'Better cooking' - Lafayette Supplement

In an effort to learn more about you, we ask that you describe an intellectual or creative interest or accomplishment.

Being the only male at home has made it difficult to become independent because, everyone would do everything for me. Up until the point that I needed to learn and I decided to become an intellectual person. One afternoon when no one was home, I saw that it was the time to learn how to cook. I wanted to surprise my family with a nice dinner on the table before they arrived home. I fear that I would burn the house down but I went onto youtube.com and looked up how to make rice with chicken. I switch the stove on and the flames surprised me as I placed the pot on top to heat. I wanted to invent something that nobody has eaten before. I opened the cabinet and saw many seasonings. I was a bit confused but I had no doubt in me. In matters of seconds I had opened about 6 different seasoning and put a little of each into my chicken. After the food was done, I was already licking my finger on how good it tasted. As the food was on the stove heating, I decided to fix the dinnerware on the table to make my family proud. Once it looked very organized, I prepared the food onto the table. Knock Knock ... It was my family at the door. When I went to open the door, the first thing that came out my mother's mouth was "that stove better not be on". I giggled inside not revealing anything just yet. As they walked towards the kitchen, everyone froze in sudden steps. The house became silent for about 10 seconds and then they couldn't believe what they just had seen. As I told them to sit around the table to eat, I explained how I really wanted to surprise them. After the meal was done, everyone complimented me on how delicious the food was. From that day on, I was happy to accomplish something that I would not picture me ever doing; cooking. By cooking, I learned how to cook much better and this showed my family I was responsible enough to use the stove. This accomplishment is something I talk about till this day. Being creative has allowed me to do this.

please help me with powerful sentences or critiques!

The main problem with this essay is that cooking rice and chicken by following a youtube video just doesn't seem like a very powerful accomplishment (Sorry). The good news is that the assignment doesn't have to be about an achievement -- just a creative interest. So, if you like to cook, you can talk about what it is about cooking that you enjoy. Also, I notice that you haven't mentioned what you are applying for (this sounds like an application essay). If its for a cooking school, you're definitely on the right track. If you are applying for, say, history or math or some other program utterly unrelated to cooking, then you might want to pick a more relevant interest or accomplishment to talk about.

I wholeheartedly agree with EF_Sean :) you 'd better choose something more interesting..this isn't powerful enough to make you stand out in tons of application..By coincidence, I know that my friend writes about cooking too but on second thoughts he rejected that essay for too many people use this idea...

If you can make it so that this experience occurred when you were very young, you could tell the story in fewer words so as to leave room for a second paragraph. In the second paragraph, tell about some culinary pursuit that was intellectually challenging. Or, tell about some other intellectual pursuit that arose rom this early experience of cooking...

But as the other said, this is not a good example of an intellectual interest or accomplishment... but don't be discouraged!! It has potential; what other creative things have you done?