🏛How do you write about a common topic in an uncommon way?

French printers once had a shortcut for pages they expected to print again and again.

Instead of setting the type letter by letter, they cast the whole page as one solid metal plate.

They called it a cliché, possibly after the click of the mold striking the metal.

A cliché was a sentence nobody had to think about anymore.

That is the trouble with a topic that resonates.

The grandmother, the injury, the move to a new country. These subjects feel enormous to everyone, so the plate has already been cast.

In the 2025–26 cycle, more than four in ten Common App applicants chose the adversity or personal-growth prompt.

The usual advice is to “choose another topic.” But these topics are common for a reason. The Lindy effect says if something has lasted a long time, it will probably last much longer. People have written about family for thousands of years. It matters, so it will stay.

So the real question is how to write good essay on an old topic.

Common: “I hurt my knee, but I learned to never give up.”

Better: “One week after knee surgery, my doctor made me walk on it, and I named my crutches ‘Pain’ and ‘Suffering.’ Wolff’s law says bones grow stronger where they carry weight, and now I ask why some stress builds us and some breaks us.”

Keep your topic.

And follow one rule. Bring an idea, a question, and a true detail about you in an interesting way.

@agora_writing — Keep Learning.