<p>Okay so i went on a habitat for humanity trip last year, and I will be going again soon. We went to New Orleans to help build houses. Overall it was an incredible experience and I learned a lot. Is this topic too cliche and does everyone use this type of story or will colleges want to see it and take it genuinely?
Thanks!</p>
<p>I do think that a lot of people use this topic. But if you write about it genuinely, then it can still be a good essay.</p>
<p>A lot of people use that topic. I would avoid it unless it really was a life-changing experience and you think you could convey that well.</p>
<p>If you are in love with the topic and this is what you feel you can write about the best, then write about it, but in a way that avoids cliches. You’ll be going for the “freshest treatment of a tired topic” angle. ie. make sure the conclusions you draw aren’t “I discovered that I have so much more to learn” or “I discovered that is really is a small world after all.”</p>
<p>By the way, I think Habitat is great! Unfortunately, thousands of other college applicants do too.</p>
<p>You definitely don’t want to write it how you described it in your post. As I described to another user a few minutes ago… Describe, don’t tell. </p>
<p>Bad: “When I was seven years old, my father passed away. This was an incredibly difficult time for me. He and I were very close, and I miss him dearly to this day.”</p>
<p>Good: “The funeral started five minutes late. As the pallbearers entered, my seven year old mind had trouble fully grasping what was happening. Why had he died? Why my father, and not someone else’s?”</p>
<p>Obviously a simple example, but you get the idea.</p>
<p>^ugh god not only writing about a father’s death for a college essay but manipulating it to try to make it more entertaining? I like the point you’re trying to make, but I truly despise your examples. </p>
<p>And I actually liked the first opening sentence better. I’ll briefly be a hypocrite and say the opening sentence for the first one packs a much greater punch. This essay is wasting no words cutting to the chase. The second opening sentence just sounds so irrelevant and even trite, in that it is such a common way these days to open “good” essays by setting a useless aspect of the tableaux. </p>
<p>Anyways a good writer can make an enlivened story about the most mundane and cliche affairs. So I would not worry about that so much, although you can definitely, as other posters mentioned, fall into the cliche traps. </p>
<p>As your pen climbs up Mount Essay, there are many crevices along the way to end its journey and suck it down into a dark oblivion.</p>
<p>write about whatever makes you you. what makes you special? does this experience help to define who you are?</p>