College Essay Series: Writing the Creativity Essay (UC Prompt #2)

All students are able to write essays about creativity because they all express themselves. In fact, it’s stated directly in the second essay prompt of the University of California Application:

Every person has a creative side, and it can be expressed in many ways: problem solving, original and innovative thinking, and artistically, to name a few. Describe how you express your creative side.

In this entry of our UC Essay blog series, I offer some guidance on how to approach this open-ended prompt.

“Express your creative side” means what you say it means.

Choose your interpretation and stick the landing. If creativity is something straightforward for you, especially if you dedicate yourself to the visual or performing arts, go with a topic like painting, cello, or dance. However, if your list of activities doesn’t include a traditional art form like that, go to your journal and jot down all the ways you share, vent, teach, and otherwise communicate without an instrument in your hand. Anything goes as long as you can show it with your words, develop the response, and follow it through to the end.

The UC essay readers unabashedly love a unique response to their prompts. Examples of somewhat off-the-path responses include making sandwiches, planning parties, writing sticky notes to leave for friends, and coming up with spontaneous plans for your friend group.

If you’re not sure if you’re an artist, you probably are.

One of the most stressful questions I ask students on purpose is, “are you an artist?” Often, they are nervous to claim the word. They may say, “no, I’m a musician,” knowing quite well that music is art. Or they may say they hope to be an artist one day, which implies that they need a certain level of skill in order to have the word. I give you permission to let go of that self-talk and claim this word, because I suspect that facing whatever makes you nervous to say “I’m an artist” is the same thing that will reveal and help you develop your answer to the creativity prompt.

Young musicians may say that they don’t, in truth, control the music, because someone else wrote it. When I hear this, I ask them to think of two professional musicians they love. When these two artists play the same piece at different times, are they identical? What if one played the piece on a bad day and then again on a good day — would it be the same performance? Does changing the audience ever change the piece? It may be challenging to wrap your head around, but the answer is there. You are not a puppet for a composer: You express yourself with your instrument.

You should be releasing something.

“Expression” in English means, literally, to press out. Similarly, cows express milk, and you can express lime juice by cutting and squeezing a lime. Self-expression is a bit more figurative, but the idea is exactly the same. You have ideas, feelings, and perspectives in your head, and self-expression is when you press them out and share them with others. It is the task of this essay to show just how this happens, uniquely, for you.

So, what is it that you have inside to release? What of yourself, exactly, are you sharing with others?

Show, don’t tell.

This is true for all the prompts, but especially for UC2. When you find the exact language, including action verbs, for how you express yourself, your creativity is crystal clear to the reader. Challenge yourself to show the reader at least one and as many as three moments of you expressing your creativity in action. Your essay just won’t be as engaging without this.