Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
University applications. Ugh! Is it just me that feels the whole process of checking boxes and giving away countless miscellaneous details is a violating and suspiciously thorough one?
However, the most daunting of all amongst the nationality credentials and your schooling history, is the dreaded ‘personal statement’. Just typing the name brings: anxiety, dread and distrust.
Like most of my peers, I am yet to properly put my fingers to keyboard and actually start writing this beast, because just the premise seems near impossible to me. Essentially, you are selling yourself to these universities, you are telling them that out of the thousands applying, you, yes you, are one of the special ones.
You are the one that craves this course more than anyone-else. You are the one who will benefit the most from this course. You are the one with the most to offer this course. You are the one that is so wondrous that their university would be at a loss without you. You must convince a complete stranger that you are the chosen one, in around 4,000 characters.
Some of you may be thinking that I pen this column every week; therefore it must be easier for me because, in the loosest sense of the word, I am a writer. Although in my opinion, that fact makes it even more difficult, because I will not settle on a sentence unless I am content with every single word, comma and implication that it holds. In addition, the course I am applying for involves English literature, therefore a misplaced comma and I shall be crucified.
When writing this personal statement, we all must remember that other than our grades, our personal statement is it.
In our personal statement we are introducing ourselves, in mere words; we become no longer statistics on a page or pixels on a screen. We become three-dimensional human beings, that need to be judged and either accepted or rejected – an easy process for the administration of the university as rejection is of no consequence to them.
You know, no pressure or anything guys.
