Your teachers and professors do not give you personal essay prompts because they are dying to read about how your first week of college is making you feel, why you want to major in a particular field, or what you hope to accomplish when you get older.  That is not to say that they will not be interested in why you ultimately tell them, though.  The point is, your instructors give you these essay prompts because they want to see your abilities and gauge how skill you are when it comes to focusing on a specific event or incident, no matter how meaningful or mundane it may be.  Moreover, more than anything, they want you to interest them, they want you to make them interested in your essay.  They want you to pull them into whatever you are describing.

Now then, there is actually a merciful aspect behind all the personal essay prompts your instructors assign when you have to write a personal paper.  Why?  Because writing about ourselves and our experiences can be some of the hardest things a writer ever does.  Think about all the writers who do not.  Journalists are staunch in their desire to write about other people, someone else’s experiences, the lives of others, et cetera.  Although fiction writers generally include a lot of ourselves in our work, most of us stick to characters rather than writing about caricatures of ourselves.  Professional essayists are another matter, as are writers of biographical non fiction, such as David Sadaris or even Anne Frank.

However, there will come a time in every student’s life when you have to write a personal, or narrative, essay.  For instance, did you know that college application essay prompts are considered personal essays?  With those types of essay prompts, your readers are also interested in your skills, your tone, your style, and how engaging it is.  It so happens that they are also interested in learning a bit about you as well.  That is why, so often, such topics deal with why you chose your particular major, that particular university, et cetera.

Not all personal essay topics will be so specific.  They can be general, even generic topics, such as “Describe a time in your life during which you were perfectly content.”  Some of you might consider personal essay prompts of that type quite boring – and, indeed, they certainly seem that way!  The trick – in truth, the entire underlying assignment – is to make it interesting by engaging your reader.  That is the key with all essays and research papers, no matter what their structure or purpose.  You have to draw in your reader, make he or she interested in what you are trying to say.

Personal essay prompts will be helpful that far down the line; they will help you with a number of different types of papers.  Personal essays themselves are the least of it.  Narrative essay prompts can also help you when it comes to writing such things as personal experience research papers.

Personal essay topics can help you tremendously, all through the course of your academic career.  In particular, they can be very beneficial when you move on to writing research papers.  For those of you who have experienced personal essay writing, this may be hard to believe.  However, think of some of the in depth, invasive, and even controversial topics you have been given.  It is safe to say that, if you used those topics as a guideline to develop a stronger, more sound thesis, it would be perfect for both more serious essays and research papers.

Just as the term suggests, when you write personal essays, you are writing about something you have experienced or you are giving your opinion on an issue.  Personal essay topics are generally seen in middle school and high school but they are a great tool for college courses as well, especially the English and Literature classes you have during your first and second years.  In all of those institutions, they are a favorite tool for teachers to use in order to get to know you.  They will get to know about you as a person as well as a student, in addition to learning about your writing skills.

Before we go on, a little discussion about possible personal essay topics is definitely beneficial.  You can generally spot a personal topic from a mile away, especially if they include any of the following terms:

•    “Tell about.”  Example – Tell about a frightening experience you had when you were a child.  How did you feel?  What specifically was frightening?

•    “Describe.”  Example – “Describe a meaningful event in your life.  Was it positive or was it negative?  Why do you think it affected you so much?”

•    “Relate.”  Example – Relate an occasion in which you were very uncomfortable.  What made you uncomfortable?  How did you cope with it?

How can such things help you in research paper writing?  It is quite simple really.  Think about it – in research papers, you have to tell about something.  You have to describe something.  You have to relate something to someone else.  Personal essays are, again, a tool.  In addition to teaching you about all the technical aspects of writing, they also equip you to craft good research paper topics yourself.  You will learn about what kinds of questions to ask and to answer.

Basically, personal essay topics can teach you how to write interesting research papers.  Mind you, you will not learn how to do so overnight.  In fact, you will probably have to write a lot of personal essays and go through a lot of topics.  Still and all, they do lay down the right foundations.  You have to start somewhere, after all, and both your high school teachers and the college professors you have early on are trying to help you.  They are attempting to groom you for the more intensive, more tedious, more involved research paper writing and academic writing you will be seeing quite soon.