3 Clichés You Can Remove from Your Essay
by Michelle
For all the Essay Narwhals who have begun boldly swimming into the first drafts of their essays, they might be unaware of a few dangerous icebergs they should avoid.
Of course, we’re referring to clichés.
What is a cliché, exactly? To recap, a cliché would be a phrase of writing (or more broadly, a scene or situation) that has been used over and over so much that it has become unoriginal and boring.
Phrases like “every cloud has a silver lining” can be considered a cliché. A person bringing a dozen roses to a date would be a cliché. A group of vacationers being stuck in a haunted cabin in a horror movie would be another example of a cliché.
The problem with using a cliché is that it makes the writing boring, which would not be ideal for your college essay. You certainly wouldn’t want readers to feel like falling asleep after reading it!
So, that being said, what are 3 clichés that you can remove from your essay?
We’ll go through the 3 most common ones I have noted from general experience, and run through how you can rewrite them instead!
1.A cliché: Appreciating my parents’ hard work and sacrifice
It’s true that most parents have done a lot for their children, and it’s great to acknowledge that in an essay. However, considering the multitude of students who want to thank their parents in their college essay, this phrase has popped up way too many times to really feel sincere.
Instead of:
“This experience made me truly appreciate my parents’ hard work and sacrifice for me.”
Consider writing:
What specific actions or aspects of your parents’ personality did you appreciate?
Perhaps your parent made sure to bring a bag of your favorite vegetables and hummus dip for you in the car after each sports practice. Or your parent sat down to watch a few episodes of Spanish telenovas with you each week during your free time as a way to bond. As each parent is different, this would offer more unique ways to describe how they had supported you.
2. A cliché: Learning about the value of hard work
Instead of:
“After running through the experiments over and over, I learned about the value of hard work to reach success.”
(Hard work as a cliché can also apply to similar words like ‘persistence’ or ‘determination’)
Consider writing:
It’s a fact that many, many students around the country have put in a lot of hard work into their studies or activities or interests. As such, the value of hard work doesn’t especially stand out.
Think about hard work as more of a byproduct of your experience, and switch the focus towards a different value instead from that exact experience.
Running an experiment for over 20 times may have taught you the importance of recording small details. Or learning a new dance over and over for a breakdance competition helped you learn how to be better at giving mutual encouragement to your teammates and others.
3. A cliché: Getting out of my comfort zone
(this phrase crops up so often that I can even meme about it)
If you see this sentence anywhere in your paragraphs, I would strongly, strongly recommend zooming in on it to revise it.
Instead of:
“Having to be in charge of a team pushed me to get out of my comfort zone…”
Consider writing:
“Getting out of my comfort zone” seems to be a very popular phrase—but as it’s a term used repeatedly by so many other students, it ends up not telling the readers very much at all about the student themselves.
Try writing instead about a positive trait that you gained from the experience!
While doing something that seems difficult or tough, a student might find that they have become more outgoing after speaking with many other people. Or a student might feel they have learned how to be more poised when facing a problem.
There are many possibilities to go with—highlighting how the situation has improved an Essay Narwhal’s personality or perspective brings the focus of the essay back to them, just as it should be.