Would you consider these essay topics too repetitive?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
1

I have two essay prompts that I would love to write about, but I’m afraid the overall message is too similar. Do you think these can be good, or should I switch up the topic on one of them to avoid redundancy?

In my personal statement essay, I’m (most likely) writing about an activity I started when I was young, but did purely because of extrinsic motivation. I hated the activity but pursued it because the teacher gave us candy. I quit the activity after a year (and hardly improved, as expected), but stumbled across it again a few years later; this time with a burning passion. It’s a large part of who I am now, and after picking it up again I improved at a stunning rate.

A major theme here is my realization of the importance of doing things out of the love and enjoyment for doing them, instead of doing things only for reaping results. (essentially extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation).

Then we have my second essay, the supplementary essay of “What is meaningful to you and why?”.
For this prompt, what is meaningful to me is “fun”. Enjoyment out of life as a whole and enjoyment in most things you do. (yes, it’s critical and inevitable to sometimes suck-it-up and work on things you dislike in order to succeed, but as an overall thing).

I might write about a time where I stopped all my hobbies and everything I enjoyed doing, because when forcing myself to work on things I felt were important for future success (despite not liking the process itself), I had no free-time to pursue my actual interests. I was essentially letting work consume most of my present happiness for what I was thinking would result in achieving even greater “future happiness and success”.
This showed me that it’s important to enjoy the work you do. You can totally make it big-time without sacrificing your happiness, in fact you’re so much more likely to become the next Jeff Bezos if you’re not dreading the process. lol
So what’s meaningful to me? Restate what I said in the previous paragraph.

The essays themselves would be extremely different along with the examples I might use, but again, I’m afraid the theme or overall message is too repetitive in that in both essays, I’m sort of talking about the value I place on enjoying the things you do.

Thoughts?

Thank you for reading this long thing <3

2

Maybe this is a positive, as it shows a large part of who I am by doubling up on the idea? I really have no clue. I could see it being positive or very negative.

3

I like the first one; the second does feel like a variation on the same theme.

4

They both feel to me like you are trying to find an essay to match a big idea you want to get across. That isn’t an especially effective (or original) way to approach the prompts, IMHO.

5

With two people agreeing plus my initial doubts, I think it’s obvious there is a better/more effective option. Thanks for the feedback, I’ll figure it out.