… is invariably the hardest part. After all, you are writing toward your dream, your ambition, your end goal. You have worked hard to arrive at this place, this moment of first putting pen to paper. And, I think, at times, it is all that has brought you to this blank page –– the studying, the discipline, the early hours and late nights, the camaraderie of peers taking up the same challenge, and the danger of doubt-inducing comparisons –– that can freeze the pen in your hand. It is so much better to abandon the idea of beginnings. You are not beginning when you sit to write a personal statement. Rather, you are recalling and evoking. You are summoning up those moments of epiphany when the world tilts, just momentarily, and your perspective tilts with it, bending your sense of self. I have always told my own students to think of those moments and to start setting them down. What was the setting? What were the colors? The quality of the air? The sounds in the distance. It is in these details that you can start to unpack what moves you, where your curiosity arises and the ways you have developed in response. You will soon find that your skills and strengths take root in these moments and that you have been mastering them every day, perhaps unwittingly, ever since. And, if you have been on the proper track for your authentic self, these skills will align with the demands of your ambition, rooted as it should be in your joy at discovery, your inquisitive mind. So with a personal statement, never begin: recall.
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