<p>Hello everyone, I'm a rising senior and have just started the common app process. The 5 essays this year seem rather interesting, and I have a liking to essay #5 in particular. "Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family." Recently, I did an internship for an insurance company where I served as a technical assistant, attended classes on insurance, shadowed a senior partner, wrote papers, and learned a bunch of awesome stuff. I did this at a professional environment, and the experience was very enlightening! So I was wondering if this can work well for #5, because I learned a lot during this time, and can write a lot about it since I connect well with the topic. </p>
<p>ALSO, in general, what type of essays should be avoided when considering #5? I'm asking this for other CCers who are interested in 5. Thanks!</p>
<p>Does that idea fit under ‘culture, community, or family’? If you fit it into one of those catagories I think that your idea is fine. Make sure you don’t write about just what you learned about the insurance buisness but maybe what you learned about yourself and why it marked you transition into adulthood</p>
<p>I actually didn’t like that prompt because I felt like most people really haven’t completed the transition. I think your essay needs to address not only how this event exposed you to an adult environment in terms of responsibility and skills, but also how it changed your point of view, etc. from one of a child to one of an adult. And what does “adult” mean to you in the first place?</p>
<p>I don’t think the internship thing could precisely fit into “culture, community, or family”…I think if you’re going to write about it you need to focus on yourself rather than the experience itself. That can be really hard sometimes.</p>
<p>@ilaughinghouse: Community maybe? I was actively involved in it, so wouldn’t that mean I adopted it as my community for a fair amount of time? And thats true, i didn’t consider that previously, thank you so much for that.</p>
<p>@ameteorite: Thats true, but I feel like in at least some ways I have. Being with adults for a long time taught me a lot about responsibility/behavior and what people have to go through in a work environment. Adults to me are those who know their purposes as a human beings. (suporting a family, learning to become more educated, helping to improve society etc.) Thanks for your response, it made me think a bit haha.</p>
<p>@23august: I looked at your question and thought to myself and looked it up everywhere haha. The focus is mainly what I gleamed from the experience, and how I transformed as a person, while crediting those who assisted me in my pursuits. Thank you so much for the response, and yes, it’s hard haha.</p>
<p>Your welcome:) Reading the prompt again, I think that even though your internship didn’t occur within your family, culture, or community you could write about the effect it had on your role in your family, culture or community. For that, however, the focus would be on your altered/more mature role in your life rather than the technicalitites of the experience itself. Let me know if I didn’t explain that well enough…</p>
<p>@ilaughinghouse Hmmm so basically, I would write about how the internship made me an adult within my family, culture or community? That sounds somewhat complicated, but I feel like if I were to write about my internship, this is the only reasonable approach to take. I’ll definitely try to form my essay so that it focuses more on my maturity than on my experience with the company. Thank you so much again!</p>