The “I Come From” Exercise

Some of the best college essay material isn’t out in the world. It’s already inside the nooks and crannies of your experiences and memories. That’s what this exercise is for. It takes about five minutes, and it almost always surfaces a few gems (specific images, phrases, or moments) that you can build a great essay around.

Step 1: One minute of “I come from…”

Set a timer for one minute. Finish this sentence stem as many times as you can:

I come from…

Don’t overthink it. Don’t edit. Don’t worry about whether something is “essay-worthy.” Just keep your pen moving (or your fingers typing) and let whatever comes, come. Mess is good here. The goal is quantity, not polish.

Step 2: Two to three minutes with the prompts

Now reset your timer for two to three minutes and keep finishing “I come from…” but use the prompts below to nudge you somewhere new. You don’t have to use all of them. Skim the list, land on the ones that spark something, and write.

I come from…

• a dinner table where…
• a family that taught me…
• a father who…
• a mother who…
• a grandparent who…
• the sounds of…
• the smells of…
• the tastes of…
• the feel of…
• long afternoons (or evenings) spent learning about ___
• rituals like…
• questions like…
• places like…
• a name that means…
• the pressure to…
• the freedom to…
• languages that…
• the knowledge that…
• books, movies, plays, or works of art like…
• the intersection of ___ and ___

Notice that these prompts pull on different senses and different parts of your life. The sensory ones (sounds, smells, tastes, the feel of) tend to produce the most vivid, specific lines, the kind that make a reader feel like they’re standing in the room with you. The others (a name that means, the pressure to, the intersection of) tend to surface values, identity, and tension, which is where essays can lead to deeper meaning and insights.

What to do with what you wrote

Once you have a page full of lines, here are a few moves to try:

Hunt for the surprises. Read back through and circle the two or three lines that surprised you, made you smile, or made you feel something. Those are your gems. Surprise is a great signal, because if it surprises you, it might do the same for your reader.

Pull one thread and keep writing. Take a single line that has aliveness in it and free-write for five more minutes. Where does it lead? A specific dinner table can become a whole scene. A name that means something can become a meditation on identity.

Look for the patterns. Step back and notice what keeps showing up. A theme that appears three or four times, often without you meaning it to, is usually pointing at something you genuinely care about.

Play with “the intersection of ___ and ___.” This one is especially worth looking at. The most interesting essays often live where two unexpected things meet (faith and science, your grandmother’s kitchen and your love of chemistry, two languages, two worlds). If that prompt gave you something, sit with it.

A note before you start

You don’t have to write something profound. You just have to write something true. The “I come from” exercise works because it gives your memory a bunch of small doors to walk through, and you only need one of them to open onto a story worth telling.

If you’d like a walkthrough of this exercise, check out the video above.