PLEASE help! PS insanity
Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 5:05 am
I really need some direction. I've been trying to write the first draft of my PS all week but I feel so scatterbrained whenever I sit down at the keyboard.
I'm not sure if what I've written so far all ties together, or if I'm even focusing on the right things for a PS.
I just want to say that this isn't all of it. I'm just stuck here because I'm afraid of continuing on a path that might not even be prudent to take with how my PS is shaping up so far. Please, please help! ANY feedback will be appreciated.
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Noble beginnings don’t always have noble ends.
I first realized this when, holding up the fresh print of my first published article, Fatima, my star, my Mona Lisa, my ticket to the Pulitzers if there were Pulitzers for 2000 word student articles mercilessly chopped down to an editorial-friendly 250, stared back at me, nonplussed.
The question her gaze begged was: so what?
Growing up in the GCC, there is sometimes a limit to your goodwill, like a glass ceiling. Here, valiantly marching in the streets for change is a criminal offense. Even more placid initiatives are stifled, or else so wrapped up in red tape your bleeding heart is quickly coagulated in tight, governmental bondage.
My college was a microcosm of that rigidity. Student clubs did not operate autonomously. Organizing any collective event or meeting was a bureaucratic nightmare of getting approval after approval.
So I tried to work independently, a lone reporter out to change the world. The subsequent fall from my high horse, and the shattered idealism that defined my university years, hurt.
It began with X, a Bangladeshi woman who worked as a cleaner on my campus. She was nineteen when I first cornered her, an oddity among a cleaning staff mostly comprised of much older men and women. I swooped in with my pens bared, nostrils flaring at the whiff of a charitable cause.
Two years earlier, X’s mother died of cancer her family could not afford to treat. The eldest of five, X took up the mantle as caretaker for her father and younger siblings before coming to Sharjah to be their provider.
After I published her story, I had to contend with the fact it meant little to her. One reader had initially expressed interest in donating money to her cause before vanishing. Absolutely nothing was going to change for X, despite all that I had invested in my measly article.
This would not be the first nor the last time my dreamy philanthropy would fall flat. Not long afterwards, phone static would follow after the manager of a women’s shelter asked me what I had to offer the inhabitants I so desperately wanted to help.
By the time I graduated, I had worn out the starter pack for Being A Good Person: stray kitten rescues, sickbed handholding, underprivileged tutoring, food distributing and bird entombing. But I wasn’t happy with the fact that I had never truly made a dent on anyone’s life.
I wanted the ability to do more for people. (here is where I go on to explain why law/the importance of empowerment, etc.)
I'm not sure if what I've written so far all ties together, or if I'm even focusing on the right things for a PS.
I just want to say that this isn't all of it. I'm just stuck here because I'm afraid of continuing on a path that might not even be prudent to take with how my PS is shaping up so far. Please, please help! ANY feedback will be appreciated.
----
Noble beginnings don’t always have noble ends.
I first realized this when, holding up the fresh print of my first published article, Fatima, my star, my Mona Lisa, my ticket to the Pulitzers if there were Pulitzers for 2000 word student articles mercilessly chopped down to an editorial-friendly 250, stared back at me, nonplussed.
The question her gaze begged was: so what?
Growing up in the GCC, there is sometimes a limit to your goodwill, like a glass ceiling. Here, valiantly marching in the streets for change is a criminal offense. Even more placid initiatives are stifled, or else so wrapped up in red tape your bleeding heart is quickly coagulated in tight, governmental bondage.
My college was a microcosm of that rigidity. Student clubs did not operate autonomously. Organizing any collective event or meeting was a bureaucratic nightmare of getting approval after approval.
So I tried to work independently, a lone reporter out to change the world. The subsequent fall from my high horse, and the shattered idealism that defined my university years, hurt.
It began with X, a Bangladeshi woman who worked as a cleaner on my campus. She was nineteen when I first cornered her, an oddity among a cleaning staff mostly comprised of much older men and women. I swooped in with my pens bared, nostrils flaring at the whiff of a charitable cause.
Two years earlier, X’s mother died of cancer her family could not afford to treat. The eldest of five, X took up the mantle as caretaker for her father and younger siblings before coming to Sharjah to be their provider.
After I published her story, I had to contend with the fact it meant little to her. One reader had initially expressed interest in donating money to her cause before vanishing. Absolutely nothing was going to change for X, despite all that I had invested in my measly article.
This would not be the first nor the last time my dreamy philanthropy would fall flat. Not long afterwards, phone static would follow after the manager of a women’s shelter asked me what I had to offer the inhabitants I so desperately wanted to help.
By the time I graduated, I had worn out the starter pack for Being A Good Person: stray kitten rescues, sickbed handholding, underprivileged tutoring, food distributing and bird entombing. But I wasn’t happy with the fact that I had never truly made a dent on anyone’s life.
I wanted the ability to do more for people. (here is where I go on to explain why law/the importance of empowerment, etc.)