Cursing in Personal Statement Forum

[birdlaw117]

Go out on a limb, like i said in a post before, I went with a pretty outlandish abstract PS for my med school residency apps and it was quite successful. Here it is in all of its glory.

It is amazing to think how many “personal statement” style essays I have written over the years and how my personal statement has changed over time. I think about the Bob Dylan song “The Times They are a Changing”, and in retrospect when I always agreed with the interpretation of his words, it is really the people that are changing with the time, and that time is the true constant that does not change. 12:00pm today will be the same time tomorrow as it will be next week as it will be next year, but with all of those hours passing, the world can change at any moment and with that, as can you or I, therefore it is really impossible to predict what you will feel or what you will perceive because what you may feel is right today, you may feel is wrong tomorrow. I have grown up dreaming of becoming a doctor, changing someone’s life for the better, imagining what really goes on in the OR, apart what I grew up watching on television, and that dream is becoming very close to reality. The only thing I can rely on now is that in this specific time, you see me as the right person that you perceive as a future physician and colleague in this particular field. What I have learned in these past two years is the true variety and differences there are in the medical community. How a surgeon thinks one way compared to an internist who thinks another way compared to an anesthesiologist who thinks another way to a family medicine doctor or pediatrician who have all read the same books and taken the same tests with the same goals, yet have become so different. I spent the first two years of medical school learning how the body works as one and what allows it to do so, and have now spent the last two learning how truly different medicine can be. What it is like to feel the rush of being in the OR, under the gun, watching the surgeon mechanically fix the body solely with the use of his hands and tools verses working in a family medicine office, discovering the cause of a patients debilitating condition that has caused them to suffer for years and knowing that by giving them THIS medication or referring them to THAT doctor that you have changed their life forever. This is medicine. It is so unique in that no matter what you choose to do, and if one day you change your mind and decide to specialize in something else, the ability to heal will always be in your hands. From a scalpel to a script pad, I will feel blessed in whatever I am chosen to do knowing that I will get the opportunity to make a difference in someone else’s life, changing them, not time, while still remembering not to forget to occasionally stop and smell the roses.

"Enter" key. It's your friend.

[RockinJosh]

can we get some more context on the quote?

[Ratchet Jackson]

Either drop it or if you really want to add it for dramatic effect, perhaps a variation of the word i.e. f**in' or f--in'. I would certainly not spell it out. In all fairness, I stand by my recommendation of the former. Err on the side of safety.

[Jader]

i curse a shit ton, even when I freelance for real writing; but I always found it to sound contrived and forced in a personal statement. It has nothing to do with the content or "is this necessary" but with form and style. From reading this forum, it seems the standard style people use is just really inflexible and doesnt, for example, allow any Shit. for dramatic effect.


There's a certain atmosphere of candidness that cursing signals, and if it isn't there, then it just looks out of place.