Writing about something hard without turning it into a pitch
By Ryan Jaffe ·
Every year a student asks whether they have to write about the hardest thing that has happened to them. No. You do not owe a stranger your worst year.
If you do write about it, the failure mode is predictable. The essay narrates the difficulty and then spends its last third converting it into a lesson, as though hardship only counts if it produced growth. Readers can feel the conversion happening, and it makes the whole piece feel transactional.
The better version stays concrete and lets the reader see how you handled a specific hour of it. What you did, what you noticed, what you said to someone. Meaning comes out of that on its own.
One more thing worth saying plainly: write it only if you want to. An essay written out of obligation reads like one.