Common App Essay Prompts

After brainstorming quite a bit, I thought I had come up with a fairly decent essay topic. When I looked at the common app essay prompts, it didn’t really seem to fit with any of them…

How important are the prompts? Can I just use the first prompt if the essay is about anything in my past? They seem a little restrictive…

Yeah, you can make it fit. They’re not really that picky about the prompt adherence.