Looking for great personal essay topics? We have got you covered with our huge list of personal essay topics covering almost every aspect of an excellent personal essay idea.
So, what is a personal essay and how you can generate good personal essay ideas? A personal essay is mainly used in high-school studies to check the essay writing skills of students by given them the opportunity to write an essay on personal life and experiences.
It can be an idea from real-life or an experience of a student based on his assumptions to live a life in a particular way. A personal essay can be written in a number of ways to incorporate different writing styles and ideas that usually take the form of a story, experience and personal opinion.
Students need to provide a detailed experience narrating their story and facilitating their personal thoughts by writing a personal essay. The essay must be subjective in nature as it contains the details and accounts on how the events unfold and the person experienced them in the course of time.
In this article, you will get an explanatory guide on how the personal essays are written following the writing standards necessary to maintain a good writing flow. Also, you will get an idea on how the personal essay topics can be formed using personal life experiences. An essential component of writing the personal essays is to use a combination of personal experiences and narrative style in writing to provide an insight on how the personal experience went from the eyes of the narrator.
This article also contains 100 great personal essay topic and ideas to suggest a suitable topic to your essay considering all the underlying requirements of a personal essay.
How to write personal essays?
Before writing a personal essay always keep this in mind that your writing piece will be subjective and explained in a narrative style. You have to write your thoughts, opinions and experience to get the attention of the reader and facilitate him into getting an idea on how you went through a particular situation.
Your personal essay must be written in first person using the first person pronouns. You cannot narrate your ideas from some other person’s perspective. So, it is necessary that you use the first person pronouns to give a real glimpse of an event or experience.
To write the personal essay, first you need to choose an attractive topic that captivates the attention of the reader in the first look. So, if you are a college student writing a personal essay then you might be given an assignment on essays such as:
- Personal opinion about an issue
- Experience on a situation
- Your observation of a particular situation
- Share a story of a life experience
- Describe an event, place or a person
- Relate some events with your life
You may need to choose from one of these topics to write a personal essay. Your selection of a topic is followed by an introductory paragraph in which you try to gather the attention of the readers. Try to introduce with some catchy lines and highlight the subject matter within first two or three lines.
Now when you have introduced your topic you must write the main idea of your essay so that the readers get aware of what you are going to discuss further. The body paragraph follows the introduction and start writing with your account of the event or situation you are going to describe. It is better to make an outline of your essay before you start writing your body paragraph.
Your essay will be managed better with an outline of body paragraphs as they are explanatory and need some clarification in terms of subjective explanation of sharing a though or story. Now focus on your ideas and gather your thought to clearly write the essay. Don’t use slang words and any fictional ideas as they will not get the readers to your real-life experiences.
Once you are done with your explanatory part, close your thoughts and opinions with a concise conclusion to detail what you have learned from your experience and how it has been beneficial in changing your life.
What are personal persuasive essays and why choose them for personal essay writing?
Personal persuasive essays are written in context of an opinion about an issue to persuade the readers and create a realization on them to accept your thoughts and opinions on the issue. The personal persuasive essays are different from other essays in context and meaningfulness of ideas of the writer.
The personal persuasive essays take the form of an elaborative approach to writer’s context of what he feels about a situation or an event. So, it differs from the argumentative essays that usually revolve around an argument to set the pace of a writer arguing about something taking an argumentative approach to explain an event.
Keep in mind that your personal opinion is different from your arguments and explanation. So, personal persuasive essays are written to:
- Improve critical thinking
- Challenging new ideas with own thought perspective
- Demonstrate creativity
- Enhance critical analysis skills
- Thought-provoking and opinion-based content
Have you decided what to choose after reading into the different types of personal essays? You have a long list of personal essays to choose from for your college assignment and it is all about your choice of what you prefer to write for your personal essay.
Personal essay topics: how to choose one?
A vast list of personal essay topics is available for the students to choose one of the most relevant topic that best-define their writing needs. So, you can take any of the topic considering your need to draft a relevant essay to portray your personal experience. It may be an event-related topic or a travel diary. You can also choose from a list of family and friends to write on your relationships and life thoughts on how the concerned person have changed your life.
You can also use personal challenge essay idea to write a context of an obstacle you faced in your life. So, as long as you choose a relevant subject matter, you can captivate the reader and make them realize that your personal essay develops their interest into reading. Some of the examples of personal essays are:
- How you and your best friend met?
- How a particular incident changed your life?
- What makes you special for your parents?
- Your experience of overcoming a fear?
- How you managed your studies at college?
- A place that is near to your heart?
- The experience of leaving a place?
- A difficult choice you made in life
- A disappointment you had in your life
- Something that you regret
- A turn of events that changed you as a person
- Your favorite personality
- A book that changed your personality
- A person that helped you the most
- How money matters in your life
- The biggest loss you had
- Words that bother you
- When you got the desire to run away
- When you get an urge to leave something
- Where would you spend your life
- Your life at college
- How would you change someone’s life
- What super power you choose to have
- Do you believe in life after death
- Your favorite time in recent years
Personal narrative essays
You have a wide variety of personal essays to choose for your college assignment and write them in the form of a narrative that gives an insight into how you have experienced something. A personal narrative essay is written in a descriptive form into an account of your journey towards a memorable trip, event and experience. So, you can also choose to write a personal narrative essay which can be penned down the same way the personal essays have been described above for your understanding.
Keep in mind that you avoid arguments in a personal narrative essay and also choose relative words to tell the readers that you have been into a situation on which you are writing a personal account to explain the turns of events and your reaction to them. Some of the widely used personal narrative essay topics are:
- Tell about your first day at college
- An account on a trip or first visit to a place
- Your childhood memories
- Any failure you ever faced
- What games did you like the most as a kid
- The biggest challenge you have overcome yet
- Your first birthday party
- An experience you remember
- Have you ever been into a difficult situation
- What would you like to eat as a kid
- How did you overcome your childhood fears
- Did you go on a trip as a child
- How you meet your best friend
- Your most memorable event
- When did you cook your first food at home
Personal experience essays
Have you ever experienced a strange incident? Do you feel happy when you are with your friends? Well, if this is the case then you have got some of the very interesting personal experience essays from within your life. A personal experience essay is written to describe a first person view of an experience that you have felt or observed. You don’t need to take up a thing from different books or daily life things to choose a topic for the essay.
Instead you can select a personal essay topic based on your personal experience with friend, family and anyone else you remember. You can describe your feelings while you were experiencing something. But you need to be explanatory rather than applying critical thinking in these essays. We have made a list of top personal experience essays here:
- Happiest moment in your life.
- Strange part of your college life.
- Explain your Christmas celebrations.
- How you come across your first driving experience?
- What was your best day at school?
- How you met you best friend?
- Explain your recent travel experience?
- How you learn something out of a road incident?
- Describe any accident you witnessed during travelling?
- Explain your worst nightmare?
- Experience of your first day at college?
- A relationship breakup experience.
- Amazing food you come across during a trip.
- Any disaster you witnessed recently.
- How you spent your first pocket money?
Personal essays for college essay writing
Are you a college student looking for some exciting personal essays? Do you need to choose a topic for your personal essay writing? If this is so then we have prepared a list of some of the best personal essays for college essay writing. You can select any of these topics to write your college essays and customize them according to your needs.
We have compiled a list of top essays for college essay writing. Keep in mind that college essay writing is nothing different from simple essay writing. The basic difference is that it is meant for college students and given to them as assignments or class activity. So, you do not need to add anything new in these essays and write them according to the method describe above. Here is a list of some personal essays for college students:
- How you made your first relationship?
- Explain your life goals
- What are your future study plans?
- How do you take freedom as a part of an ordinary person’s life?
- Things you want to do in your life?
- Explain the things you regret the most.
- Your encounter with a strange thing or incident.
- How you come across your first relationship?
- Describe the experiences of your hostel life?
- How you got your first appreciation letter in school?
- Describe some intellectual challenges that you want to solve?
- Have you ever learned from your failure?
- How college life changes your personality?
- Have you been to a place you never wanted to go?
- Explain your family commitments.
Personal persuasive essays
Personal persuasive essays are written to describe your opinion of something. You can write down your feelings and observations on some event, incident or a person with the help of a personal persuasive essay. However, you need to persuade your audience by making a clear point towards something you want them to acknowledge or like. Some of the best personal persuasive essay topics are:
- How to make the world a better place to live?
- Is it ethical to put animals in zoos?
- Should cigarette smoking be banned due to health concerns?
- Your favorite place everyone should visit?
- How do you see the current economic situation in the country?
- Do you agree with political parties using influence to make certain laws?
- Things everyone should do in their daily life?
- What is the secret to good health?
- How you save money from monthly expenses?
- Do you recommend studying abroad?
- Is loving someone a strength or a weakness?
- How to avoid environmental pollution?
- Explain your idea of technological advancements.
- Do science affects human development?
- Do you consider bank loans to manage your finances?
