Is this a good college app essay?

I come from a huge extended family, and every summer more than fifty of us congregate at a Priest Lake in rural, northern Idaho. There is a tremendous diversity of ethnicity, wealth, mental health, religion, profession, and sobriety. But we all have exactly one thing in common: this one week is the highlight of each persons year. When my well-meaning friends ask, So Emma, what are you doing this summer? and I respond, Going to Idaho for a family reunion!, my words are met with looks of confusion, feigned interest, and occasionally sympathy. Few of my classmates know that my family reunions make Burning Man and Woodstock look like staff meetings. While other families reunion activities might include crafts and storytelling, our family fills the daily schedule with more entertaining activities. The highlights include wrestling matches on top of inflatable rafts attached to a boat going 35 miles per hour, scavenger hunts where points are given for re-enacting fight scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean or The Goonies in public, pyromania in any form, and drama to rival Mexican telenovelas. The younger children are given slightly safer activities. In fact, all Wrenn children are raised to believe that, just like Santa Claus comes to bring you presents on Christmas, Priest Lake is infested with pirates who have hidden treasure along the shore. This tradition alone should tell you everything you need to know about my family. Each year they find clues carefully placed by their pirate cousins. I once helped to sink and recover a forty pound, wooden treasure chest filled with fake doubloons and pirate toys in about ten-foot deep water.

Though being a little kid at a Wrenn family reunion is incredibly fun, I was somewhat self-conscious about this yearly week of insanity and recklessness when I was younger. I was hesitant to bring up stories that set me and my family apart. But as I got older, I developed an intense pride for my strange family and this absurd event. I have learned more each year from this one week than the other fifty-one combined. Though I have always loved being a student and learning from my friends and teachers, Idaho is the place where my knowledge and opinions are truly tested by the real world. As I begin the slow transition from teenager to college-bound adult, I know these experiences and challenges will help me handle the obstacles ahead of me. Honestly, after seeing my college educated, middle-aged aunts get into a fistfight over childcare and watching my cousins see who could hold on to the back of a swerving speedboat for the longest, at the very least, its pretty hard to rattle me.
Its a very interesting topic. Your family reunion sounds awesome.



I feel like the beginning could be cleaned up a little bit. It just didn