Stop Worrying About Your Personal Statement Until This Point

Session 61

What should you do, before you start worrying about what your personal statement says about you? Write, write, and write!

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[00:15] Write, Write, Write!

A lot of premed students worry too much about their personal statement when they haven’t even started yet. They’ve haven’t put any words on paper or on their computer screen yet.

All they’ve done is thinking what to write about and how they’re going to tie those thoughts altogether. When you do this, you’re only stressing yourself out for no reason.

'You need to get words on paper before you even start worrying about what your personal statement is doing.'Click To Tweet

Start writing your personal statement. Get your thoughts down on paper before you evaluate how the transitions are going to be. Before you evaluate how strong your conclusion is, write it down first.

[01:35] Stop Thinking, Start Writing

If you’re so worried about your personal statement that you’re not even writing it, all you’re doing is stressing yourself out and delaying the process.

'You cannot think about your personal statement in your head for a month and then write a final draft.'Click To Tweet

Just stop thinking and start writing. Stop thinking about having an amazing introduction or conclusion or that you’re going to have an amazing final draft. That’s all in your head. You have to go through the process of getting your thoughts out on paper.

[02:55] How Many Drafts Should You Write

You may have to write a number of drafts before arriving at your final draft. There are students who have even made 30 drafts. That’s excessive but it does happen.

There are even students who have given me trash for their draft. They’ve turned it around and have written a solid personal statement in four or five drafts.

'It's individual. Don't compare yourself to other students.'Click To Tweet

Don’t compare yourself with other students in terms of how many drafts you have to write because it’s different for every student. You may have more anxiety than others over writing your personal statement, or it may be less.

[03:40] Stop Editing in Your Head, Get Help from Rev.com

As you’re going through this process, write, write, write! Check out Rev.com. Access it as a mobile app or on their website. Record something and upload it to their website. It’s a dollar a minute per transcript.

Their new service Temi, is an automated machine learning algorithm that listens to it at $0.10 a minute.

'You can use those tools to get started on this process. This prevents you from editing in your head.'Click To Tweet

[04:40] Write and Repeat

Get the words out on paper and then start worrying about everything that has been written. Don’t be scared if you think what you wrote was trash. That’s totally fine. Just repeat the whole process.

'Go through this process. Get your words on paper. Send it to somebody for evaluation. Get feedback. Evaluate yourself and move on.'Click To Tweet

Don’t worry about the stories. Don’t worry about the transitions, the intro, or the conclusions. Don’t worry about any of that until you have written your first draft.