<p>...and she dumped me. I was in therapy in my school for over a year. I'm still getting over it -- but the entire experience has affected my life greatly. </p>
<p>When I was in therapy, I learned that the therapist wasn't too accessible to other students, who I knew had issues. I began to spread awareness, and soon you had to take an appointment to see her.</p>
<p>I ended up becoming an assistant for an online support group, and contributed greatly. I also became interested in Psychology and volunteered for a suicide prevention hotline in my city.</p>
<p>Is this good fodder for the common app essay?</p>
<p>Also, which topic would this fit under most appropriately:</p>
<h1>1</h1>
<p>Evaluate a significant experience, achievement, risk you have taken, or ethical dilemma you have faced and its impact on you.</p>
<h1>2</h1>
<p>Discuss some issue of personal, local, national, or international concern and its importance to you.</p>
<h1>3</h1>
<p>Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.</p>
<p>The goal imo is a topic that allows for a personal, detailed, honest and revealing essay </p>
<p>It sounds like this might be suitable for you. Downplay the relationship and emphasize how you responded to the ending of the relationship, so that the essay is about you, not about the relationship.</p>
<p>Do you actually answer phones on a suicide hotline?</p>
<p>It IS fine if I don't go ahead and speak about Olympiads and quizzes and symposiums I've won in my CommonApp essay, right? </p>
<p>@Adad: Yes, I did sign up to answer phonecalls over the weekend. It wasn't exclusively suicide prevention -- more of depressed men and women with issues. Wasn't for too long, but I did two weekends. I kinda have a knack for pacifying people and making them see the light, lol.</p>
<p>This experience has been a really positive learning curve for me (seriously) and that's what I really aim to highlight in the essay. I'm kinda feeling uneasy about it, because this hinges on risky...but hey, at least it's not cliche (or is it, sigh).</p>
<p>Actually, I myself am a listener on a crisis/suicide hotline. I am very impressed that you are willing and able to take on that responsibility.</p>
<p>In looking at colleges, are you considering whether opportunities to listen at such hotlines are available on campus?</p>
<p>To me, "cliche" means that most or all of what the writer has to say is commonly known or could be said by many other applicants. The target, of course, is just the opposite: writing something that no one else on earth could write.</p>
<p>It sounds like you will show in some detail that you've had a series of experiences that few if any other applicants have had. Further, as NickH said, your actions after the breakup have apparently had an intensely positive effect on those around you. What does this say about the kind of presence you will bring to campus? To me, it says that, all else equal, I want you on my campus.</p>
<p>Fwiw, I've read a lot of college essays and I don't consider your concept to be risky at all. The AdCom will know about your awards etc. from the rest of your application. With this concept, though, you can distinguish yourself from others of comparable backgrounds. The essay sounds promising to me.</p>
<p>I was kinda skeptical about it, but this is something I can write the most truthfully about, since it really WAS as important to me as I will make it out to be in my essay.</p>
<p>In my view the concept is not about the relationship or the girlfriend. The concept is about resilience and initiative in the face of a significant difficulty.</p>
<p>The way I would pull it off would be:
a. Start off by describing the voice of the person who called into the hotline. Then follow it up by telling why he or she called (suicide attempt, etc). </p>
<p>b. BRIEFLY tell about how you helped the caller and his or her problem.</p>
<p>c. BRIEFLY reflect back to your relationship w/ your ex and going to therapy for a year.</p>
<p>d. Talk about how the call ignited a desire to help people, become a psychologist, spread awareness, encourage others to reach out for help, etc</p>
<p>e. Conclude by talking about what the experience did for your own personal self (how to not take things in life so seriously, while i was obsessing over a breakup, there are those who have no resources available and contemplate suicide, somebody always has it worse or is going through a tougher time, etc)</p>
<p>Remember:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The best essays appeal to each of the five senses! If yours doesn't, then you need to do some serious editing!</p></li>
<li><p>Readers are never impressed with achievements or activities. However, what they are looking for include: What did he or she GAIN from the experience? Was he or she able to make a personal connection? How did this experience provide an "Ah Hah!" moment for this writer?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I would probably go about the essay in a more chronological fashion but your rearrangement of events is a very interesting idea I will definitely consider. </p>
<p>ADad, I generally agree with you that the focus of this essay will be on the positive impact from the experience. However, I also wish to express that this breakup was not a 'casual' thing -- and that the relationship ending was a powerful loss. I wish to not belittle my experience and say that looking at others' misery changed my perspective. I wish to say that I went through a bad thing, gutted my way out of it, and having gained that experience, went about to help people in my surroundings to a great extent.</p>
<p>Now OP is getting into questionable territory imo. Going into how you fought through tough times doesn't sound like it's going to reveal much about you that would be of interest to the AdCom. Involving yourself in a positive way with others, by contrast, is going to be of considerable interest to the AdCom imo.</p>
<p>One reason colleges are interested in stories of resilience is that many people are going to experience setbacks in college. How is the applicant going to deal with such setbacks? If part of your answer is: "by involving myself in a positive way with others", with details, you give a degree of comfort to the college. However, if your answer is "By privately gutting it out", you might be flagging yourself as a potential problem. Imo, people who reach out for help or human contact when there is a problem give more comfort to an AdCom than people who struggle and brood at length privately.</p>
<p>I still feel that an essay that says "I suffered a terrible loss in a relationship, here is how I responded to the loss" is going to be fine. The focus then will be on the recovery, the positive actions. I don't recommend going the "gutting it out" part of your experience.</p>
<p>ClaySoul: I'll guess that we will just have to disagree. I think that few if any topics are absolutely taboo in college essays. I believe that It's not the topic, it's what you do with the topic. I've read many excellent essays, whose authors received excellent acceptances, about topics frequently dismissed by posters on this board.</p>
<p>I would have to agree with ADad. I believe most the time, it's a "taboo" topic simply because people fall and just recover slightly -- it recalls a struggle between you and yourself, but not with the outside community. Letting the adcoms know about how you deal with pain as millions of others do isn't unique and, in a sense, it really just delves into your less positive side of yourself.</p>
<p>This case, though, should be an exception. He fell and picked himself back up AND beyond. It shows initiative and courage to prevent the same fall he took (or at least alleviate it) for others, which shows a leadership role and concern for a problem he experienced himself.</p>
<p>And as a personal note to GregoryHouse, stay strong if you're still getting over it. I also am still getting over some relationship problems that happened more than a year ago, but I admire your courage in your period of pain by helping others. I couldn't have been able to do the same.</p>
<p>it's a taboo topic only because it's based on a relationship, and its unwise to discuss relationships -- it can be an uncomfortable topic for some.</p>