First Drafts of Personal Statements: Let Yourself Go
First drafts. These are probably the hardest part of the whole process for would-be applicants. There’s a sense of overwhelmedness, of trying to capture so much of your experience onto a single page.
I’ve read hundreds of first drafts over the years. To be honest, most
were okay. Not stellar, granted, but most could be polished up enough to
probably win an interview at an average program.
But I’ve also read a few first drafts that blew me away. First drafts
that told me the applicant would be accepted somewhere great. First drafts
that, although the language might not be sharp, or the organization might be terribly
muddled, already contained the core of what would be an astounding final
version.
And more often than not, these great first drafts were not the tightly
focused, sharp sounding, well-written essays. In those, applicants seem too
focused on how their story sounded to
really recognize what was special
about it.
But when a first draft is allowed to be expansive, wonderful things can
happen. I frequently find the best ideas are hidden, just waiting to be pulled
out and put center-stage. For instance,
in the middle of one applicant’s four-page first draft, this gem was tucked
away:
[The radiology attending] was
pointing out how sometimes we forget that in interpretation that it is still an
image and not a actual
person. However, our interpretation will significantly impact the human and not
the image. This same radiologist on a separate occasion while a resident and
myself were looking at a plain film of the chest brought up the same point, but
in a very creative way. He pulled up a
painting by René Magritte
that said “This is not a Pipe.” In this painting, Magritte cleverly communicates with his viewers that it was truly
not a pipe, but an “image” of a pipe.
This
passage concealed an essential truth of how this applicant had come to view
radiology. We brought it to the start of
her personal statement, and used it to set the stage for an essay focused on
the radiologist’s commitment to his patients:
“The
Treachery of Images”, one of surrealist artist RenĂ© Magritte's most famous works, depicts an ordinary pipe
with “this is not a pipe” written below it. While a resident and I examined a
chest x-ray, our
attending pulled out this image. I immediately understood his meaning. What we
saw was not truly a pipe, only its image; similarly,
a chest x-ray was only a representation of what we were really seeing. It
was a reminder that what was revealed in these
shadowed images - the reality behind the image - could
be used to treat our patients.
Many things stand out about this introduction. This revelation about
radiology is expressed
in a creative way that shares something about the expanse of her education. The
way she seems to effortlessly extrapolate these other aspects of her life to this
chosen specialty implies a level of comfort with this specialty – a way of
thinking of herself already as a practitioner of it. It also helped roll out a
very clear structure for the essay focusing on how these images could help real
people.
This applicant succeeded because she gave herself the freedom to write
expansively in her first draft, expressing - albeit unknowingly - what was
special in her story. Whatever your educational goal, try giving yourself this
freedom, and allowing yourself to discover what is special about your own
story.
Originally posted on Accepted.com