College Essays

How can someone possibly write an essay to apply to college without sounding extremely cheesy? For instance, a prompt for a college says to write about an experience that changed your life. Well, first of all, I'm only 17...so not much has changed my life so far. What do they want me to write about? Going to my first rated "R" movie in theaters? Or getting my wisdom teeth out? I don't really understand what colleges deem as "life-changing" for a 17 year-old. Do they want me to write about the time that I babysat and it was "extremely rewarding because of the experience of responsibility I gained"? I put that in italicized quotes because I was saying it in a goody-two-shoes voice. Basically, when writing an essay, you can go two main routes: A.) Talk about how a certain thing taught you about life/yourself; or B.) Try to make them feel bad for you by talking about a hard time in your life. For the second one, I am writing about how I could never make any school plays that I've tried out for. In reality, I'm 95% sure that the board of admissions for a college never actually thoroughly reads through these essays that we spent weeks or even months writing. I wish I could be like Ron Swanson in the way of writing essays because if I was I would just write the following (read in Ron Swanson voice):
My name is Sara. I am a strong candidate for your school because I am hard-working, a good eater, and a good person. Please consider this when making a decision to let me in.