<p>"... and that is the impact it has had on my life."</p>
<p>I wrote a generally good essay, but was told to change my concluding sentence, which meant adding on that. Is it a bad idea to directly address the prompt question like so?</p>
<p>Any insight?</p>
<p>Uhhhhh, I wouldn’t recommend it generally at all, but, I mean, if it totally fits the rest of the essay then I suppose it’s fine…but I still really discourage that directness and here’s why:</p>
<p>If your essay is good, then it should already demonstrate the effect/ impact whatever experience you had has had on your life, so you shouldn’t need that sort of directness.</p>
<p>If your essay is good, as defined above, then that conclusion knocks over all you’ve built up, you don’t need to be direct, again, and you wasted words by being direct.</p>
<p>The conclusion, if your essay is good, will end up being a sorta repetitive restatement of the rest of the essay. </p>
<p>It kills the nice subtleties and moral lessons that might be in your essay, like a joke that needs to be explained; it’s no longer funny just as your essay may become not too good anymore.</p>
<p>Do you see where I’m getting? For MOST good essays, as I defined, that sort of directness is unnecessary and actually detrimental, but, if you feel it really really really really belongs there, then go for it–I don’t know your exact situation after all (Disclaimer, yay!). Please go with what you feel right and you’ll be fine</p>
<p>Don’t end with that. The first and last sentences are crucial because they tend to leave lasting impressions. Firstly, the two verbs in this sentence are “is” and “had,” which are very weak. Also, as amimike said, this statement is probably quite redundant and unnecessary. Every word you put in the essay should have a purpose.</p>
<p>There are other ways you can “change your conclusion” without adding on a completely useless string of words. I think a good way to end a college essay is to leave it sort of open ended and foreshadow how the experience (or whatever you wrote about) will affect what you’ll do in college. Basically, leave your reader interested.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. Yeah, I was like “what?!” when my editor told me to add that on. I’ll remove it now.</p>