I’ve never gone to college, so I can’t speak from that level of writing.
However, I still regret one essay from eighth grade of all things. I was twelve.
There was a standardized test called Florida Writes, that all eighth grade students had to pass or they couldn’t go to high school. VERY high pressure from the district, from the school, and from the teachers, on top of the pressure I put on myself.
It was drilled into our heads that we were not to stray from the prompt at all. If we didn’t agree with the prompt, too bad, we had to fake it.
My prompt was “Describe your living hero, and persuade a contest judge to grant you a prize to meet them.”
Seems so simple.
I was raised in a religious household, and I was taught never to look up to “man”. I had no “role models” as such. I froze. I only had 40 minutes to write the essay. What was I going to do? I couldn’t write about why I didn’t have a living hero.
Ended up writing some bullshit about the first name that popped into my head: Mariah Carey. I don’t even like Mariah Carey.
Whatever, I passed. Even got a 3.5 out of 5. Only needed a 2 to pass. Still, I should have killed it. I was a great writer for my age.
That whole situation still pisses me off.