How to Start an Essay About Yourself: Useful Hints and Tips

Every student who has to create a reflective piece of writing is whether they are willing to write such kind of paper without making it sound selfish. It may seem easy to know how to start an essay about yourself. However, you should remember that even this type of paper has its specific structure and writing rules. For example, it is obligatory to follow particular writing style. 

This article is dedicated to explaining the basic rules of writing a paper about oneself so that students had an opportunity to apply the tips in their day-to-day academic writing tasks.

Why to Write a Personal Essay

In college, 3 or 5 paragraph essay about yourself may be divided into the following types:

1. Reflective essay
2. Application essay

Usually, the first type is assigned to students in order to help them share their emotions and impressions about certain movie, book, experience, vacations, etc. while an application essay is referred to a more serious academic writing. It is considered to be a key to the college or university. The major idea of such paper is to show that the potential candidate suites best to the chosen college or university by emphasizing on his/her knowledge, skills, experience and future potential contribution to the selected field of study.

When a student wants to send an application to university or college, or apply to an extracurricular program, it is crucial for them to know how to start an essay about yourself.

Five Simple Steps to Write a Perfect essay

Prior to writing the essay, we recommend you to get acquainted with the below steps that will definitely help you to create an interesting essay. 

• Select an interesting story you want to describe in your paper. It is crucial to provide a description of a particular moment that occurred in your life. There is no need to describe your whole life experience since it will be overwhelming for the reader.
• Determine the major objective of your paper. You should know why you want to tell this particular story to people. It is also crucial to read all the requirements and instructions provided by your teacher and follow them to the letter.  
• Determine your target audience: try to think about people who will be your potential readers, try to imagine their expectations and interests. It is vital to meet or even exceed their expectations by catching their attention so that they are interested in reading your paper till the last page. So, your task is to grab reader’s attention from the first lines in your paper.   
• Before creating the document, brainstorm interesting ideas. You can try using the below techniques:

1. Make a list. Listing your thoughts and ideas you want to mention in your essay is a good idea. Reread the list and divide the ideas into groups.
2. Try to practice freewriting. This technique is easy and effective at the same time. All you need to do is to write non-stop during ten minutes. After you are done, review what is written and use only information that is relevant to your future essay. 
3. Apply clustering approach. This is a graphical method where your task is to draw connections between the ideas and the selected topic and then you need to provide a description of the drawn connections. 
4. Questioning is also crucial. Question as much as you can about the topic and give answers in detail.

• Before writing your essay, make an outline. The more details you include in your outline the less time will be needed for creating your document. It is crucial to include the below three parts in your paper: intro, main body and conclusion. Perceive the outline like a map that will guide you through your own thoughts and ideas. This simple plan helps to save one’s time and efforts when writing academic papers.

Organization of Personal Essay Writing

As it has already been mentioned, it is crucial to write an outline before creating the very paper. Below you will find tips on how to organize your paper: 

• Start from the introduction and grab readers’ attention from the first sentence. Do not use too complex and boring phrases because it will only kill the desire to read your paper. Provide a thesis statement, which is considered to be the main essay idea. Make sure the audience is provided a short story background at the beginning of your paper. 
• Min body should be divided into a few paragraphs. You can write three to five paragraphs in order to make a smooth and coherent essay. It is important to follow the chronological order when writing your ideas and details. 
• Finish your story with a logical conclusion. Here you can sum up the lesson you have learnt from the story you described. It is not supposed to be long. It can be written on less than a half of page. 

When you have finally finished your paper, reread it attentively in order to detect any mistakes or misprints. Then you need to correct them so that the paper looks flawless. We hope that no you know how to start an essay about yourself. Try to use the tips we provided and create your perfect paper. That will attract attention of all potential readers. 

Interesting Topics for Your Paper

1. Roots of personal fears 
2. Best friend of mine
3. Healthy meal and why I eat it
4. How to behave with your home pet 
5. Why Christmas is more than a holiday to me and my family 
6. Personal root and how I found it 
7. My crazy life 
8. How I built a tree house 
9. My best outfit 
10. My personal experience as a tutor 
11. How to interpret my name 
12. My favorite movie or book 
13. The place I dream to visit on the holidays 
14. Imagining the dream career 
15. My future invention 

Paper Sample

When you want to write an essay but have no idea how to begin it, you can always resort to essay sample. Below you can find one of such samples that will definitely inspire you to start writing your own paper. 

Personal Portrait

According to Erikson’s stages of psychological development, I successfully passed the first two stages called Hope and Willpower that spans between the ages 0 to 3 years. However, there was a negative impact during the Purpose stage of development that ranges between 4 to 6 years.  This is a stage when a child’s life revolves around achieving autonomy that they hope will be instrumental to plan and execute onuses with minimal interference. The child develops a sense of initiative and a conviction to see to it that they complete anything they had started. The child at this stage confronts a very confusing emotion that’s/he finds unfathomable, uncontrollable and inexplicable: guilt. Guilt imperceptibly creeps into the child’s life in abstract manners since they are inclined to feel guilt for things that have no logical connection to their actions. It is during this time that my parents went through a divorced. I subliminally developed a sense of guilt since I was sent to live with my grandparents in Louisiana. I unequivocally missed the tender and loving care that I received from my mother after the change of environment. As a female I was more prone to attachment than males. Consequently, I was very much affected by the absence of my mother.  I must have felt that I was paying for my bad actions by being taken to very austere guardians who would punish me regularly and put many restrictions in my life. . I was at Kohlberg’s  1st stage of moral development given the guilt and I constantly flogged myself believing my actions led to their separation hence my suffering This one year experience during my stay as I went to kindergarten followed me to elementary school . The nouveau culture of strictness greatly affected my sense of autonomy that impeded this development stage. This is because I was unable to feel independent whilst under the watchful eye of my strict grandparents. The guilt coupled with my curtailed autonomy led to dyslexia that I experienced when I joined elementary school. Given that I am female, the sex aspect exacerbated my performance in class since girls are known to be more timid but less rebellious than boys.

Despite having moved back to Dallas and living with my single mother, the breached process of development affected my performance in elementary school. This is because my stage of developing fully to be focused in my endeavors as a child was rudely interrupted when my environment changed. It also led to the learning difficulties that I experienced in school that led to my poor performance in class. I was not at liberty to establish autonomy and push myself to limits by trying out things without supervision. This was to present itself at the university as a problem that affected my undergraduate studies. 

Living with my mother back in Dallas subconsciously relieved the psychological tension in my mind. It took me a while to adjust from the trauma but I gradually picked up and my Competence stage was seen to completion during my 1st to 8th grade as I lived with my mother. The cultural impact of not having a father figure might have affected my social life in the light of interaction with the opposite sex. Being a female the gender factor made me vulnerable to males moiré than they were vulnerable to me. So I got involved in a series of catastrophic relationships with boys. I was still struggling to complete the Autonomy stage at a belated age so it took me the whole of my elementary school years of study to go past it. The effects of completing the Competence stage were obscured by the struggle to complete the Autonomy stage. Therefore prowess in academics could not be manifested until my 9th to 12th grade.

My mother’s attention and encouragement saw me past the Erickson’s Fidelity stage. It also led to the further nurturing of the fist stage of Hope that explains why my relationships with people flourished at the 9th to 12th grade. This development was synergistic to the Erickson’s Fidelity stage of development.  My mother did not have divided attention as to whether to look after me or to watch the drug abusing husband who was now out of our lives. This was instrumental to the sealing of the void that may have been existing impeding the completion of this first stage of Erickson’s development making me a socialite by default.  Although it took time, the stage of autonomy was partly completed and I believed in doing things by myself. The sense in self belief led to my outstanding performance in high school since I could independently initiate and complete tasks. The Erickson’s Competence stage of development was manifested at a late stage but it was for my own good. I excelled in my AP classes, Task and all state wide assessment tests. I was able to be admitted to Texas State University in Houston. The smooth transition from the full developed competence stage to Ericson’s Fidelity stage of development explains my large circle of friends, my membership in the school choir and pep squads at games.  I was at Kohlberg’s conventional stage of moral development therefore I worked hard to conform to the expectations of the society. I wanted to be called good and worked towards achieving it by pleasing my mother with the good report card. The Dallas environment was contusive for my studies with fewer antagonistic mechanisms hence I comfortably excelled. 

The Erickson’s Love stage of development found me in Texas state university. I was not sure if I was loved and wanted to learn more about relating with the opposite sex. The repercussion of this was that I made bad decisions with boyfriends. I found myself inclined to having thugs and criminals for boyfriends in lieu of straight forward men. I was in a state of role confusion and I did not know exactly whether to approach life the high school way or a different way. That is when I plunged into identity crisis and became careless with my academic work. This can be exemplified by my first semester attendance stood at a mere 18hours! That did not bother me and it was a small part of the several immature decisions that I made. This led to my stay in Texas State University in pursuit of a Bachelors degree stretching for a whooping 8 years from 1992 to 2000. The environmental factors including keeping the company of delinquents must have contributed to my lack of seriousness in my studies. Furthermore, it is easier for a female than a male too be  a follower hence the alpha male in the criminal group of friends was appealing to me to the point I forgot about  my studies. I began displaying characteristics of a failed development through the Ericson’s Love stage of development. This was after having a baby two years after my graduation. I knew the father of the baby who he was a off-shore merchant marine. The circumstances surrounding my situation were expeditious to exacerbating the fear of rejection by the baby’s father. I had a feeling that my relationship with him would not work. At times, intimacy can be exhibited through distantiation making isolation and that is the step. I took by moving from Houston to Dallas. This was despite quitting my job that was the source of my pecuniary independence since isolation was the best move that I deemed to be pertinent at that point in time. Isolation overrides rationale and that is why I gave up my job in a bid to avert speculated rejection. This is because of my familiarity with pain and my ego could not stand the possibility of suffering another blow that stems from painful rejection. I feared the break-up more than being broke. As part of this stage of development, it took me 6 years to establish my identity to establish my identity. The Dallas environment is what I deem good for the raising of my child since that was the springboard to my success. I believe that Dallas is a place to where I achieve clarity in thought and I am predisposed to inflect better in this environment. After establishing my identity as a single mother, I made a move that is a typical characteristic of the Love stage of development by making a long term commitment to my child and no one else. We therefore exist as a tightly knit family of two: my child and I. Another long term commitment I made is to commit myself to listening to other people. I therefore love listening and analyzing people’s situations seeing their points of views and giving empathetic advice and let them know people care. I decided to acquire my degree in counseling and further my career in something that can give me fulfillment. I believe that I am at the very early stage of Kohlberg’s the post-conventional stage of moral development where I am now enlightened by experience, laws, and I reason from a more clear perspective. I know societal expectations.

The Kohlberg’s model of moral development is in tandem with Erickson’s model of development. The two complement each other so well that it is now clear why I did some action back in my formative years all the way to my adulthood. The gender, environmental and cultural factors are synergistic to these development stages since eliminating them would lead to a grossly erroneous conclusion as to why I to up the above-mentioned development pattern.

Questions and Answers

• What should you write about oneself? 

Well, it is really easy. For instance, you can write about your best achievements, virtues, values and beliefs; describe your talents and hobbies. You can always tell a story how you developed one of your best talents. How you decided to do it? In addition, you can write about your own challenges and how you overcome them.  

• How to write a bio about oneself?               

Autobiography writing involves reflections about one’s life and experiences. It is important to list and select crucial moments that were important in making your life path and improving yourself as a personality. 

• How to create an intro about oneself? 

You can always start with describing your most interesting and exciting experience or telling a story about a certain moment in your life. Moreover, you can describe a situation that you faced in your life and how you managed to cope with it.  

We Can Write a Personal Essay for You

Writing a personal essay can take different shapes. Some of them may seem to be really complex for students. However, it is always possible to improve your writing skills when you follow professional advice. Another option of getting a perfect paper is by asking a professional writer to assist you with writing process. 

At Essays-Service.com you are free to choose the preferred writer. You can cooperate with the assigned writer by providing instructions and requirements, monitoring the writing process and giving feedback. In addition, if you notice that some requirements are not met, you are free to ask for revision of your essay.