Last month (June, 2015), I was invited by Dr. Myhraliza Aala to give a presentation on demystifying the process of writing personal statements for her High School Interns in July, 2015. After receiving her invitation with no hesitation I decided to take her offer because personal statements are a crucial component in an application for admissions in academia, internships, and scholarships. Often times, Native Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders, underrepresented minority students, and local students from Hawaii struggle with writing personal statements because of self-doubt and not-knowing. I should know, I was once there. For many of us, we are trailblazers in our ohana to even consider and pursue college.
I presented this to the student interns and wrote this blog post to share some of the many lessons I learned. It is my intent as well as to share my presentation and style to practitioners who present on this kind of material. I don't want to hoard knowledge. It is important to know that there is no magic formula or “correct answer” when it comes to writing personal statements; however, this is just some lessons I learned along the way to begin to develop my voice as a writer. It is valuable to learn from many sources and begin to find your voice. Uiha...e hele kakou! The best way of learning how to write personal statements is to write a personal statement Two days before the presentation, I sent an email to the attendees to fill out a pre-evaluation form. This was a mock scholarship “personal statement” activity from a real scholarship. There were 10 required questions with a character limit of 200 characters to answer. |
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