College app: Contribution to educational environment essay: help with beginning

I am working on an essay for a college application. The prompt states to talk about how my personal characteristics will contribute to the educational environment. I am not really sure how to begin this essay or organize it. Because they want characteristics that contribute to the class, I was thinking about talking about how I work well with others, I like to teach and learn from others, etc. One of the most significant things in my life is that I love to cook. I though about using this as a main point and showing how cooking has taught me several characteristics that will help me in a classroom environment. Does anybody have an idea on how to begin this essay or a way to organize it to highlight these characteristics? And is this even a good idea. Thank you for your help.

First of all, working well with others is an excellent characteristic to stress. Secondly, I like your idea of using cooking as an analogy. You could suggest that the people in a class are like the ingredients in a recipe. If you were to use that metaphor, you could start with a description of cook adding different ingredients to a dish, note that you like to cook, and then say that cooking has taught you that every ingredient is important and they all work together. You could then stress that you are very good at working with others, perhaps even offering a particularly friendly ingredient as a metaphor for yourself. Or you could talk about other things you have learned by cooking, such as the importance of planning ahead and taking one step at a time or the joy of creating things for others to enjoy.

Wow. that's an excellent metaphor. My idea was to start off with a cooking scenario that incorporated certain characteristics. For example, the scenario can include many people working to prepare a dish representing team work. Or learning a dish from my grandmother and then teaching it to another cousin to represent my ability to learn and teach. I was having a difficult time coming up with a scenario that had a flow and was interesting. I will definitely try your idea, hopefully with success. Thank you so much.

I like that idea too! You could start with a scenario in which "too many cooks spoil the broth" by competing rather than cooperating and by not communicating with one another. Or you could describe some joyous group cooking scene, such as a group of volunteers with Food Not Bombs using cast-off ingredients to cook a meal for the homeless.

EF_Simone

hmm...I don't know if I'm having writer's block after all these essays but I can't seem to get a good start on this. It may be a while before I can come up with something. I really like your idea though! Should I start with a list of ingredients? I was thinking of using my recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I guess this would be baking instead. This one's tough.

Try it a couple of different ways. See what you like best. Hey! That works when creating recipes too!