“You are a moving billboard. Everything you do points back to the University. So if you do something wrong, believe me, we will hear about it”, was the advice given to SMU’s three first-year counselors before beginning our 15-passenger bus driver’s test last week. The proctor’s admonition, while slightly less dire than the one given to me when I first began to drive a car, had a similar message to what I heard at sixteen. My father looked me directly in the eyes the first time I got behind the wheel of a car and told me something I will never forget, “a moving car is a weapon. When you drive, you are driving a weapon. Remember that.”
I would reflect on my father’s statement many times while learning to drive; when I almost careened into the mailbox because I overcompensated on turning the steering wheel, when I sat through an entire cycle at a stoplight because I wasn’t sure about taking a free left turn onto a one way street, when I stalled out in my mother’s manual car again and again at the base of our steep driveway, and when I walked away from my driver’s test with a score of 92 and a shiny new driver’s license fully aware of the responsibility I had just been given.
I felt a similar responsibility when the kindly gentleman reminded me and the two other first year counselors what we were signing up for if we passed the driver’s test. To be “a moving billboard” implies the same as being a “moving weapon”. Namely—every internal action has a larger external effect, an effect that you may never learn the full extent of.
Once again I passed the test, as did the other two counselors, and with the successful completion I am now cleared to be responsible for fifteen lives in addition to my own while driving on University business. While the words of my father and the drive test operator were meant to apply to the road, over the years I have learned to incorporate their philosophy into every aspect of my life. What I do matters, and to more than just me.
Do you see what I did up there? I wrote a personal statement. I wrote a true personal statement, in far less than 500 words, that shares an experience I found to be important. The essay also demonstrates my general command of grammar and the English language, and you may notice that while my vocabulary is varied I did not substitute every single word with something I looked up in a thesaurus.
So many students seem to be under the impression that a college admission essay needs to be a sob story or populated completely with “college-level” vocabulary in order to be succesful. While a sad or painful experience can make for an excellent essay, too often I am sent a paper that says “accept me because this happened to me and you should feel sorry for me”, not “this happened and helped shape who I am, but I have grown and am prepared to succeed”.
Don’t be afraid to use humor as well. The personal statement that I wrote isn’t overtly funny, but some of the best admission essays that I have read have been. Outright humor, positive sarcasm, toungue-in-cheek, and, yes, confidence can all be great tools in your admission essay!
Now, it’s time to let you in on the biggest secret: it doesn’t matter what your essay is about. Much. What matters is that your essay shows us you are prepared to succeed at a college level (so please do go over your essay with a teacher or tutor or other qualified editor before turning it in), that your personality will be a great fit on campus, and that you want to go here! So don’t turn in a history report that you got an ‘A’ on if it says nothing about you, but do feel free to be creative.
We Admission staff members are intelligent, we understand that you may be looking at more than one school (and you probably should be). There is a difference between tacitly understanding that we may or may not be your first choice, and reading in an essay, “it is my dream to go to [insert name of a school that is NOT Saint Martin’s] University”. So while it is ok to send the same essay to multiple schools, it is not ok to address the wrong school by name in the essay.
Finally, most importantly, follow the important rule of show verses tell. Instead of the personal statement at the beginning I could have written the following:
I took a test to be certified to drive a fifteen passenger van last week, and when I got on the bus the proctor told me, “You are a moving billboard. Everything you do points back to the University. So if you do something wrong, believe me, we will hear about it”. It reminded me of when I was learning how to drive at age sixteen. My father gave me similar advice, “a moving car is a weapon. When you drive, you are driving a weapon. Remember that.”
Ever since my father gave me that advice I have been careful to remember that everything I do has a bigger effect than I can see. I did not realize how much this philosophy affected me until last week when I was warned about being a “moving billboard”. I believe that in all areas of life it is important to be cognizent of my actions and so I always remember that what I do matters, and to more than just me.
The second personal statement is much less effective than the first. While it does share an important and personal story, it shares none of my personality. Even without obvious spelling or grammatical mistakes, the second essay is not a good example of a college admission essay.
Be brave, be funny, be truthful, and be creative–your essay should help us get to know you, not know about you.
–Emilie Schnabel
Benny's Blog 