Are Personal Statements personal anymore?

From time to time, I wonder: what did that admissions panel think about my PERSONAL STATEMENT?

This wondering usually happens when I am slogging through some other paper and hit the wall.

(I originally started this entry a few years ago.  Fortunately, I don't have any more papers to write.  Unfortunately, those papers have been replaced with other tasks, like adult life.)

Have you ever been asked to write about yourself?  Anyone who has ever applied to a school or job has been faced with the dreaded PERSONAL STATEMENT.  I consider myself an above-average writer, but the thought of tackling that still makes me cringe.  Why?  My belief is because it is a paradoxical situation.  The difficulty does not come from the fact that you don't have enough information to start.  Rather, you have TOO MUCH information.  After all, you are the "subject matter expert", right?

The problem comes from filtering out the pedestrian from the extraordinary.  Without a doubt, every person who has passed time on this earth has both pedestrian and extraordinary experiences.  The hiring department usually just wants to hear about the latter, though.

"But I never have any extraordinary experiences," you say. "I'm sort of boring."

Maybe.  Not everyone is Michael Westen or Amelia Earhart.  But look at Jerry Seinfeld: his is admittedly a "show about nothing" and yet America spent 9 years watching those four bumble around New York City doing extremely pedestrian things.  Including walking a lot.  That the show made people pause, examine their supposedly pedestrian days and find humor in them, was extraordinary.

The first things to materialize in my mind include overseas service projects, running one's own business, and research experience.  Perhaps a heroic act of valor - though, nothing too over-the-top, of course.  We want admissions to be intrigued, not scoffing at what you or I would call "harmless embellishment."  None of these are easy to wrist about eloquently, but they show up on personal statements all the time.  How come?  Because some students on the fringe did these things decades ago, wowed some people and word spread.  These days, it is almost expected to have accomplishments of this level when you apply for school admission or first job, depending on your industry.

The truth is not everyone is able to do these things. Writing about something you are deeply interested in rings infinitely truer than trying to convince a stranger that you did, in fact, love spending Thursday afternoons in a hospital lab, helping nerdy Ph.D. candidates collate reams of data for their dissertation on Why I Think My Lab Rat Doesn't Have Backaches Anymore.