Advice on adversity/challenge essay... too complicated?

[Saturday’s Child]

In writing about a challenge I faced, I realized that the experience I was writing about had multiple challenging aspects to it. I’ll try to give as much detail as possible while still being vague:

I was in a volunteering situation in a foreign country where I had no plan, resources, or connections to anyone in the area. I had to overcome those obstacles in order to figure out a plan for myself. However, once I figured out what I wanted to do, I struggled to overcome self-doubt and the feeling that what I was doing would not have any lasting impact.

The self-doubt part was the adversity I was initially planning on focusing on, but I realized that the lead-in to it (making a plan from scratch) could also be viewed as a separate challenge. Would it be OK to keep both parts of this story in a single answer? I don’t want it to be perceived that I wasn’t answering a prompt about “a (single) challenge.”

@LizzyM @gonnif @Moko

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[LizzyM]

How you got yourself into such a predicament could raise questions about your sensibility. Was this a long term volunteer situation (4 weeks or more)? Were you sponsored by an organization? You might have had a good challenge but how you ended up having that challenge could reflect negatively on you. If you were there under the auspices of an established organization, it would be okay to use as a topic for the essay.

 

[Saturday’s Child]

How you got yourself into such a predicament could raise questions about your sensibility. Was this a long term volunteer situation (4 weeks or more)? Were you sponsored by an organization? You might have had a good challenge but how you ended up having that challenge could reflect negatively on you. If you were there under the auspices of an established organization, it would be okay to use as a topic for the essay.

Fair points thankfully this was a long-term situation (2 months). I was interning with an established organization, but they left it very open-ended since they believed it would be foolish for me to try to plan a project for the community without ever having set foot in it—I agreed. There was a preexisting project they suggested I could jump into, but when I got there the project was failing and there was not much I could do to help it since I knew I had limited time.

I spent a few weeks in the community to identify some way I could do some actual good there. Then used the info I learned + connections I made with locals to develop a practical and helpful project idea. It was at that point that the self-doubt crept in, but I overcame that and was able to follow through successfully with the project.

If all of that checks out, my main concern is whether it would be OK to talk about the initial difficulty starting the project AND the eventual self-doubt I experienced within the same adversity essay... if it’s not, I can try separating them and just picking one to focus on

 

[LizzyM]

Fair points thankfully this was a long-term situation (2 months). I was interning with an established organization, but they left it very open-ended since they believed it would be foolish for me to try to plan a project for the community without ever having set foot in it—I agreed. There was a preexisting project they suggested I could jump into, but when I got there the project was failing and there was not much I could do to help it since I knew I had limited time.

I spent a few weeks in the community to identify some way I could do some actual good there. Then used the info I learned + connections I made with locals to develop a practical and helpful project idea. It was at that point that the self-doubt crept in, but I overcame that and was able to follow through successfully with the project.

If all of that checks out, my main concern is whether it would be OK to talk about the initial difficulty starting the project AND the eventual self-doubt I experienced within the same adversity essay... if it’s not, I can try separating them and just picking one to focus on

OK. I would not have any concerns about the underlying situation. The difficulty in starting and the self-doubt seems a reasonable challenge. Schools want to know that you have been challenged (medical school won't be the first time) and how you have reacted when faced with a challenge.