anouchka Grose, a psychoanalyst and author who has brought her specialism to bear on such topics as fashion , vegetarianism and eco-anxiety , this tolerance of ambiguity is precisely what makes Sigmund Freud’s work ‘radical’: ‘There isn’t a boundary between the normal and the pathological,’ says Grose, ‘and I think that’s a good way of thinking about it. We really don’t know how these things are going to play out in our lives.’ I ask her about the articulation of Freud’s aim, turning neurotic misery into normal unhappiness, and Grose reads it ironically: ‘I suppose, in a way, the reason that’s a kind of joke is because the slippage between one state and the other is so discreet: it’s not like you would ever know.’

I believe that the mechanical explanations of self-sabotage – neural pathways and dopamine responses – get us only so far. They are physical descriptions of psychological patterns and processes that can be explained in more profound terms: namely, the terms of psychoanalysis. Where neuroscience seems to demand that we overcome ourselves, psychoanalysis suggests we develop a more accommodating and nuanced understanding of our split selves and contradictions. To take it down to basics, we engage in self-sabotaging behaviours because at some level it feels like they are helping. My OCD is a kind of coping mechanism. Slumping in front of a screen or drinking wine on a dry day is a respite from self-flagellating productivity. Snow days, train strikes and pandemic lockdowns allow us to let ourselves off the hook with impunity, even as we feel thwarted.

Freud thought that we are governed by two opposing instincts. There is the pleasure principle, associated with life and creativity, and the death drive, which is the impulse to return to an inert state. ‘We’re all after a kind of homeostasis,’ says Grose, ‘and excitement has to be managed very carefully … not doing things is actually quite comfortable, except that it tips to the point where not doing things becomes morbid and deathly.’ A healthy balance, in other words, must be maintained between the two impulses: as Grose put it with down-to-earth wit: ‘You have to live, you have to act … and you also have to flop.’

Self-sabotage becomes problematic only when the death drive is too dominant. Fear of failure, for example, can overpower our ambitions. So we put obstacles in our own path in order to keep the painful reality of our imperfection at bay – not preparing well for those job interviews or public appearances, or behaving erratically. What the psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn in 1952 called our ‘internal saboteur’ tries to protect us from shame. But it does so at a high cost, foreclosing the possibility of novel, creative and authentic experiences, perhaps even hope. Grose believes that the advice to ‘get out of your comfort zone’ is really a reminder to resist the death drive and engage with life: ‘don’t procrastinate, actually do this thing, even though it’s awful. Write your book, even though you might fail.’ Although we think we want to do well, this comes with the risk of inciting envy in others that might rebound upon us, becoming ‘a profound source of comeuppance’, the psychoanalyst Josh Cohen told me during a conversation full of humorous exasperation at these inhibitions: ‘The subtext is, What am I doing enjoying myself at this moment? Who do you think you are!? ’

The interruption is a form of self-sabotage, but it also expresses a need for connection and validation

If we have omnipotent tendencies that overinflate our sense of our own destructive capabilities, we may scupper our chances of happiness or fulfilment to defuse the possibility of harming those around us. Even if we just have thoughts and feelings towards loved ones that make us feel bad (including what the family therapist Terrence Real calls ‘normal marital hatred’), we can turn that aggression on ourselves, which stops us having to properly own those impulses. Freud called this internal judge and jury the superego, and what should be a necessary system of checks and balances can become tyrannical.

Carl Jung came up with another useful concept to add to our saboteur’s toolkit: the shadow self. The shadow self is the parts of ourselves that we label undesirable, or that we think society will reject: unmet needs, say, or aggressive impulses. We split off these parts, but they revolt against us powerfully and unpredictably, as erratic outbursts, mental blocks or physical ailments that compromise our plans. ‘When an inner situation is not made conscious,’ wrote Jung in Aion (1951), ‘it happens outside, as fate.’ An example is the worker who constantly distracts herself with social media. The interruption is a form of self-sabotage, but it also expresses a need for connection and validation that she has repressed as invalid, and which emerges with redoubled force in those procrastinatory habits.

Jacques Lacan described the paradox that, while we fear failure, success may provoke more anxiety. The ‘curse of the lottery’ strikes when winning millions generates unexpected discontent; or think of the man who, all his working life, looks forward to retirement, but experiences a crisis when the structure of his day job is removed. I’ve felt a minor version of this when I’ve gone on a long-awaited holiday and found myself fiddling; at a loose end, I snap at my family, and scroll British news headlines so I can catch up on domestic gloom. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

I f self-sabotage exists on a spectrum, the contemporary world – with its alluring screens and overwork culture – has made it far more prevalent. Forms of self-sabotaging behaviour previously classed as abnormal have become ubiquitous. There has been a 400 per cent increase in the number of British adults seeking a diagnosis for ADHD since 2020, according to Tony Lloyd of the ADHD Foundation. And, according to Steel, about 95 per cent of people admit to procrastinating at least some of the time. A growing number of young people ask for extenuating circumstances to complete the coursework for a degree they may ostensibly really enjoy. Universities are dealing with an entire system on the brink of logical absurdity and administrative collapse. Faced with collective self-sabotage in the form of climate change and an ever-more competitive jobs market, many young people appear to be turning the anxiety upon themselves, inducing a kind of paralysis. We should exercise caution when we link mental illness to ambient conditions such as geopolitics or the dominance of screens. But it’s also worth considering why self-sabotage is such a feature of modern life.

The big change is that diversions from our chosen path appear at every turn. The researchers I spoke to pointed to recent research on the impact of screen time , particularly social media . ‘We are hacking our own operating systems, and marketers have very quickly discovered how to exploit our impulsivity,’ Steel told me. ‘Procrastination is on the rise because there’s a trillion-dollar industry to get us to indulge in these smaller sooner temptations at the cost of our larger later dreams.’ The philosopher Harry Frankfurt in 1971 defined these as first-order and second-order desires. So, our first-order desire might be to look at Instagram, but the second-order desire might be to become an artist. We can only be said to have free will when our first- and second-order desires align. The stakes couldn’t be higher. As Steel says: ‘These are deep questions about what kind of society we want to live in, and we have not designed it to maximise human flourishing.’

It’s a double battle: the world offers opportunities for self-sabotage and raises our perfectionist expectations

Our screen addictions prevent us from accomplishing our higher goals, but they also prevent us from resting and living in the moment – something we are constantly told is good for us. ‘We don’t know how to relax anymore without digital media,’ said Lembke. ‘The way that we now relax is to take a break from our externally focused attention and then to mind-wander, facilitated by social media. But, in essence, when we’re doing that, we’re consuming a drug and so we’re not really allowing ourselves to return to a homeostatic baseline.’ We can neither properly get on with our work, nor truly sit still.

We are ‘nurtured in a competitive, individualistic atmosphere’, said Cohen. His interests are wide-ranging; he’s written about anger , how to live , being a loser , and he’s questioned whether we even possess a private life, while his book Not Working (2019) offers a critique of our workaholic culture. In the past, our sense of duty came from the superego: a hard taskmaster, but somehow contained. But, under capitalism, the compulsion comes from another Freudian concept, the ‘ego ideal’, which is more internal and insidious. ‘The ego ideal never says “you must”, it says “you can”,’ Cohen explained. ‘Under the gaze of our own perfection, our own punishing ideal, we’re always falling short.’

So we seem to be fighting a double battle: the contemporary world offers readily available opportunities for self-sabotage and it raises our perfectionist expectations, making distraction and addiction more tempting. As well as leading to overwork, the ego ideal makes us less good at our work, too: another downwards spiral. This state of mind is ‘performance wrecking’, says Cohen: ‘you lose conviction and confidence in yourself. The more you’re aware of falling behind, of not quite being at the level you’re supposed to be, the more it does something to your capacity to seamlessly produce.’

C an self-sabotage be reduced or eliminated? In order to think about what might help, we need to distinguish between the self-sabotage that is caused by the contemporary world, and that which is simply a part of us.

As far as the external world is concerned, Lembke takes an original and bracing approach, arguing that we need to ‘change the narrative’ away from the drive to experience pleasure to ‘a new form of asceticism’ that paradoxically will enable us to achieve what we are really after. When Lembke considers the problem of young people failing to launch themselves into the world, in a growing number of cases ‘it’s not that their lives are too hard. It’s that their lives are fundamentally too easy, and that with more friction they would find more purpose. With more purpose, they would be able to endure the pain of being alive. Because it would have at least some meaning for them.’ The way to do this, she argues, is to create ‘a world within a world where we insulate ourselves’ from these ‘highly reinforcing substances and behaviours’. Similarly, Steel has found that one remedy for procrastination is putting pleasures a little out of reach: ‘We need delays, and even small ones can be very effective.’

Beyond switching off the internet and taking cold showers, a first step in limiting our self-sabotaging tendencies is to recognise that we have them. In some ways, we’ve come a long way as a culture in appreciating that we don’t always act in our own best interests. Behavioural economists like Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have questioned the model of ‘homo economicus’, the rational, self-determining individual. They’ve documented how irrational we actually are: we neglect our pensions, stick with our overpriced insurance plans, and demolish mediocre takeaways on the sofa. The equivalent in political theory is false consciousness: as Thomas Frank puts it in What’s the Matter with Kansas (2004), it’s the conundrum of ‘working-class guys in midwestern cities cheering as they deliver up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life, will transform their region into a “rustbelt”, will strike people like them blows from which they will never recover.’

Making sense of the deeper logics beneath what is dismissed as perverse can be the most effective remedy

In the mainstream conversation about ‘wellbeing’, however, self-sabotage can appear counterintuitive. The self-optimisation movement is driven to some extent by a recognition of the need to overcome bad habits, but its positivity (encapsulated by the injunction to live your best life) can downplay our feelings of being out of control and irrational, making us feel bad for being merely ‘normally unhappy’. Here it resembles the rhetoric of self-management that pervades popular discussions of neuroscience: the assumption that if it’s physical, it’s fixable. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, understands very well how and why we undercut our conscious intentions. Rather than eliminating these aspects of the self, psychoanalysis brings them into the light, where we can better understand them.

In fact, making sense of the deeper logics beneath what is dismissed as perverse can be the most effective remedy. OCD’s triggers may be genetic, but they are also contextual: perhaps you were made to feel, from an early age, that your natural emotions – especially rage, but also desires that felt underserved or risky – were poisonous. Such conditioning pops up like a self-appointed security guard, keeping that ‘shadow self’ toxicity channelled away inside. The bestselling popular psychiatrist Jeffrey M Schwartz, who champions our ability to rewire our neuroplastic brains, advocates a combination of conscious awareness (or mindfulness) of the compulsions, while thinking about why they occur – an approach that has certainly worked for me. Though it may look less empowering on the surface, I am reminded here of Melanie Klein’s belief in the need to replace our idealised self with our actual self, so we might reconcile ourselves to the difficult reality of our imperfection. We can defuse our deep-seated fear of envious revenge, for example, by seeing it as our own projection – a strategy that might have rescued my BBC interview.

Comprehension leads to self-compassion. Accepting the reality of self-sabotage loosens its grip. We need ‘to work with our symptom rather than “return to normal” or assume that there’s a sort of benchmark human,’ Grose told me. The task is ‘how to include your symptom in a life that you can live – and like.’

Perhaps, then, we don’t want to jettison our self-sabotaging tendencies altogether. Ironically, renowned analysts such as Freud and Jung deployed their own struggles with self-sabotage to spark innovative and creative breakthroughs – delving into their neurotic, maddening inability to work to help them understand these tendencies in us all. Jung had hallucinations and heard disturbing voices – documented in his fantastically illustrated masterwork, The Red Book – that were both debilitating and groundbreaking. Freud’s letters reveal that, around the age of 40, he faced the unbearable realisation that he would not be able to accomplish his life goal of explaining all human psychology in terms of the physical workings of the brain. He complained of ‘a feeling of depression’ that took the form of ‘visions of death … in place of the usual frenzy of activity’. He found he couldn’t stop smoking and was ‘completely incapable of working’, declaring that ‘in times like these my reluctance to write is downright pathological’. But then he had a revelation, and moved beyond this narrowly scientific project into an exploration of fantasies and dreams. ‘Symptoms, like dreams, are the fulfilment of a wish ,’ he wrote, realising that his neuroses have their own wishes. Only when he attends to them is he able to invent the discipline of psychoanalysis.

Self-sabotage may be debilitating, but it can also be a spur. Very often, it is the engine of productivity – and humour. There is something precious about the neurotic tangles that make many of our most relatable cultural figures who they are – I’m thinking of George Costanza in the TV show Seinfeld . ‘Lots of people who are very successful are on that boundary,’ Grose told me. ‘It’s a tight-rope act between being insane and brilliant.’ The best we can hope for, perhaps, is having people we can rely on to save us from ourselves. After all, it worked for Marcel Proust. ‘Proust was a total perfectionist, and drove his publisher mad,’ Grose said. ‘Left to his own devices, who knows what would have happened. But that was his process, and luckily, in his case it was possible for someone to step in and say: we’re going to press, right now. It’s time to stop!’

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The Morning

How to like yourself more.

Taking time to enumerate nice things about yourself each day may sound terminally conceited, but in practice the results can be pretty transformative.

By Melissa Kirsch

I want to be a person with practices. A yoga practice, a mindfulness practice, a gratitude practice. I’m not totally sure when a nourishing activity passes into the realm of a practice, but I think it has something to do with intention and devotion. You prioritize doing this thing that has a positive effect on you or others or on the world you live in — say, sitting in quiet contemplation for 20 minutes each morning, or journaling every night before bed. You commit to doing it on a regular basis, and after enough reps, it becomes part of who you are.

I’ve been hesitant to declare — to myself, never mind anyone else — that I’ve established any of the aforementioned practices because I’m skeptical of my ability to stick with them. I tend to burn hot in the initial phases of something that promises to improve my life, and then lose steam very quickly. I’ve done the first day of the “Yoga With Adriene” 30-day challenge at least 30 times.

One need not be so doctrinaire about one’s practices, I know. The point is to do and feel better, not to get a gold star. I’ve wandered away from many practices only to return to them, usually because I miss them, because seeing the benefits of doing something is often not as powerful as experiencing its absence. That’s the case with something I’ve been doing for the past eight months or so — not every single day, but enough days to tentatively call it “a thing I do,” if not a thoroughgoing practice.

At the end of the day, I try to write down as many things as I can think of that I appreciate about myself. It might be how I handled a difficult situation, or that I checked something off my to-do list that I’d been putting off. It might be something witty I said, or the way I reframed how I was thinking about a situation. Some days there’s not much content to work with, and I might just appreciate that I made the bed even though I really didn’t want to, or that my hair looked kind of good.

When someone first recommended I try this, I thought it sounded very self-involved, maybe a little pathetic — was my self-esteem so impoverished that I needed to ply myself with compliments? (It turns out that some days, in fact, I do.) But over time I realized that what at first seemed facile was actually sort of revolutionary.

I’d tried practicing gratitude before and found it quite effective. You take a few minutes to write down things you’re thankful for — the kindness of a stranger, the way your child looks at you while you’re reading a bedtime story, the smell of honeysuckle when you bike past that one tree. You remind yourself how lucky you are, that while you’ve been fretting or regretting or despairing, all these good things and people and possibilities are part of your story, too.

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