Let’s start writing!

  1. Reflect on what you’ve done for the purpose exercises you completed over the last few days.
    Take a moment to celebrate all your hard work that’s setting you up not just to write an essay,
    but (far more importantly!) to move forward with meaningful plans for your life. You have:

    1. Received (possibly) ideas from family, friends, and/or mentors about your strengths and possible future activities.
    2. Learned more about what having a sense of purpose is means, and how it can benefit your well-being.
    3. Thought about the world you’d like to live in and what the role you’d like to play in shaping it.
    4. Seen examples of people talking about their sense of purposes in life.
    5. Thought about how the things that matter to you might help you overcome difficulties.
    6. Identified values that are extremely important to you.
    7. Reflected on who you want to be at age 40 based on what matters most to you in the long term.
    8. Thought about what symbols and quotes best represent what matters to you, and why.
    9. Gathered together your thoughts on all these activities in order to explain your goals and plans for how you will reach them.
  2. Review what you’ve written, especially in the exercise where you wrote about your goals and plans, and ask yourself this question to figure out what steps to follow next when writing your essay:
    Click to Review

Review your list of goals, and then write what your big, far-reaching goal is in one sentence. This is your ultimate aim—the goal that is furthest out—it may not be one you’ve even written yet in your initial list of goals. This is the dream you hold in mind that you want to reach someday. It likely influences other more short-term objectives.

Examples:

  1. I want to run the hotel with the best customer reviews on the East Coast.
  2. I want to become one of the top hip-hop artists in the country.
  3. I want to help find a better way to treat and prevent Alzheimer’s.

Now write out why pursuing this goal is important to you in 1-3 sentences. Why do you want it, and who do you want it for? Dig into your deeper, more specific reasons—we all want to make decent money, and to enjoy what we do, but it’s important to get into why you specifically have this very particular goal beyond those initial reasons

Examples:

  1. My mom travels a lot for work, and I see how stressed out she always is from staying in bad hotels, and what a difference it makes when she’s lucky enough to land in a good one. I want people who are away from home to feel just as comfortable—maybe even more comfortable!—as they do at home, so they can focus on the reason they’re travelling. Plus, I really enjoy meeting new people all the time, and I’d love to travel more myself—and being in demand from top hotels would be a great way to do that.
  2. Music has always helped me express myself, whether it was anger, or love, or dreams. Hearing other artists share their thoughts and feelings opened me up to so many ideas I never would have had otherwise, and I want to do that for other people.
  3. My best friend’s grandmother has Alzheimer’s, and it’s been so hard for her and her family to deal with, in one sense, losing the person they know and love, while still having to help take care of her. I’m scared this might happen to someone else I know and love in the future, and I want to help stop that from happening.

Write out the steps in your plan for getting to your goal (hint: many of these might be in your second-to-last purpose exercise from earlier).

Examples:

  1. 1. Get into a college with a great hospitality program. 2. Do well in my classes and build relationships with my professors so I can get good references. 3. Get a part-time job or internship in a hotel I admire while taking my classes to begin to build my resume and get more good references. 4. Etc…
  2. 1. Get into a college with a great music program, with faculty who have specific interests in hip-hop. 2. Learn not only music, but music production, so I can work in a studio while developing my music skills. 3. Find a group of verbal artists and musicians I admire and can share my work with to get and give lots of feedback. 4. Etc…
  3. 1. Get into a college with a great pre-med program. 2. Do well in my classes so I can get into a good med school. 3. Go to a med school with specialists in brain disorders. 4. Etc.…

Reflect on your life up until now. What have been the key experiences you’ve had that led you to this goal? Was there one specific turning point moment you remember clearly? Or are there a series of smaller moments that now, looking back, you see were all leading up to where you are now? Take 15 minutes to really dig into the details of these memories and write down all the specific, little details that would help you tell this story to someone else in a way that felt like experiencing it in a really good movie. What did you see, hear, and feel? What did you, and anyone else who was in the memory, say? What made the experience have such a big impact on you?

Now, with those memories in mind, read over the model essays below. Look for things that jump out at you as doing something you’d like to do in your own essay—not because they express a similar goal to yours, but because you identify with how they’re expressing it. Make sure to read the notes beside the models, not just the models themselves—they help explain what the writer is doing so you can get better ideas of how to do it yourself!

Sample Essays

I suggest taking a short break—or even a long one, if you have time—at this point to let all these ideas you’ve been thinking about mix around in the back of your brain while you’re doing something else. (It’s called “incubating an idea”—different than procrastinating, because you’re letting your subconscious do a bit of the work for you to make it easier when you sit down to write your essay. Plus it’s always easier to write when your brain is refreshed!)

All right, now you’re ready to write. You’ve found a model, or pieces of different models, that feels like a good fit for you. So tell us the story of what your purpose is by:

  1. walking us through experience(s) in your life that illustrate where it came from (based on your brainstorm from step 4 above),
  2. making it clear exactly what your far-reaching goal is now–and why you want to pursue it (steps 1 & 2 above), and
  3. explaining, briefly, the steps of your plan for getting there (step 3 above)—give more detail to the steps you plan to take over the next year or two, especially relating to college to make it easier to use this as a college entrance essay later!

Show it to someone whose feedback you trust and will listen to—and who you know will tell you the truth if you ask them to. Ask them to sum up for you what they understand your purpose to be, how they see the stories you’ve shared relating to it, and whether the plans are clear as to how you’re moving in that direction. If they seem uncertain or vague about any of these things, ask them why—and then figure out how to revise that part to make it clear!

Essay Tips for Option A selection

Review your list of goals, and then identify what links them together–it may be one broad theme, or it may be a few different possibilities you’re exploring simultaneously.

Examples:

  1. I want to figure out whether I am most interested in pursuing my math or artistic skills–or even whether there is a way to combine them, perhaps in a design career.
  2. I’m not yet sure of my long term goals, but I know I want to explore a range of possibilities in college to help me decide.

Now write out why this area, and figuring out your more exact goals within it, is important to you in 1-3 sentences. Why do you want to explore this further, and who do you want it for? Dig into your deeper, more specific reasons–we all want to make decent money, and to enjoy what we do, but it’s important to get into why you specifically want to explore this area (or areas) beyond those initial reasons.

Examples:

  1. Whether as an engineer, artist, or designer, I know I want to use my skills to leave the world a better place than I found it, and I want that to be in a concrete way that benefits people I may never even meet.
  2. Although I am not sure yet how I want to contribute to the broader world, I know that will play a big part in helping me narrow my focus in college. One of the most rewarding experiences I had in the last few years was when I served as a peer mentor to some students in my high school. It started out as just something I was doing to earn my Beta club hours, but after doing it for a few weeks I realized I got so much more out of feeling like I was helping other people than I did from, say, just playing video games (though I still like doing that too!).

Write out the steps in your plan for getting to a clearer, more defined long-term goal (hint: many of these might be in your synthesizing purpose exercise from earlier)

Examples:

  1. 1. Go to a college that offers design internships as well as majors in math, art, and design. 2. Take introductory courses in each of these areas in my first year, and form relationships with my professors to learn more about the options available in each of these areas. 3. Find engineers, artists and designers to interview and possibly shadow in their work to learn more about the day to day experience. 4. Etc.
  2. 1. Get into a good liberal arts college that offers a wide range of good courses in the humanities, social sciences, and hard sciences. 2. Take a diverse range of introductory classes to find out what clicks for me. 3. Etc.

Reflect on your life up until now. What have been the key experiences you’ve had that have circled around this theme? Was there one specific turning point moment you remember clearly? Or are there a series of smaller moments that now, looking back, you see were all leading up to where you are now? Take 15 minutes to really dig into these memories and write down all the specific, little details that would help you tell this story to someone else in a way that felt like experiencing it in a really good movie. What did you see, hear, and feel? What did you, and anyone else who was in the memory, say? What made the experience have such a big impact on you?

Now, with those memories in mind, read over the model essays below. Look for things that jump out at you as doing something you’d like to do in your own essay–not because they express a similar goal or theme to yours, but because you identify with how they’re expressing it. Make sure to read the notes beside the models, not just the models themselves–they help explain what the writer is doing so you can get better ideas of how to do it yourself!

Sample Essays

I suggest taking a short break–or even a long one, if you have time–at this point to let all these ideas you’ve been thinking about mix around in the back of your brain while you’re doing something else. (It’s called “incubating an idea”–different than procrastinating, because you’re letting your subconscious do a bit of the work for you to make it easier when you sit down to write your essay. Plus it’s always easier to write when your brain is refreshed!)

Alright, now you’re ready to write. You’ve found a model, or pieces of different models, that feels like a good fit for you. So tell us the story of where you are now in identifying your purpose, and how you want to get even clearer on it by:

  1. walking us through experience(s) in your life that illustrate where your emerging sense of direction is coming from (based on your brainstorm in step 4 above),
  2. explaining, briefly, the steps of your plan for this exploration (step 3 above), and how you think it will help you get clearer on your long-term goals–give particular detail to the steps you plan to take over the next year or two, especially relating to college to make it easier to use this as a college entrance essay later!

Show it to someone whose feedback you trust and will listen to–and who you know will tell you the truth if you ask them to. Ask them to sum up for you what they understand your direction to be, how they see the stories you’ve shared relating to it, and whether your plans are clear as to how you’re going to get clearer on a long-term purpose. If they seem uncertain or vague about any of these things, ask them why–and then figure out how to revise that part to make it clear!

Essay Tips for Option B selection