Hi everyone, this is Albert Chen of The Pop Out, and if you made it this far, that tells
me that, for one, you are not completely turned off by my personality, but two, you're finding
at least some of the information here, or some of the discussions here, useful, aside
from maybe my Tyre Tuesdays.
I do have a sincere request of everyone who's listening.
That is that I ask that you do some things to support this particular podcast, and I
want to first give you the reason for it, and then make the request.
So ideally, one of the reasons I started this podcast is I wanted to get in contact with
students who actually needed assistance.
One of the things that's hardest in the private sector of education is the connecting up of
the student to the right instructor.
It's hard to know the right people to draw the right sort of connection so that students
get paired up with the people that could help them the best for what they need help with.
And I started this podcast in part because I didn't know where to find these students.
I've gotten students handed to me, essentially, through word of mouth.
People that I've worked with, people who trust me, have said, hey, I found a student, they're
going through some things, and I think you could be of real help to them, and then they'll
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But I wanted to just do something a little bit more proactive to try to reach out to
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So since that was the goal of this podcast, my hope was that this podcast spreads as much
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I'm a one man operation and I know nothing about anything that I'm doing.
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What is it?
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I've never done that before, so this is all just new to me.
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That's because I'm not a professional.
I'm a complete amateur.
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resource for one another.
So I'll see you now for the next show.
Welcome everybody to the Pop Out.
I'm your host, Albert Shin, and I am here to talk about personal statements part two.
This is going to be a discussion of how to actually write one of these personal statements.
Now, last time I talked to you a little bit about what the purpose of a personal statement
is, right?
And I was trying to break some of the myths that exist around personal statements.
And you'll notice this about me that I tend to focus less on the exactly what you talk
about and focus more on the purpose behind what you're talking about, right?
And last time I tried to explain to you that personal statements are not necessarily about
showing off how wonderful you are.
I mean, it should show you yourself in a positive light.
But the purpose of a personal statement is really to contextualize everything in your
application and to fill in gaps to be informative of the details that are missing in the rest
of your application, right?
And so what I'm going to talk about today in terms of exactly how to write a personal
statement, this is a particular style of writing and a type of writing with a very particular
purpose that it'll be helpful for you to get better at, not just for college applications,
but especially for those of you who are trying to go into professional and graduate schools
later on, you're going to be asked to write a personal statement at some point again.
And even those of you who are just going to go straight into the workforce and want to
be able to present yourself in a way that clearly demonstrates the right kind of fit
with wherever it is you're applying to, knowing how to write a personal statement can be extremely
helpful.
Okay.
All right.
So what exactly is the approach to personal statements and how is it different than other
kinds of writing?
Well, the name says it all.
It's a personal statement.
You're going to have to get personal.
Okay.
So which means that you need to have a good sense of who you are.
This is going to be the starting point.
Okay.
I cannot tell you the number of times I have met students who look great on paper.
They are very intelligent.
They know how to write.
They have really honed their skills in writing and in the work that they do and receiving
a bunch of accolades.
They're just like on paper, they just look great.
And then I am trying to help them with their personal statement.
I look at their personal statement and I'm like, okay, this is trash.
Well, I don't say it necessarily like that, but it's clearly not a high quality personal
statement.
And then so I have to kind of start from the bottom up to figure out what is this student
about, what makes them tick, what drives them, what motivates them, where is this coming
from?
And I would work with them and months and months of working on it and editing and they're
frustrated and I'm frustrated because there's not very much progress.
And part of the reason there's not a lot of progress is that there's not a sense of self
awareness that allows them to tap into their own life experiences to be able to properly
explain who they are.
Right.
Talking personally in this way is a skill set that needs to be developed.
And by the time you get to college applications, it's going to be too late for you to really
develop it.
This doesn't happen overnight.
This is something that you develop after years and years of really kind of reflecting on
your experiences, which means that if you really want to write a good personal statement,
the place to actually start is really thinking about who you are, figuring out your identity,
figuring out what makes you tick.
Right.
There's a lot of different ways to do this.
Right.
I mean, children do it at an early age by doing, you know, writing diaries.
Some people I know, I have friends who have journaled well into their adult years as just
a good exercise for slowing down and reflecting on life.
Right.
And especially in this climate in education, students are so busy doing a lot of things
without really considering the meaning behind what they're doing.
Right.
Like what are they actually getting out of the experience that is deeply moving and meaningful
for them?
If you're too busy just doing stuff, you're not really taking the time to appreciate what
it is that you're doing.
And so you're not going to have a good sense of why you're doing what you're doing because
it's not connecting to anything about you in any way.
Instead, it's just stuff you're doing.
Right.
Kind of like mindless activities that we might do.
Right.
It might show up on the resume as you've done a bunch of stuff, but there's nothing particularly
special or, you know, revealing about those activities, revealing at least in the sense
of revealing about you as a person.
Okay.
So if you want to write a better personal statement, the first place to start has nothing
to do with writing.
It actually has to do with you getting to know yourself.
Right.
So last time I suggested an exercise where you kind of go through your life experiences
and really track the things that were most meaningful for you, the things that would
stick out in your memory, the things that are ever present when you think back on your
life.
Right.
I was suggesting that a lot of these moments probably have impacted you in some sort of
way.
There's a reason that these memories stick.
It's because it touched something in you, some core aspect of you, or it was important
for shaping your identity or shaping your interest or whatever it might be.
Okay.
So that's one exercise that you can do.
Like I said, you could do journaling if you'd like, but my personal favorite, and this is
something that I've been doing for over a decade now, is getting therapy.
Right.
Now, I know there's still a bit of stigma, although over the last few decades that stigma
has kind of diminished a bit.
But I think there's a lot of ideas going around around therapy thinking that, oh, I need to
have suffered through something horrible or have a mental illness to go seek a therapist,
to seek a psychologist and go to these sessions.
That's actually not at all what these sessions are, or at least need to be.
Right.
Yeah.
In some cases, somebody might be suffering from severe depression and then so need to
go seek a therapist.
In some cases, it could be an underlying neurological or physiological issue, in which case you
might seek a psychiatrist because you might need the medication of some sort.
Okay.
But other times, the therapists are there to help improve the way that you navigate
life by better understanding your emotions, your responses to stimuli, to situations,
and it gives you a better sense of control and agency over yourself.
That's really what ideally it should lead you to do.
Now, I will say this from the beginning that this is a luxury.
This is absolutely a luxury because therapy in the United States is extremely expensive.
It is actually difficult to find a good therapist.
There are a lot of good therapists, but sometimes it's a matter of fit.
Right.
Some therapists you can trust because of your own personal experiences.
You find it easier to trust than others or some therapists who feel like their approach
kind of fits in with your worldviews.
And so you find that you click with a particular therapist.
There's a lot of trial and error that happens.
Right.
But I think that it's an extremely helpful experience in part because in the sessions,
if you really want to make it worthwhile, you're forced to confront your true self.
Right.
Your truest, most authentic self.
That's not necessarily the prettiest picture.
Right.
It could reveal that you get jealous and are petty sometimes or, you know, you are insecure
about something or another.
Right.
Like it could reveal things that you don't necessarily like about yourself.
OK.
But here's the thing.
If you do not take the time to address those, you know, now, then it's not as if it's going
to go away.
It's just going to manifest itself in other ways as you grow older.
And in fact, as you grow older, it probably gets worse.
If anything, you spend too much time trying to cover up your insecurities, for instance.
That's how you breed narcissists.
Right.
That's where narcissists come from.
This is rooted in this deep seated insecurity that they're trying to constantly cover up
by putting down others or puffing themselves up.
Right.
So, look, what I'm saying is the following.
Right.
Whatever method you use, you know, whether it's conversing with others, with professional
or friends or family or doing some journaling or, you know, like I said, to each their own.
Right.
You find a way that you feel comfortable with, that you find, you know, a way that you can
challenge yourself to dig deeper into who you are, but also at the same time with people
that you can trust so you don't you're not in an unsafe position emotionally, especially.
You know, just find the time and make it a priority to do some of this work.
Which means it's going to take time away from doing a bunch of stuff.
Right.
It's going to require you to slow down and just be attentive maybe to the things that
you're doing or why you're doing it.
OK.
It's going to mean that you're going to have to be more selective with things like extracurricular
activities or what you do with your free time, hobbies, that you are going to be a little
bit more mindful in what it is that you pick and choose to spend your time on.
This is all a product of you kind of slowing down and focusing on yourself, focusing on
what it is that you really want.
What is it that you're doing because other people have told you you should do it and
other things that you are doing just to do it like mindlessly, thoughtlessly, just doing
it just because.
Right.
And so this is where it's going to start.
If you have trouble with this area, your personal statements will always feel lacking.
Right.
It'll always feel lacking.
I have found that the students that have written the best personal statements are not necessarily
the best writers.
They're students who have spent time reflecting and have come to kind of accept and understand
themselves, both their strengths and their limitations.
Right.
They know what they like.
They know what they don't like.
They know what they want to do.
They know what they don't want to do.
Or if they don't know what they want to do, they know at least some of the things about
themselves so that they have an understanding of what direction would make the most sense.
Right.
We often learn a lot of this from in the context of relationships.
Right.
This includes relationship with parents, which sometimes could be contentious.
Other times it could be a source of great support with friends who sometimes might call
us out.
I will say this.
You have good friends if you have friends who will call you out for your bullshit and
will force you to look in the mirror and accept some ugly sides of you.
Those are good friends.
Okay.
Friends who just pump you up.
And you know, those are not real friends.
Friends will challenge you because they care.
Right.
If you care about a friend, you will make sure that they don't move in a direction that
is harmful to themselves.
Right.
And you know, friends could be a good source of resource and a good big help in this area.
Whatever method you use, like I said, you need to start taking time to really get a
good grasp of who you are.
Okay.
So all these suggestions are just, you know, some of many.
Whatever you find works for you.
Please, I would say, start doing it.
Ideally, I mean, you know, you can't do it at a too early of an age.
You know, just human brain develops at a certain rate and just, you know, physiologically,
I just know that it's probably going to be starting in high school at some point where
you can do a lot more deeper reflection on yourself, on your identity.
Right.
Oh, one other exercise that I thought was interesting that actually helped me a lot
was talking to older family members.
Right.
So older cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, if they're available.
Right.
So conversations about family history, learning about, you know, where you come from.
That's been super helpful.
But you know, you could also learn it by talking to people in your community, because if you
grew up in one area for a really long time, knowing what other people in that community
you're seeing could help you make better sense of your own experience, because there might
be some points of intersection between your experiences and theirs.
And so they might give you the words or, you know, a way to kind of explain your experience
in ways that others might not have been able to.
OK, so get to know yourself.
That's the first thing.
OK, second thing, when you're writing your personal statement, the first thing, the first
thing that needs to come out is the fact giving.
You need to make a list of all the things that are not in your application.
That is a central part of who you are.
So once you've got a good sense of who you are, you want to make sure that that comes
out on the paper.
And how do you let that come out on the paper?
Well, strategically speaking, now we're doing a little strategy here in terms of what we
choose to put in.
You'll want to pick things that are not present or at least not really clear in other parts
of your application.
OK, doesn't make sense.
So like if you are somebody who really cares about stand up comedy, let's say, and then
you've even done some stand up comedy on your own time just for fun.
OK, like you're really big about it.
OK, it might there might be something on your application somewhere that says like, yeah,
I've done a couple of gigs of stand up comedy.
Right.
But if that's like a real deep, intimate passion of yours and it's like something that you're
not only proud of, but it's like a core part of your identity.
Right.
You need to mark that down like that needs to come out somewhere in one of these many
essays.
We'll talk about this.
I mean, it's going to come out in any one of them.
And so you want to add it to your list of things like I really want this to be something
that I talk about because it's genuinely who a key part of who you are.
Right.
If you are, I don't know, like huge on sports or if you're huge on like there's one particular
activity that shows up on your application, but it's it doesn't really exemplify.
Right.
Let's say it just shows that you did four years of some activity.
It doesn't really show the extent of your passion for it.
Right.
Like the personal statement would be a place where you could bring it in.
Right.
The actual what you talk about won't matter all that much.
What matters here in this first stage is making sure that you pick out as many of the things
that you think would be helpful for completing the picture of who you are.
Right.
We're filling in the gaps.
That's the first thing we're doing.
We're filling in the gaps.
Okay.
And it's important to do this because, look, we're all humans.
The people who are reading your personal statement are humans and humans connect to other humans
when they sound like a human.
Right.
But resumes and these applications by design don't present a human being at all.
What they present is a list of accomplishments, a list of, you know, interests, a list of
accolades.
It doesn't present an actual person, person, right?
It doesn't feel like the reader is going to be, you know, as the reader isn't necessarily
seeing a real person in front of them.
The personal statement is one of the few places where you can actually present yourself as
a real person.
And what constitutes a real person?
Well, a person is made up of experiences.
It's made up of, you know, memories and feelings and all of these other things that cannot
be expressed in other parts of the application.
So it's going to be important for you to make sure that you fill in the gap by presenting
all of the things about yourself that make you who you are, make you a human being.
Right.
So when you get advice for things like don't list down your, you know, accomplishments
and so on, there's a couple of reasons that you shouldn't do it.
It's not because, like, you know, your accomplishments are like trash and that's just like you shouldn't
be talking about it or sounds like you're bragging.
I mean, those could be concerns, but that's not the primary reason.
The primary reason you don't want to list your accomplishments is A, you sound not like
a person again.
Right.
And B, it's going to bore the shit out of the reader.
It's going to bore the reader because it's not going to sound like a person.
Right.
Look, if I'm having conversation with a robot that gives me robotic responses, I'm going
to lose interest pretty quickly.
Right.
If I'm going to have a real conversation with somebody, I'm going to want to do it with
another person who has their own perspective, their own set of experiences, their own thoughts,
and they're bringing something to the table.
Right.
That's what's going to make the conversation more engaging.
Right.
So think of it like having a conversation with somebody.
You're going to be bored if somebody just talks at you with a bunch of facts about themselves.
OK.
If you've ever been on a date like that, oh my goodness, it's the worst kind of day where
somebody just talks about themselves and all the things that they've done.
Right.
So they're talking about themselves, but in a way where it just sounds so you're not a
real person and you're just a resume.
That's what it feels like.
I'm talking to a list of stuff.
Right.
You need to present yourself as a real person to do that.
You need to fill those gaps so that those accomplishments turn into a rather a story.
Right.
That's really what you're presenting.
You're telling a story of a real person who has had experiences, who has interests, who
has desires, who is passionate about something, who has stuff that they value.
Right.
Who has opinions about things.
Right.
Like that's a real person.
Right.
You need to present yourself as such.
Once you don't, that's when you lose the audience.
That's when the reader starts to get bored.
They start falling asleep.
You got to understand.
Right.
These readers are going through like hundreds of thousands of essays.
Right.
It's exhausting.
I could tell you as an instructor.
Right.
When I have to grade a paper with the same topic.
Right.
And I have to grade like a hundred of them, I lose interest after every like five, six,
just because I'm so exhausted from reading one essay after another that's talking about
more or less the same kind of stuff.
Right.
Like it could drain you.
The essays that will spark interest and give me life again are ones that actually sound
real.
Right.
Where especially for a personal statement where a student is actually bearing.
Right.
And then being vulnerable and exposing themselves as a real person.
Right.
That's when you start hearing a real story.
That's when it's like, okay, I am interested not because there's anything particularly
special about this person, but because they're actually talking to me like I'm a fellow human
being.
Right.
So the goal is to make yourself into a real person in these essays.
And the way to do that is first by filling in those gaps so that it's not just a resume
that you're giving to them.
Right.
Where you're adding all this information that is what constitutes a person.
Right.
Your feelings behind why you did what you did.
Okay.
This is why I always tell students, right, like you might feel like you haven't gone
through any special experience, but I keep on stressing to them like, look, you don't
need to go to go through anything like, you know, amazing or traumatic or unique to have
something interesting to write in a personal statement.
You just need to talk about your own life.
You just need to talk about yourself.
Right.
So once you've got a good sense of knowing yourself, so if you're doing it step by step,
once you've got a good sense of knowing yourself, then you should have a good idea when you're
looking at your application.
Right.
Like what is missing in these resumes that doesn't like, you know, when you're looking
at your own resume, it doesn't really explain me as a person.
Right.
So what would that be?
What would the stories be that would help explain why I'm the kind of person that I
am or, you know, what can I explain about my family background or my community or whatever?
Fill in the details here.
Right.
What is it that would make this turn into a real story, a narrative about a person who
has real desires, real goals?
And once you hit those personal notes, that's when the reader will maintain their interest
throughout the essay.
They don't have a lot of time to read your essay.
So you really need the first, like, you know, few sentences to already tell the reader,
hey, I'm not just going to be talking in this robotic way.
I'm going to be talking like a real person.
Okay.
Which means, this goes to my third point, right, when you first write your first draft
of your essays, okay, what you need to do is speak like a teenager.
You need to speak like you are an actual, like don't try to impress them with flowery
language.
This is not the space for it.
The whole same is not the space to show how eloquent of a writer you are.
Now there is one exception, which is if you're super into writing, right, especially creative
writing and you want to showcase it because that's just kind of like how you are, right,
then fine.
Go for a concept where you present that because that's really reflective of who you really
are.
Right.
But I think a lot of students try to, you know, again, this kind of like this faking
themselves, right?
Like they're acting like they are smarter or more intelligent or more college ready.
They try to present themselves in a certain light and that's not the primary goal of a
personal statement.
So you need to cut that shit out, right?
You need to focus on actually talking to this person like they're a fellow person, right?
So I always tell students it's actually helpful to start off by speaking in your everyday
conversational voice, right?
Right as if you're having a conversation with a friend, right?
So imagine that your friend asked you those questions that are on the, you know, College
of Mission Essays, right?
You say like, hey, so why do you want to do?
What do you want to accomplish in college?
Right?
Like just talk to a friend about it, right?
This is where a lot of the information is going to kind of come out, right?
And be honest here, right?
So one of your goals for college might just simply be, hey, you know, I want to meet more
people because I'm super interested in meeting people.
I've lived in a small community and I just really haven't gotten mean to people that
are too different from everybody in my community.
Just more or less seems similar to me.
Or you know, you might have the desire to go to a different city and this is your opportunity
for it.
You've never been outside of your area.
You know, just to share some personal stories, like I remember when I was writing my personal
statement, right?
I wrote about how much I wanted to get out of my neighborhood.
I just hated living in the Inland Empire.
You know, other people, like my brother, I remember had a great experience.
He had friends.
He still goes back there.
He has friends there.
But for me, it was a time of severe depression.
It was really hard.
Not that I was talking about anything particularly uniquely challenging necessarily, but you
know, I talked honestly about how one of the motivations to go to LA was I wanted to get
out of the kind of environment I was in.
There was something about the situation where I felt like it was taking some of the energy
out of me, right?
Whether it was the weather, the hot, hot desert summer weather, whether it was the people,
whether it was something about the environment, like being around people who, at least in
my media circle, right, weren't necessarily very motivated, right?
How it sucked a lot of energy out of me.
I noticed that and I wanted to go to a place that would energize me.
And I felt like a big city would be helpful for it, being exposed to people who are busy
and ambitious and wanting to do stuff, right?
Like that brought me a lot of excitement, right?
The other reason was I wanted to leave home and be away from my parents for my own personal
reasons.
But again, we're going to talk about how we want to be careful about exactly what, how
we present ourselves in these essays.
But the key here is this, right?
As you have those conversations, not all of it, especially in the first few drafts, not
all of it is going to come out in the final draft.
So you don't have to worry about whether or not it's appropriate.
You just need to be honest, right?
And then you need to write in a way that's true to yourself, right?
So write as you speak, the way that you speak, right?
Make it feel like they're talking to a real person because, well, if you are just speaking
how you normally speak, then it should come off that way, right?
That's the best place to start.
Again, I'm not saying that this is the final draft.
So stop getting anxious about what, whether what you're saying is right or wrong or appropriate
or any of these things, right?
Just be honest in the first draft, okay?
The editing process will help you kind of hone it.
You know, it will help you, you know, pick and choose and how to present yourself and
all that.
That's the editing process.
But if you self edit, like if you censor yourself in the first phase, then you're going to produce
garbage because it's already not really you, right?
And the readers are going to feel it.
Students don't realize, like, if you develop as a writer and, you know, develop reading
skills and you've read enough of different types of writings and different, you know,
personal statements, you start developing an eye for, you know, when somebody is being
authentic or not.
Like the writing itself feels different.
And this is one of the places it starts, right?
The writing does not feel authentic if you try to present yourself in a certain way from
the get go.
You need to start by just talking as your normal self, okay?
I personally would recommend that you leave a lot of the editing to, you know, people
you can rely on.
I know a lot of high schools, they have teachers who are willing to assist you with, you know,
looking through your papers.
You could turn to friends.
I mean, it might seem strange, but, you know, friends could give you some feedback, like
they could call you out if they feel like you're lying.
Or they might ask more probing questions like, oh, I didn't know that about you.
And it could lead to some great discussions that give you some great material to add to
your personal statement, right?
So you know, all these things consider, like, just again, just write like you speak, be
comfortable in your own skin, and just present yourself as you are.
Okay?
All right.
Once you have that, you have all of the building blocks to now figure out what to do with the
personal statement.
Okay?
If you don't know, right, Common Essay, UC applications, just college applications in
general, they ask a lot of different questions.
And you could strategize about what, you know, how you want to answer each of those questions.
But once you have a draft of all the many things that you could be talking about, and
the things that you really want to make sure is included in your application, then you
can start strategizing at that point about what story or what essay or what topic fits
best and what combination, right?
You want to try to get at least all the different elements.
You don't want to, and essentially you don't want to repeat yourself in any of these essays.
You want each essay to present some new information about you or present yourself in a different
light, right?
Because that's how people are.
People are multifaceted.
They have a range of experiences.
It's not just one thing.
And so, you know, each essay should kind of touch on something different, right?
It might all be connected to the same thing, like your overall goal for college and what
you want to do with it.
But you do want to start now thinking about how do I get all of these different things
I want to talk about?
How do I get it into all of these different essay topics, right?
How do I pick and choose, you know, so that I have the right combination so that I could
talk about everything I want to talk about, but they're responding to the specific questions
in front of me.
Okay?
I hope that makes sense.
Okay?
What this means is that you need to be very careful with some of the advice that I see
thrown out there, right?
I mean, I'm not doubting that a lot of people have a good understanding of how to write
a personal statement because they might have read through, you know, thousands of personal
statements.
But, you know, I want you to be careful because one, you know, I know that sometimes people
are following like trends and things like that.
If unless they're actually part of admission committees, then they honestly are guessing
why a student got into a college or not, right?
And there's a lot of luck involved in whether or not you get into a particular college.
So if a student gets into a college, you can't assume it's because of the personal statement.
You also don't know how much of the personal statement played a role in it unless they
explicitly tell you it was because of the personal statement.
Okay?
So a lot of people are doing guesswork about the personal statement.
So you need to be very careful when you receive feedback or advice about how to write a personal
statement when it comes to the particular topic or what you talk about because the truth
is people are just guessing.
Okay?
My experience and when I reflect upon, you know, what I consider to be a solid personal
statement versus not, again, it's not about the specific topic, right?
So like, here, let me give you an example, right?
One of the things that in the Asian community, they're told not to put in their personal
statement is don't talk about the immigrant experience, right?
Don't talk about your immigrant experience.
And then the explanation that they're given is, oh, it's because there's so many people
who write about their immigrant experience and so, you know, like they get bored of it
and they don't want to hear it because it's like the same story again and again and again.
Okay.
Fine.
All right?
But my guess, and this is just a hunch, right, based off of the range of different types
of immigrant experience essays I've read, is that very few students actually write a
good personal statement talking about their immigrant experience, right?
Because honestly, sometimes it just doesn't sound personal.
And one of the ways it doesn't sound personal is if they spend a lot of time talking about
their parents and the sacrifice of their parents or their grandparents or their caregivers,
the sacrifices that other people have made, right?
Those stories will not be very good personal statements.
But why is that?
It's not because they're talking about their immigrant experience.
It's actually because they're not talking about themselves.
If you spend the whole time talking about the immigrant experience, but, you know, where
half of the information is really about what your parents or your caregivers went through,
that doesn't say anything about you, right?
That doesn't say anything about you.
And if you say that you're doing it because you feel obligated to do well, that also doesn't
say much about you other than that you have a strong sense of duty to parents or to your
caregivers, right?
So again, like when you hear this kind of advice, like do this or don't that, these
do's and don't lists, I think they're very misleading because it's not necessarily what
you should or shouldn't do in terms of the specific content you should include in your
personal statement.
Rather, it's how you present that information.
I have actually seen immigrant stories that are profound, like really moving and ones
that really present a person in a great light where they focus on things like specific kinds
of, you know, like, I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking of one specific example where a student talked
about their experience in ESL, right?
And how they were put into ESL when they knew that they had the ability to read really well.
So they were facing some kind of a discrimination because they just assumed because they were
an immigrant, oh, they couldn't speak English very well.
And so they had to be put in a program where they didn't get the same opportunities to
advance and to get teaching and to be challenged when it comes to reading.
So they had to challenge themselves.
And this motivated them to better understand how perception often guides people's opportunities
and experiences and connects that up with other things that they've wanted to do or
have done that there's like a continuous story of those experiences and how to let them to
the things that they want to accomplish in college.
That was actually a very, very good story.
The way it was written sounded very personal.
It sounded real.
It sounded like a real person talking about their experience.
Right?
And essentially that was an aspect of the immigration story.
Okay.
So again, take these advice with a grain of salt, but I mean, more specifically, I would
hope that you see the bigger picture because the bigger picture is what matters.
Right?
Like I said before, your story is your story and it's your story that actually needs
to get out there.
That needs to be on paper in a personal statement.
But your story is not going to be put on paper if you're constantly censoring yourself with
these do's and don'ts of I should talk about this and I shouldn't talk about that.
No, fuck that.
Talk about whatever actually matters to you.
Right?
And this is why when you see some of these great examples of great personal statements,
one of the things you'll find that they all have in common, they don't necessarily have
commonality.
When it comes to things like is it humorous, is it dramatic, you know, what's the writing
style like?
They all vary.
But the one thing they all have in common is that it's real.
It's authentic.
Right?
I could nowadays today, right?
I could probably, if I was applying to college, I would probably write one of the essays I
would probably write on would be my passion for Legos.
Now you might think this sounds absolutely crazy, but I really, really care about Legos.
Right?
Legos bring me joy.
I get angry when people try to compare Legos to things like Mega Bloks.
Mega Bloks is just garbage.
Right?
People should throw that stuff in the trash.
All right?
Legos is the only way to go.
I love Legos and I can talk about it for hours and hours.
That's something I'm really passionate about.
Right?
There's no rule that says I can't talk about it.
But the reason that it's going to come off well, and I know it's going to come off well,
is because it's real.
I actually feel this way about Legos.
So the more you fake it, the more it's going to show in your writing.
Right?
So the first things first, get to know yourself, know what's real.
We people just in general often lie to themselves.
I have lied to myself for decades.
I still probably lie to myself about some things.
Right?
Because it's not always pretty to look in the mirror and to be honest with yourself.
Right?
But the benefit of actually knowing yourself is then that when you talk and speak authentically,
it will feel authentic because it is.
There's no faking realness.
There just isn't.
And it'll show in your papers.
Unless you are a master, unless you're a sociopath, I think, right?
Master manipulator, you're going to have a really hard time, at least in writing, being
able to present yourself as something different than who you really are.
But in order to really be able to do that, you need to start accepting the realities
of who you are.
Okay?
Don't censor yourself.
Put it all on paper.
Speak authentically and then let editors give you guidelines for an insight into why talking
about certain things or certain ways might not necessarily be the best thing to do.
Okay?
I will tell you this, when I wrote my college application essay, I wrote specifically about
my experience being a pastor's kid and the horror of knowing that people knew things
about you even though you didn't know them.
Right?
And that you felt like a kind of fish in a fishbowl, right?
That kind of experience where you're constantly being looked at.
I imagine this is a common experience with anybody in the public eye because of family
members or people that they know they're close to.
They're being in the public eye and being judged by a bunch of strangers.
Nowadays, I guess it happens a lot in social media as well.
Right?
But that was a real experience, a real difficulty for me, something that I've often struggled
with.
And I included that in the essay.
And I remember writing a couple of times, right?
How other people would sometimes whisper and there would be rumors about me and how sometimes
the insults were things like, this kid is like the spawn of the devil and I was blamed
for things that I didn't do.
Right?
I used that term, spawn of the devil, twice in my essay.
And my English teacher said, hmm, once I think is enough.
Right?
A second time and now it sounds like you're really harping on it and this is starting
to sound like this is more other issues going on that you need to kind of address personally.
Right?
So that was really helpful feedback.
Right?
Because, you know, somebody else saw something, right?
I was speaking authentically, just writing as I would, you know, talk to a friend about
whatever what I was going through.
And it was it was somebody else who was reading my essay that was able to kind of pick up
on, hmm, I get what you're going for.
I don't want to lose it.
I want to keep it in there.
I think it's important.
But you know, once is enough.
Right?
That kind of feedback feedback was extremely helpful.
Okay.
So leave it up to the editors to go ahead and give you that sort of feedback in your
first and your second draft.
I would highly recommend that the bigger issue is keeping the readers attention because they
don't have a lot of time to read your essay in order to keep their attention.
You're going to have to be real.
You're going to have to really be real.
Okay.
So learn to be vulnerable.
Learn to talk about it.
Practice with friends, with family, with people that you trust, get better at it and do that
before you even start thinking about writing a personal statement.
Okay.
I hope that it's an eye opening experience for you.
I hope that you have people that you can trust that you can lean on.
I know that that is not an option for a lot of students, which is why I wanted to create
the space where you could come ask me questions and I could give you some feedback or you
can talk about your experiences and I can help you kind of make sense of it in a way
that would be more suitable for presenting on a personal statement.
Right.
But I really do hope that at some point in your life, you do have people you can trust
and lean on, people you're close enough to that you can be vulnerable in this way because
it is through that vulnerability that you're going to find a lot of strength.
You're going to find the strength to be yourself more than anything.
And once you do that, you're going to open up a lot of doors for yourself because one,
people who are reading your essay are going to see you for who you really are and two,
it's going to give them a better sense of why you fit in with their community.
Right.
Because it's not because of all the things that you try to present yourself to be, but
it's because of who you really are.
And there's nothing more beautiful than being accepted, whether it's to a university, to
a job or with friends, family, and other loved ones because you're loved for just being yourself.
I'll see you next time.