Stop arguing for yourself
By Ryan Jaffe ·
School trains you to state a thesis and defend it. That instinct produces essays that tell the reader what to think about the writer: I am resilient, I am curious, I am a leader.
The trouble is that nobody believes a claim about character. They believe evidence and draw their own conclusion, and the conclusion they reach themselves is the one that sticks.
So the work is subtraction. Cut the sentence that names the quality. Keep the moment that demonstrates it. If the moment does not demonstrate it, the moment is wrong, and no amount of framing will fix that.
Almost every essay I read improves the second it stops arguing.