Blog Nonfic

This was an especially relevant reading for me this week, because the online tutoring session I conducted was in response to a student's personal statement for grad school. This student, like Lorainne, has hedged her essay on more formal/academic writing, which makes sense given her discipline of choice. Unfortunately, the expectations of a personal statement are implicitly creative, though that's not a distinction made explicitly clear by the language used in most non creative graduate school applications and selection committees. It is, however, the only way to mark the difference between a summarization of a resume, and the kind of statement or essay that will demonstrate to a school not only that you're qualified for the position, but that you're the kind of student they're looking for--that your values align with theirs, and so on. In this instance, and when I've taught the college essay in the pass, I am also met with a lot of resistance from my students when I try to encourage them to tell stories in their statements. I find that students are so concerned with painting themselves as the idea candidate, they find it difficult to describe themselves at all.