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Not enough talk about sex with randos IMHO.

Reminder: this isn't the fucking lounge. Further failures to heed this warning will result in bans.

Do you want editing of content, grammar/spelling/sentence construction, or both?

whirledpeas86 wrote:Do you want editing of content, grammar/spelling/sentence construction, or both?

Whatever you are willing to do!

I'll be blunt. This was painful to read. It's way too long and you cover too many life events.

The part about your father was the worst. I feel like you could have reduced that to two sentences. But I would just remove it entirely.

Start over from a new approach. There are a number of ways you can write a personal statement, but I think you would benefit most from writing a story. I say this because there are fragments of a genuine story in here. You dropped out of college, did some volunteer work, matured a little and then returned to school.

Can you think of some event that occurred during your volunteer work that had a significant impact on your perspective? If so, that's your arc. That's what you should write a story about.

Include some detail about how you got to that moment. Say as much as you can with as few words as possible. Maybe two sentences.

On that subject, brevity is your friend. When I say "story," I don't mean novella. I mean 2,000 words, max. I think some schools have a word limit of 1,000. Mine was 800. I know of at least one school that limits you to 500.

Don't feel bad about starting over. I wrote 10-15 different versions of my personal statement. It wasn't perfect, but it did the trick.

Oh. And use metaphors sparingly.

Just skip to the AmeriCorps part. The personal stuff is awkwardly personal without really adding anything to my understanding of you as a law student.

IAFG wrote:Just skip to the AmeriCorps part. The personal stuff is awkwardly personal without really adding anything to my understanding of you as a law student.

I was thinking this, as well. OP could start from, "As I sat on the hot sidewalk..."

It is pretty good. I'd say leave the personal stuff. Although it's mostly irrelevant to the story it does add some humanity. Your writing has good flow. There are some technical issues in the last paragraph that can be fixed with editing.

nygrrrl wrote:

IAFG wrote:Just skip to the AmeriCorps part. The personal stuff is awkwardly personal without really adding anything to my understanding of you as a law student.

I was thinking this, as well. OP could start from, "As I sat on the hot sidewalk..."

I absolutely agree! Paragraph three is totally disconnected from paragraphs one and two.

IAFG wrote:Just skip to the AmeriCorps part. The personal stuff is awkwardly personal without really adding anything to my understanding of you as a law student.

This. Also you're falling into the classic showing vs. telling trap. Don't just tell the reader that you learned the importance of x, y and z and that you felt a and b emotions. Show us how/why the experience changed you. You also resort to hyperbolic but vague clichés a lot, and they don't really explain anything. You say Americorps "changed everything." What did it change? How? You say that "nothing could have prepared me for the realities of being a team leader." What realities?

As others have said you could really take the two paragraphs starting with "As I sat on a hot sidewalk..." and turn that into a solid personal statement.

Too much "I did this, I did that" & too little insight into you.

PickMe! wrote:

nygrrrl wrote:

IAFG wrote:Just skip to the AmeriCorps part. The personal stuff is awkwardly personal without really adding anything to my understanding of you as a law student.

I was thinking this, as well. OP could start from, "As I sat on the hot sidewalk..."

I absolutely agree! Paragraph three is totally disconnected from paragraphs one and two.

That actually was the first paragraph in my original version. Good insight on deleting the daddy issues I don't really like that in there anyways. I think I was being a bit too lazy by just leaving the first two pages as is. I guess because I am in the middle of being a team leader it is hard to write about it right now. I spend a few nights a week thinking about how much easier it would be to quit. Idk I'm working in Jersey right now because of Sandy so maybe I should include that. To be honest the partnership has been quite a struggle and working with FEMA has been really difficult.