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I did not know it at the time, but I was about to experience the most physically painful experience of my life. After waiting for what seemed an eternity in a crowded waiting room, I was called into the ENT specialist’s office, and he proceeded to examine my nose. “It’s broken,” he said flatly, and then explained to me that he would have to set it in place- with his bare hands. He took a firm grasp of my olfactory organ, and yanked it back into position. A shockwave of pain flashed through my entire face, and I could not help but ask myself in the face of this seering pain- why had I joined an amateur boxing team?

What had driven me to spend months of my life toiling away in a dingy, smelly gym getting my face and body brutalized week in and week out? In a word, it was the challenge. Nothing in my life gives me more of a thrill than setting a seemingly implausible goal, and then setting off to accomplish it.

Id go onto describe a few examples in my life of such difficult challenges that I'd set out to do (ie triathlon, being the first member of my fam to try to go to law school, as my parents were exiled from Cuba)

Thoughts? Keep topic or find a new topic?

Id greatly appreciate any help, and am willing to read any PS's that you guys have. Thanks

1. searing pain
2. Definitely an exciting start - but if your theme is "challenge and achievement," did you really succeed at boxing? Right now your PS talks about how you worked really hard at boxing and got a broken nose. I would recommend that you focus on one event/skill that you trained really hard for and did very well in. If your boxing story stops at the broken nose, I'd suggest going with a different story, since as it stands it doesn't tell a success story.

Good luck!

^Thanks so much for the reply! (if you need any proofreading, feel free to pm me) Good stuff in that post too. I was going to say that the accomplishment was just being physically fit enough/mentally tough enough to push past the broken nose and actually go through with my first amateur boxing fight. I was scared as hell, so to me that was an accomplishment. I totally got rocked in the fight though, so maybe its a bad topic idea

I did have concerns about the topic being too "informal" and too "unacademic" if that makes sense too

Hey no prob As my English professor once told me, writing is manipulation. You can write well about any topic as long as you can convey the action and emotion behind it so that it feels important to the reader. However, you do need to keep the ending in mind as you write and think what the story says about you. It sounds like you were deeply influenced by your boxing experience, but how can you tell it so that it shows something positive about you? Maybe you could draw a grand analogy between boxing and debating, or compare the physical pain of fighting to the mental stress of studying for a test. Did you learn anything from boxing that you couldn't have from any other activity? Just throwing ideas out there...

I wouldn't worry about being informal/unacademic. It's a personal statement; just keep it typo free and I don't see how it can go seriously wrong. Just try to make them realize something (good) about you that the rest of your application cannot convey.