Too Personal

It's August. I'm about to head back to school and all my lofty goals of getting everything done for applications are thwarted. Why? Well, because most applications were not even open until mid-September and . . . the personal statement.

It sounds innocuous, right? Just write an essay explaining to a school why it should accept you. WRONG! At least for me, this was the most stressful, pain-staking part. At one point, in a half-crazed, half-desperate mood, I almost signed up for a professional service that evaluated personal statements and cost almost my entire summer's income. The only thing that prevented me was that I had exactly one fragment: "I am a qualified candidate for law school because . . ." so I had nothing to even be evaluated yet. (Don't worry, I changed my riveting opening sentence later)

I didn't know how to proceed. The unknown of where to begin paralyzed me, eating up my precious summer free time I had previously set aside to work on the daunting essay about myself.

The issue was I had to convince the admissions board that I was a highly qualified candidate, stood out from the rest without being weird or obnoxious, informed them about my skills and abilities without sounding like an arrogant jerk and keeping in mind that this is the only "interview" that I will have with the school.

So I did what anyone would do in my situation, I avoided it. I immersed myself in the new school year. Soon, it was mid-September. The applications opened, and I began to eagerly fill out the applications online, skipping right over the Personal Statement Addendum.

Finally, my avoiding caught up to me. I had decided to visit one of my top schools, and they suggested I complete my application before I came. "No problem," I said. Inwardly, kicking myself for not getting my personal statement done before then. But, it motivated me. I scheduled an appointment with my school's Career Services to review my essay, then pulled a very late night in order to at least get a rough draft out.

And it was rough. But at least I finally had something down. Meeting with Career Services helped me too, and I highly recommend having them help you not only with resumes, but with any sort of written application essays. They helped me organize my thoughts, figure out what to focus on, and how to say it without coming across like Jared Franklin from TNT's "Franklin and Bash."

Long, whiny story short, I got it done. I had a completed essay, with every comma in place. And then I read the fine print. 500 words only. While most schools gave a 1-2 page limit, this school said 500 words. So I had to, as British author Arthur Quiller-Couch so poignantly wrote, "murder my darlings." (Murdering darlings means to edit your writing, even if you love what you wrote, in order to shorten/tighten it.)*

In my last desperate attempt at this dreaded thing called a personal statement, I murdered over 300 darlings in a merciless bout of editing. And with that, my personal statement saga was finally over. I survived and became a better writer for it. But heed my warning, DO NOT put it off. Leave plenty of time for revisions so you can honestly answer a school with "No problem," and not loose a wink of sleep over it.

*Excerpt From: Roy Peter Clark. “Writing Tools.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/5wttv.l

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