Aug 20, 2007 18:06
In slightly under three weeks I am going to mug a truly unprecedented amount of shit. It is going to get done. In between, perhaps as light entertainment, I will cut about two thousand words from my History H3 paper, ascertain the quality (or lack thereof) of my rewritten KI IS, and ... write my Oxford personal statement.
It should say something that out of all the unpleasant/harrowing/impossible activities I have listed above, the one that most distresses me is the latter. I suck so bad at writing personal statements. I can't even write a CCA testimonial in the third-person ("Karen Lee is ...") without collapsing into a self-loathing heap of gibbering embarrassment. When we had to do our CCA testimonials I agonised over mine for ages, bizarrely horrified at having to say nice things about myself for three paragraphs (I know, the very last aversion you would expect in Y.H.N.), and finally wrote what I took to be the most sickening 500 words or so of overblown, nauseating, unrealistic crap. Shuddering, I turned it in at school. and uh AFTER ALL THAT everyone who read it (and by "everyone", I mean, "my far superior and more experienced friends and classmates, who apparently have no trouble stringing together sentences that present themselves well and don't inadvertently make themselves sound like Nazi war criminals or whatever") was like ... you kind of understated most of your achievements. DIE.
Left to my own devices, my personal statement would read something like, "My greatest achievement has been to waste my late adolescence on hobo activities such as drinking, which I am not very good at; debauchery, opportunities for which have been scarce, and reading, at which I am reasonably proficient, but nothing special. Nevertheless I hope you will accept me into this very prestigious course at your very prestigious university, low and unworthy though I am." My best hope is that they will think this is some kind of diabolical reverse psychology ploy and admit me. Why am I so craven and shrivelled??? I hate to reinforce the negative racial stereotypes Mr B attempts to perpetuate ("I know coming from an Asian society you feel the need to humble yourselves ...") so I would like to qualify that I THINK THIS MIGHT JUST BE ME. Maybe that is a positive trait I could mention. "UNIQUE AMONG MY PEERS, I FIND MYSELF EASILY SURPASSING THEM IN MY INABILITY TO WRITE A SIMPLE PERSONAL STATEMENT ABOUT MY ACHIEVEMENTS AND INTERESTS."
Added to the above problems, I obviously did not live my life to this end (i.e. History in Oxford). While everyone else was jaunting off to Papua New Guinea and Uttar Pradesh (or whatever) to build shelters, heal the world and interact with other young delegates on matters of social concern so as to build us a better global village, I was ... not doing a whole lot with my life. My achievements are conspicuously literary: poetry anthologies, CAP, no competitions (in my youth I thought they were beneath me; in my old age I find I'm beneath them) ... or academic (top in english language and literature for four years. history? took it as an elective. HAHAHA.) The one advantage one might expect me to have is expressiveness, or whatever, the healthy ability to get across my character and personality in a personal statement, but that personality is apparently "craven and self-loathing", and I am expressing it very well. I was asking Mr Miles for samples of old personal statements so I could see how everyone else managed (effortlessly) and he was like ... no, it's a personal statement, right, you have to sound like an individual. NO. I DON'T WANT TO SOUND LIKE MYSELF. I AM TOO WORTHLESS. CRY. There is too much other shit going on in other areas e.g. mugging for HISTORY. ECONOMICS. KI. LITERATURE. for me to be messing around trying to express myself with a plausible degree of sincerity and eloquence in a 4000-character essay. IT'S NOT EVEN LIKE IT'S A BIG DEAL. IT'S A MINI-ESSAY. AN ESSAYLET. IT'S JUST TWO-THIRDS OF A PAGE. WHY CAN'T I DO THIS?
The application is due by the end of term, and life can only go downhill from there: if I'm no good at writing personal statements for the UK, applying to the USA is going to kill me dead: where the UK (arguably) values a degree of restraint in personal statement self-pimping, personal statement writing for the USA is (so I am told) all about creative analogies in which one likens oneself to flavours of jellybeans and/or utilises cunning reverse psychology ploys on the admissions office. I should just send in what I've got, I hear they value diversity. "Oh look, a bluestocking poet of dubious sexuality filled with craven self-loathing! We haven't got one of those on campus yet!" [puts on "Accept" pile] NO. NO I DON'T WANT TO GO TO AMERICA. I WANT TO GO TO OXFORD AND READ HISTORY AND PLAY WITH THE DUCKS AND BE DRUNK ALL THE TIME. CRY. CRY. Okay. Okay. I feel a lot better now. This tantrum is over. I am going to study inter-state conflicts in Southeast Asia and ASEAN and tomorrow I will be extremely worthwhile and ready to behave like an adult. I will remember that I have in fact lived a very worthwhile and impressive life, academically, co-curricularly, spiritually, whatever. I will present myself favourably in a short personal statement about my achievements and interests, which will not take me an unreasonable amount of time to write, time that I can ill afford at this stage. We now return you to your scheduled programming. ... when I am dead please remember your little droog Karen that was never, in her entire life, a responsible and highly motivated student leader, or, for that matter, an exciting flavour of jellybeans.