by Anthony Terenzio
Ah, the personal statement: 650 words to capture the essence of you, your aspirations, your merits, and how you stack up against many others like you, all vying for one of a limited number of spots at a given institution. It’s a lot of pressure, to say the least, and certainly one of the big reasons our mentees come to us for support in the first place. After all, it’s no small challenge to distill you down to little over a page, let alone one that puts your best foot forward competitively. That said, it’s often not the distillation that students struggle with; perhaps more frequently, students’ initial toil is to determine what it is they have to say, show, and offer in the first place. This is a challenge because, in their mind, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about their lives; they haven’t invented a source of renewable energy or discovered a long-lost ancient civilization, so there’s nothing for them to show off in their personal statement. This leaves them feeling stuck and discouraged before they even sit down to write.
While we empathize with this feeling, all of us at Hyll having experienced it ourselves at some point or another (including when preparing our own university and graduate school applications), we also possess enough wisdom on the subject to know that it’s an illusion; the idea that you (or, parents, your student) haven’t lived an interesting or impressive enough life to write a compelling college essay is a bit like the opener from David Foster Wallace’s classic 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College:
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” (David Foster Wallace, 2005. Source: Kenyon College Alumni Bulletin)
To paraphrase DFW’s meaning, we have a natural tendency to be like the younger fish – living our lives constantly surrounded by and (quite literally, in the joke) immersed in something we are not even aware exists. His speech goes on to offer an approach to life characterized by conscious decision-making as to what we value instead of living on autopilot, but the core metaphor offers another nugget of wisdom which I will summarize as a recommendation to any student setting out to write a personal statement: notice the profundity of your own life. This may sound difficult, especially if you are operating under the assumption that your life is not profound (or at least not yet), but I promise you, you have lived a life worth writing about, and, likely, one that is much more unique and interesting than you’ve given it credit for.
This came up recently with one of my students, working on a writing exercise as preparation for a college personal statement. The exercise asked her to reflect on the notion of community in her life, and, when she sent me her response, I was taken aback when she explained that she was not part of any community to speak of. This was particularly surprising given that previous writing prompts I had assigned her as well as many of our discussions had revealed deep roots in her cultural identity and the city/country she comes from as well as a more recent connection with a sort of second home that she developed during a year abroad living with a host family, not to mention a close knit family, a rich social life with many friends connected by shared interests in international travel and languages, and experience regularly volunteering with a food drive. All of these areas of the student’s life were characterized by the groups of people within them; in other words, the respective communities to which she belonged. When I shared my reaction with this student, it was a revelation that community is actually a major salient force in her life.
Like the young fish in the DFW metaphor, this student wasn’t aware of what was all around her, shaping and guiding her path through life. She took another crack at the writing exercise after we discussed this, and her second draft included some powerful reflections on the importance of community in her life that would go on to become a central theme in our discussions around her identity and how to capture it in the personal statement—the idea that the communities she is a part of, especially those she found in unexpected and new places (such as with her host family and local environment during the year abroad), have allowed her to develop a deeper sense of her own value and strengths, especially insofar as growing into a multiculturally-minded and independent person who is ready to step into and thrive in a university setting in another new country. This, naturally, becomes an excellent springboard for developing a compelling appeal for international college admission by way of her personal statement.
Even if you are not struggling to identify the elements of your being that make for good essay-fodder, take this as a reminder to stop and look around—what do you take for granted? Who has influenced or inspired you, consciously or otherwise? When has your worldview been challenged or your opinions changed? Try free-writing on these topics for twenty minutes, or ask someone close to you—a parent, sibling, or friend—how they see these elements manifested in you. Like the young fish, you may not be aware of how deeply entrenched you are in these elements, but, to paraphrase DFW once again, you ought to make the conscious choice to notice them and how they have impacted you, both during and beyond the college admissions process.
