Hey all,
I’m writing CommonApp #2, the prompt about failure leading to success/life lessons, and I really can’t find any big lessons I’ve learned through my failure.
I wanted to write about my experience as a Pokemon card vendor (7th grade), and how by the end of my “career” (about 2 weeks), I not only barely gained any money, but I spent a lot of time and lost some of my favorite cards as well.
A few of my ideas of what I’ve learned from this are:
- I’ve become more thorough in my work (I barely gained money because I was spending money on Energy Cards and evolutions, trying to sell “evolution packs.” I also didn’t really research how much cards cost - I sold a $30 Lugia Ex for around $12 via Buy-it-Now).
- I realized that I can’t do everything on my own (I opted to buy and sell and operate my store without the help/suggestions of my parents
- Short term, when I sold my PSP on ebay a few months later, I ended up selling it for a very reasonable price and was happy with that transaction
However, I think these are mostly superficial and aren’t really anything a prestigious university is looking for.
You might be thinking, “If you can’t think of any lessons, surely this isn’t the right topic for you!”
I think that this could be a pretty unique essay, and I’m sure that there’s some larger life lesson that I could’ve learned from this experience that I just can’t think of. If there really is nothing, please tell me, my only other CommonApp option is to write a sports essay, and we know how much admissions officers loooove reading those.
If you have any questions about the story, feel free to ask.
Thanks!
I’m also doing the failure prompt! Nice.
Okay honestly? I feel like you’re trying really hard to create the special out of the mundane. Although that’s usually where you can get great essays, this just doesn’t seem to be working. This Pokemon card vendor thing happened 5 years ago when you were 13 years old. That was a long time ago, surely newer more exciting things have happened in your high school career since then.
It just seems like you’re trying really hard to make something out of this topic. If a huge lesson doesn’t immediately pop into your mind, (did this vendor experience in 7th grade inspire you to go in as an economics major maybe?) then a different topic is probably your best bet.
Even though everyone always stresses the importance of having a unique essay, you still have to have something valuable to say. Writing a more commonly used topic and putting a great twist on it is way better than writing an out of the box essay that just doesn’t seem to have any meaning.
If need be, I’d love to read drafts of your essays for you. Maybe this Pokemon essay could be fantastic, no one’s gonna know until you write it 
Thanks for the response!
Yeah, that’s what I was worried about - trying too hard to make something out of nothing.
I appreciate the feedback, and, while you’re here, any quick suggestions on how I could make an essay about golf unique? I’m aware that people perceive golf as a boring sport, so an admissions officer who sees an essay about golf probably isn’t going to be too excited to read it.
Well what do you wanna say about golf? Do you have any specific experiences that immediately pop into your mind when you think about golf?
I don’t think that an essay about a sport is completely off limits-- it’s completely dependent on what you do with it. If your idea for a golf essay is to talk about winning the big tournament then that’s probably a bad idea. But maybe your whole high school career you were mocked and teased for playing golf because no one understood the fun in it? So you could then write an essay about how that bullying affected you and what it makes you want to do in your future. Of course that’s just a crazy example and I’m sure that never happened to you, but you get my gist.
If you’re stumped for essay topic ideas, my AP lit teacher made us do an exercise for this exact purpose. Write down 50 things (or just as many as you can think of) that have happened to you in your life- big or small- and just write them down. Don’t worry about what you’re going to do with them yet. Just write. Everyone has key moments in their life that are always popping around in their head. Writing them all down is a great way to get a cohesive list of ideas.
Again, any idea can be great it just depends how you write it. So try writing rough drafts of different topics and see which one flows the best!