1.1 - Beginning

In this lesson, I’ll cover:

  • What’s Narrative Structure Anyway?

  • What’s the Purpose of Narrative Structure?

  • The Feelings and Needs Exercise (aka The Most Effective Way to Brainstorm a Challenges-Based Essay I’ve Ever Found)

Time to complete

10-15 minutes

Module Content

Welcome to Narrative Structure!

What’s Narrative Structure Anyway?

This path is useful if you’ve faced personal challenges. It basically involves describing three things:

  1. Challenges you’ve faced + effects on you

  2. What you did about it

  3. What you learned

What’s the Purpose of Narrative Structure?

As I mentioned in the intro, colleges want to know what skills/qualities/values/interests you’ll bring to their campus. A narrative essay describes an experience or set of experiences (usually a challenge or set of challenges) that have changed your life or perspective in a big way and—this is crucial—have led you to develop some of the skills/qualities/values/interests that make you who you are.

Let’s start with a short exercise that’ll help you figure out if the challenge(s) you’ve faced could lead to a great personal statement.

A Note on Going Fast vs. Going Slow

While I believe the time estimates I’ve attached to the various exercises and action items can be a useful guideline, please treat them as only that—I’m a huge fan of taking time to explore, and I’ve found that many students get a lot out of devoting time to this process, both in their writing, and in their self-discovery. Sometimes it’s great to go fast (I love efficiency!), but sometimes it can be really important to slow down—often, that can create the space for great insights.

So if an exercise takes you a suggested 15 minutes, great. If 45, great. And if longer…you get the idea.

Next steps

The Feelings and Needs Exercise

Complete the Feelings and Needs Exercise below. It’ll take you about 12 minutes to watch the video and complete the exercise. This is one of the longest exercises you’ll complete in the tool, but it’s also the most important, so feel free to take longer, if you need to, as your work on this exercise will set you up for the rest of the process. Make sure you have somewhere quiet to complete this one—headphones are ideal.

You can either do this exercise in your workbook (recommended), or use pen and paper, take a photo, email it to yourself, then drag the photo into your workbook (so you don’t lose it).

Once you’ve finished it, click continue to move onto the next module.

 
 
 

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Action Item: Complete the Feelings and Needs Exercise in your workbook.