A Not-So Personal Statement

I never thought that the hardest piece of writing I'd ever have to create during my undergraduate career would be a personal statement for graduate applications.

I'm currently taking a graduate workshop with an amazing English professor at St. John's, and I do not know how to thank her enough for offering to direct it. I learned so much about graduate school in general, the application process, the proper timelines, etc. in just the first week alone. Our assignment for the second week was to write 1-1 1/2 pages of the first draft of our personal statement. I thought, "Sure, that's a piece of cake. Due next Monday night via email? Easy."

Sitting on my bed, laptop in hands Monday evening, I quickly found out otherwise. There's a formula to these stupid statements. Yes, it's supposed to be personal and tell the story of your academics, and the reasons why you'd want to enroll in a PhD program, but these so-called personal statements must be written like an academic essay. I'm supposed to sound like Britannica Encyclopedia, rattling off eloquence wrapped inside intellectually designed syntax. It's supposed to be perfect to the extent that it could be published upon sending it with my application.

Sure, I can write an amazing academic essay. I can sound like an intellectual in a film paper. I have the potential to create a stellar dissertation on Fritz Lang's concern with identity and individuality in his early German films.

But I can't fake sounding like a scholar in what's titled my personal statement.

It was hard and demanding, especially while trying to watch game two of the ALDS. It reminded me that graduate school itself is going to be stressful and will certainly wear me down. But I pushed on, and I wrote my first draft. Wednesday I will be given the oppurtunity to work on that draft with peers and professors in my English department, and that's something that not every student applying to grad school has.

I wanted the ability to tell graduate school advisors what to me, is so special about film studies. I wanted them to hear my personal tone that I use in most of my writing. I wanted to tell that story with passion, not in a researched, well-supported MLA format.

I still told my story, to the best of my ability, for now. I have to keep telling myself that this is just a draft.