Monday, October 8, 2012

The Thought Process of a Personal Statement

Don't start out with "I'm going to tell you about myself and why I love chemistry" now.  They won't read it.  It's not eye catching.  Compare your love for chemistry to something....like...I don't know...art?  You are always saying how the hierarchies and branches of study in sciences is kind of like the different tools in art.

I mean think about it, you have materials you use in art: your paper, your precious copics, your pencils and tablet, photoshop.  They can all be thought of as the chemicals and machinery needed to conduct a scientific experiment.  You can't make molecules without reagents or glassware or a hood.  Both require a plethora of materials, which at first glance may seem unrelated but in the end make a beautiful (hopefully in both cases) product.

They both require references.  If you didn't have artistic references, you would have never been able to draw the human form, just as if you didn't have a textbook or journal article, you would have never learned how to set up a column properly.

And creativity.  You know you lack no amount of creativity in either area.  You just need time to stretch and learn.  Look at it this way, you've been drawing for more than 10 years.  That's about an undergrad and graduate career right?  Right.  So you've basically got a PhD in your own manga drawing skills (not quite, but you get the idea).  When you did your first 4 years of manga drawing did it look pretty and refined and set in?  Nope.  It looked like a lot of copying from other resources (not plagiarism though, just borrowed).  You basically do that now.  The stuff your working with, it's been done.  You're just trying to find a better way to do it.  With crayons.  Remember when you colored with crayons?  And your works were sufficient then but you desired to find new materials, to branch out and do new things?  That's your transition from organic to biochem.  Sure, you can make great products in organic, but you need to stretch into a topic that interests you more.  Biochem is the copic marker of your chemistry career.  It's rich and vast and comes in 346 colors.

You're going to have to explain why biochem is a good end goal and art is not.  Art doesn't help people.  Well it can, but not in the way that you want to help people.  You couldn't do medical school, cadavers and blood, and hospitals.  Ick.  You'd probably faint all the time, but you know you want to do some good in the world that's rewarding.  You can't do political activism, though you cheer for every underdog, you're too introverted to be around that many people all the time.  You are reserved; independent, though you enjoy a minimalistic amount of human interaction.  That's why lab work that involves discovering and finding ways to cure disease is your cup of tea.  Labs are relatively small overall, you get to work alone for the most part.  You rely on yourself to get things done and yet you will have people around when you need to ask for help.  Plus you love macromolecular structures and protein interactions.  You haven't been looking up drug interactions since high school for no reason.

But how do you convince people in a graduate committee that even with your GPA and class record, you are perfectly suited to do this for 5 years and potentially the rest of your life.  You know that love for a certain field guarantees no one yet it's more difficult to prove one's drive and motivation.  Think about your art.  Your cousin laughed and scoffed at your first pieces that you were so proud of.  Your artwork improved on your shoulders, not on the shoulders of those who praised or critiqued your artwork.  And yes, it did take almost 6 or 7 years before you could say you were truly proud of the work you've created and now it's marketable.  You sometimes make a bit of cash for your artwork.

And that was just me thinking.  Yes, I think in 3rd person.  The better part of me talks to the worried me that is applying for schools.  Cause I'm really not sure how to seem "awesome" in my personal statement.

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