@ChillDad… First thing I thought of when reading the title… Nice pick up.
Write throw-away essays. Short ones. Give yourself a time limit that encourages you to do one every day. The topics can be stuff like what you had for dinner. Get used to writing without the stress of having to submit it. If you play an instruments or a sport you will recognize this as a skills drill. Boring but it builds muscle memory and reduces anxiety.
You can put your throw away essays in a “practice” folder and forget about them. Then, when you’re ready to start on your real essay, you could either start fresh or go back and review your throw aways to see if maybe there are some that are worth developing further.
I always believe that when you don’t have anything interesting to write/talk about, then write/speak sincerely, write/speak in a way that people who read/listen to it, will know that you are a kind and nice person. And if you could flavor in some humor, then it is good.
Not many high school seniors have experienced exciting/life-changing events, most people haven’t either.
One suggestion on how to figure out what you want to write about, was to start by writing a lot of drivel about stuff you enjoy - then when you have a few pages of junk, read through it and see if there’s anything you wrote about that sticks out. D struggled to find a topic, and tried this approach. She wrote a lot of garbage. Then she read through it and noticed at first she was writing about how much she enjoyed superhero books and movies, but she ended up looking through it and she wrote about how much she enjoyed finding her own time to read stuff she wanted to for herself, not classes, and finding a balance to take time to be with her friends.
I thought she’d written a decent essay that just wasn’t special enough to get a second look at the single-digit acceptance rate schools where she was applying. But I clearly don’t know anything, as she got into most of them. So don’t be afraid to edit it, nor to to re-do it entirely. When you have something written down, it’s easier to edit it, and pare it down to what you’re really getting at, then you’ll have something to build on.
The whole process taught me that the topic doesn’t matter, but the author does.