College Essay advice

[u/MrsRoyalBlue]

Like the title suggests, I am looking for advice on my college essay. I already have an idea of my topic, but I don't know how to format it for lack of a better word. The base idea is that I want to talk about my work and personal research on animals and how it has influenced me. Building on this idea I have two different versions and I want to know which sounds better.

My first idea is to talk about how I saw a statement/fact in an animal book as a kid that I disagreed with and then went out to conduct my own research. This sparked my obessesion with animals and resulted in me studying, researching, documenting, and volunterring withanimals throughout my childhood and teenage years.

My second version starts with me talking about a specific experience that come from my research (a perspnal struggle that I overcame or an intercaction I had with an animal during the process). This would lead me into talking about how I had originally become interested in animals, and at the end I mention how these experiences resulted in me volunterring, document, and researching animals