Personal Experiences Essay: Example and Tips
Talking about personal experiences is often much more difficult than researching a bunch of material and writing a scientific essay. In a personal essay, you need to reveal yourself, your soul and your thoughts, and this requires inner strength and confidence that you will be understood. Let us think together how to make writing essay on personal experiences easier. Another our goal is to write an interesting essay so that the reader will not stop reading it at the beginning.
Contents
- 1 9 reasons to write about personal experience
- 2 Tips of writing very good papers
- 3 Choosing the topic for personal experiences essay
- 4 Examples of topics for personal experiences essay
- 5 How to write essay on personal experience of travelling
- 6 Personal experiences essay example. The story of my trip to Pakistan. How I stayed safe
- 7 How to write about real events
- 8 Personal experiences essay example. Today I almost died
9 reasons to write about personal experience
Let us think why it is useful to write about personal experience.
- Stories from life. Almost every reader likes reading success stories or life stories. That is why the parables are so wildly successful, because they are written in the language of stories. Each person has a personal story, which consists of many small stories.
- Only a few readers will pass by the headline “How I …”. These headlines are considered one of the most catchy. The teacher also reads such essays with more interest. For example:
- How I went through self-discipline
- How I was doing a marathon for losing weight
- How I started blogging
- How I see myself
- How I started living in the present
- Experience is important. Everybody know theoretical foundations or can get them in any second in the internet. Everyone wants to learn about other people’s personal experiences. Readers expect to learn useful information for them, which will be useful to them in life.
- Mistakes and failures. In personal experience, you can write about your mistakes and failures. You have probably often seen essays and articles like “How I lost a client, (home, wife)”. Or such as “Never repeat my mistakes.” “They laughed at me when I …” All your failures and mistakes can be submitted as a valuable life lesson. Some even write books about it and create courses, like in the movie with Will Smith.
- Be a practitioner. I constantly repeat this advice to the writers. Anyone who shares practical experience and advice, immediately falls into the category of experts. It’s like a breath of fresh air against the background of overload of general information. Informative essays are boring for the reader even when they contain important information. Essays about personal experiences are very different.
- Write down your experience and knowledge for yourself. You have everything in your head. And it is sometimes difficult to pull out from there, it seems that we know nothing or know enough. But when you write an essay, a book or an article, you can conduct a training, then the information is systematized and decomposed. It is useful for you.
- Your personal experience may be the beginning of your info business. If you are good in writing personal essays, you may use it for professional future. Many bloggers and copywriters eventually begin to conduct webinars and seminars, create their own courses and trainings. First, through the articles you create your own name and brand, and then sell something. Because experience is expensive, and people like to share their knowledge. Especially successful people do not hide anything, and willingly help those who really try.
- Others do not understand why you share the secrets of success with them. It’s all about the effort. The article on how to become creative said that the more time you invest in yourself, the harder it is to catch up with you. Therefore, beginners, knowing all your chips, will still have to spend hundreds of hours.
- Perhaps this is your mission in life. Sharing personal experiences and helping people is a worthy goal in life. I believe in personal growth and I believe in vocation. Maybe I want to believe it. Bring more meaning to everything you do. Find a deal bigger than yourself. Perhaps you will gain something more.
Tips of writing very good papers
Today, we all feel fatigue from the information flow entering the brain. The more valuable are the people who can write in an accessible, original and bright way. To write so that the reader could not tear himself away from the text.
How to write good, interesting papers? We offer tips for beginners. Use them and you will succeed.
- Formulate the topic in two simple sentences. Why such a restriction? Because it is the natural length of a clear answer to the oral question “What did you want to tell about?” If you cannot formulate a topic in two sentences attracting the reader’s attention, then something is wrong. A two-sentence constraint will help hone the thought, determine which lines and episodes are important, and which are minor. Repeat this technique for each chapter. It really helps to build the idea, plot and structure of the text on a segment of any length.
- Exploring the topic, try to keep a fresh look at things. Yes, you have read a thousand books on a topic, you are already a bit expert, but remain an alien, a child who is surprised at what adults have accepted and does not hesitate to ask questions.
- There are necessary details and there are details that are not important, but this is not the same thing. Details are the signs of the hero, the episode, telling something important about a person, landscape, sketch. And another details are malicious, insignificant clarifications, without which it would be possible to do.
- Try to have one, maximum two digits per paragraph. Unless, of course, you are not writing an essay on accounting or math.
- You shouldn’t immediately give away trumps: it’s better to hold the most striking episode, but to start a little from afar, in the first sentences you can confuse the reader a little, but you need to get him interested.
- On the Internet you can find, patiently googling, at least 20 ways to combat procrastination. But, as practice shows, only two of them work properly.
Method A is to calculate in advance how many thousands of characters you need to write for today – and, when procrastination entangles you, start writing as much as you like, but according to a detailed plan. Through force, stubbornly – and without literary processing at the same time, just write what you think about this matter. This activity in itself brings the electrodes to the brain, and after a while it will spark.
Method B is to talk to yourself, to speak out loudly in a free form in response to the question “what I want to say in this piece.” Having spoken, we, as a rule, find successful formulations or moves for the beginning of one or another piece, or even the entire text. After a few minutes, if you realize that today it is easier for you to speak, turn on a prepared voice recorder. Again, the author at this moment looks like a schizophrenic, but this technique works.
- Unnecessary words are the most terrible enemies. After writing the phrase, look at it and throw away half the words. Does not work? Change the wording to work out.
- Do not use constructions of three verbs or adjectives in a row.
- Invalid bureaucracy like “carried out the scheduled repair work.” Much better it looks like “repaired”.
- Every time, looking at a complex description of a complex phenomenon, try to put it into a capacious phrase of four or five words. Assign yourself a figure for which you can not go.
Choosing the topic for personal experiences essay
In practice, it often happens that the freer theme for an essay you get, the more difficulties you experience when choosing the topic. In case of personal experiences essay, you might consider the following directions of thinking:
- Tell about a person, whose meeting has changed you, your life or your life views;
- Tell about a particular event that has stayed in your memory for some reason;
- Tell about the turning point of your life. What has made you the way you are today?
In any case, choose the topic wisely, as you need to be able to write an essay about it. The main here is to feel free talking about it. As some things are to private and personal and we try to avoid discussing them with strangers. Do not choose the topic that is offensive to you or someone else, as it might cause a conflict. Remember that you are about writing an essay on personal experience not a diary. Tell what you want to share not something you want to hide.
Examples of topics for personal experiences essay
- How I decided to become a lawyer
- Why honesty has become my main principle in life
- When I was a kid
- My experience of going abroad
- A person who has changed me
- My life – my rules
- The story of my biggest failure in life. What did it teach me?
How to write essay on personal experience of travelling
To write an assay is not an easy and quick work, it requires the investment of a considerable amount of labor. Continuous sitting at the computer can cause considerable health problems. But these are already professional problems of students. I will return to the topic and talk about ways to write an article about the journey.
Tips for writing a travel essay
Travel essay require concentration, memory stress, when you maximize your creativity. It is necessary to describe sights, landscapes and life in bright colors and emotions. Travel essays have common features that are highlighted in the list below:
- Leave your feedback in the essay – personal impressions. When you go on vacation, of course, you get personal impressions. Therefore, the essay about the journey is written in the first person and contains a review of the past trip, vacation.
- The traveler writes about the places he visited, what sights he saw. Since everyone stays in hotels, do not forget to tell in all colors about service and maintenance, why you liked it and why not.
- When sharing information, avoid inaccurate expressions. A useful essay is distinguished by its specifics, exact facts and clarifications. Write to the prices encountered by the attitude of ordinary people to you. This will help convey the experience gained to the reader. The reader will be delighted with such a text.
- Deliver to the reader something new and interesting, and not well-known facts about a country or a city. Without this, the reading of the material will be bland and not fascinating, because the facts are banal that everyone knows them.
- Attention to detail. When you write about your own journey, do it with a fresh mind, right after arriving from vacation. Thanks to this, story of the adventures will be full of details about the local exotic, life, and relationships. What a taste of the food eaten a couple of days ago was, what smell you felt when you smelled a beautiful flower. Share your feelings and sounds you heard or music. It is interesting to learn to any reader.
Personal experiences essay example. The story of my trip to Pakistan. How I stayed safe
“Pakistan is not the most attractive country by tourists. It is located between Afghanistan and India, and many associate with danger, from which it is worth keeping away.” That is what I knew and thought about Pakistan before visiting it.
However, when you find yourself in Pakistan, the first thing you notice is the bright contrast between the image of the most dangerous state and the terrorists, where explosions thunder every day, and the reality that a tourist can walk at three o’clock in the morning without fear and when almost everyone is sincerely happy to help you.
As it turned out, the Pakistani friendliness has no limits. So, in one small town for 48 days only 48 people approached me with a request to take a picture. I must say, I also showed interest and asked for permission to take pictures – men and children happily agreed, but I always received a refusal from women.
People in Pakistan are very diverse – from black brown-eyed to blue-eyed with fair skin. When you see such an unusual combination, you involuntarily start to admire, especially if such eyes look at you from under the burqa. Sometimes you want to come and talk, but in this country, it can end badly.
In one of the villages I happened to see children who begged on the street. When you see them, you realize how sad the future of a child from a poor family or orphan in Pakistan is, in a country with a population of 190 million people, where prospects are minimal. And such children cannot be helped except to take responsibility, to adopt and take them to another country. It is noteworthy that the adoption procedure in Pakistan is very simple, but there is one condition: since the child is Muslim, he must be raised as a Muslim, and for this, adoptive parents of another religion need to adopt Islam.
Most tourists coming to Pakistan go to the north of the country, where they meet three mountain ranges – the Kara Kum, the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush with 150 mountain peaks over 7,000 meters high. Tourists also travel to the Hunza Valley, which is famous for its beautiful scenery and artificial lake, formed as a result of the collapse of the mountain. You can also talk with local ethnic minorities, who preach a special kind of Islam that allows them to prepare and drink alcohol, so even in a country like Pakistan alcohol is quite accessible.
Many tourists just come to the mountains to go on short day walks, and some go on multi-day routes, where they do not come across villages and there is no place to buy food, everything has to be borne by yourself. So we decided to do it. Having passed half of the route, we once again camped, cooked food and went for a walk, and on our return found that almost all of our supplies were eaten by cows. Thus, without finishing the route, we had to turn back, but the beauty of the landscapes smoothed out the disappointment.
Tourists in Pakistan are attracted not only to the mountains, monuments included in the UNESCO World Heritage List are available for history lovers. There are several unique fortresses scattered throughout the country, mosques, necropolis and the ruins of ancient cities. Nevertheless, the most important thing to pay attention to in Pakistan is the people. Here you can start a conversation with almost any person on the street, and if you cause sincere interest, you will be invited for a tea.
Many people ask about security there. Well, it is difficult to say for sure. For example, the embassies of the United States, Great Britain and some other countries categorically do not recommend going to this country because of the threat of terrorism. In fact, it is rather a warning about the unpredictability of the situation than a real calculation that a terrorist act is bound to happen soon.
But one thing is for sure: in regions where tourists mainly travel, you will be safer. In Pakistan, 70% of the budget is spent on the army and it controls the entire country. Taliban is driven into the mountains of Afghanistan. Widespread police outposts are commonplace, and I felt completely safe all the time, even when I walked through the streets of Lahore at night. However, there are regions which are better to be avoided. For example, in the city of Karachi, terrorism and crime flourish. According to the local government, there are troubled places in the west of the country, and all because of the proximity to Afghanistan – you just will not be allowed there.
99% of tourists in Pakistan visit the highlands in the north of the country, the capital and the city of Lahore. I decided to go to the west, to the city of Bahawalpur. As usual, on arrival at a new place, the first thing a person does is go to look for housing. So did I. I will say that it is difficult to surprise me, since I travel a lot, but I was at a loss when I was told that it was forbidden for tourists to stay in the city. I said, “Let’s make a deal, no one will know anything,” but I was told that every few days the police arranged raids. After that, the one with whom I spoke, called the police. After 15 minutes an armored car with six policemen arrived and took me to the base, where it was then decided to lodge me in the most fortified and expensive hotel in the city.
Upon arrival there, it turned out that there were no vacancies, but since the police insisted on being accepted, they placed me in the conference room. Since my weekly budget was spent due to the hotel, I decided to quietly leave, take a bus and continue on my way, but at the exit a smiling clerk told me: “Wait, please,” and then started to call somewhere. Half an hour later the police arrived, who forbade me to move on my own and insisted that I call a taxi. Since I had a long way to go, I had to agree. The car arrived, I sat in the front seat, and in the back there were two law enforcement officers with automatic weapons, who didn’t move a single step from me all day.
When the initial stupor from the presence of the police passed, we started talking and at the end of the day we even became friends. They explained to me that such increased attention was necessary for reasons of safety and respect for the guests. It can be said that laws in Pakistan are not enforced and laws do not work, but the unwritten rules (such as taking care of guests) are strictly observed here.
How to write about real events
Writing an essay based on real events is both a risk and a responsibility. Many beginning authors want to start with this, real events (especially from their own lives) seem to be simpler to describe. However, there are pitfalls here. To base a paper on real events is, first of all, the risk to be subjective. Psychologists say that such an author is actually engaged more in self-healing and savoring himself than in literature. Therefore:
- It is better to write such works when the author has already experience in writing and professionalism. Then he will avoid most mistakes.
- Forget about ambitions. You must treat yourself, your talent and text is more critical than anyone. You can not think that your life experience is unique. This killed more than one author. It is important to know exactly what your experience is of interest to others and to have data that this knowledge is in demand.
- Understand your reader, and most importantly – figure out what he needs and what is interesting for him. Suppose you write for women from 25 to 30 years. You need not just to assume, but to find out exactly, based on data from surveys, research and statistics – what exactly interests women of a given age, exactly what things they want to read, what they are looking for. And ask yourself afterwards – does this correspond to what you want to tell them?
- Maximize your target audience. The trouble is that most papers based on real events are only interested in a narrow circle of people of similar environments, life principles, and experience. Therefore, you need to add plot threads, details that will expand the circle of your readers.
- Remember that even in such a work fiction should be present. And it should relate to the characters and the plot, and not the entourage (it is not enough just to retell the real events, changing the name of the hero, the city, the detail of the exterior and the time of year). The ratio should be the following: 20-30% of truth, 70-80% of artistic fiction.
- Study the interesting topics, relevance, relevance.
Personal experiences essay example. Today I almost died
Today I almost died. I almost choked to death in my own bed. And you know what, it’s weird to be dying. I do not want to talk like an experienced adult. I am only 18 years old. It is too early for me to die. And it scares.
How did this happen? I will tell. I remember everything in the smallest details:
Suddenly, there was a very lack of air, a terrible fit of coughing, without the possibility of breathing. All this has happened before. Well, what to do? That is life. Failed to turn and here it is, the result. However, this time it was different. I’ve almost died. The coughing attack without the slightest breath continued, it seems, for ages. But, oddly enough, there was no pain. Quite. Like fear, I was frightened much later.
The body struggled for life itself, you will not believe it, but at that moment I was not aware of anything. That is absolutely nothing. No, of course, I understood that something was wrong, but I had no idea what I was doing and why I was doing just that.
You know, experience saved me. Since childhood, I really love to sing. At the present time I am writing my songs too. Sometimes I speak. People involved in singing will understand me. Sometimes during a song a breath is left no more than half a quarter of a second. And on this breath you have to hold about 3-5 seconds of the song. It can be difficult. But it saved me. Well … I think so.
At that moment, when there was no air in the lungs at all, I still managed to seize the moment in order to get a thing so vital for life as oxygen. You will laugh, but even at that moment the body acted itself, the mind remained on the sidelines. Now it seems to me that I just remembered everything that is happening. And from this it becomes scary.
Here people say about the life flashed before his eyes, the faces of angels, demons, about the fears and fantasies that appear before death. Personally, I did not have this. I just realized that this was the end. That’s all. It’s good that the end hasn’t come yet.
But returning to consciousness for a long time I thought that it would be extremely foolish to die like this. However, it would be fun. In general, not the worst death, do not you think? It seems to me that this is so. I imagined everything that would happen if I died.
Most of all I was saddened that many good words would have been said about me. I realized that I was kind of a good person. I have a family. I have friends. Yes, and many people would regret my death. I sincerely regretted. You know, it’s nice to know that there are those who care whether I am dead.
It’s a pity that I’m not really doing anything that’s really worthwhile in my life. It would be a shame to die without leaving a mark, even a small one. All my songs were always kept only in my head and there are hardly any people who remember at least one by heart. Yes, and it is unlikely that they can be called worthwhile. In general, it would be very sad to leave. I am very glad that I did not die. Friends, try not to die. For myself, I realized that to die now would be very offensive. If possible, try to postpone your death until better times.