The good news, reader, is that I have (almost) drafted my statement of purpose. The bad news… well. The bad news is that it will inevitably read as all such grabby-needy self-sale documents read. The following is a rough translation from what I have written into how it will appear to its lofty destinataires.
Dear Professor Elegant Linen-Trousers, FancyPants University,
HIiiiii!!!!!! So I’m doing all this really fantastic stuff right now [NOTE TO SELF: BE MORE SPECIFIC HERE] that is super-relevant to Your Area Area You Dabbled in Briefly Fifteen Years Ago, and I’m really really pleased with myself for being so fabulous. And smart! Don’t forget smart. Sooo I’m applying to NAME OF INSTITUTION HERE Some Institution that is Not Yours But Is A Strong Rival of Yours, because I think the work that is happening at Your Institution is revolutionizing Your Area, and I’m like so totally excited to be part of the revolution, man! Heavy.
[TRANSITION NEEDED!!] Okay so I did this sweet research paper this one time, right? And it like totally had to do with WHATEVER INTERESTS MAKE SENSE FOR THE PROGRAM exactly what you work on in so many exciting ways! Well no no no I don’t mean exactly, exactly, just kinda, I mean I’m original and innovative and everything and not just some copy-cat sap. Girl scout’s honor. Aaaaaanyway then I got this really rad, super-competitive awesometastic fellowship/prize/pat-on-the-head thing and did so much sweet research that ii”m not going to really tell about in detail because I don’t really remember it all that well and even if I did it doesn’t make any sense at all to me! Teehee. So I wrote this other thing that totally has everything to do with Your Colleague’s work in Field Your Colleague Has Never Worked On But Once Tangentially Said Something About. And that was totally awesome and I learned all this crap.
You know what else I really love, I mean besides mint-chocolate chip ice cream? I really really really love this Really Exciting Thing That’s Happening In The Field Right Now but That You Hate Because It Was Inaugurated By Your Evil Nemesis Whose Name I’m About to Drop as My Personal Hero. I’m using the work of Your Nemesis, whose work changed my life and rescued me from the brink of suicide, to do toootally awesometastic research, well not really research so much as vague thinking, in Area You Hate. How neat is that!
And then I won this other thing!!!! Which has never been heard of outside my tiny-ass college, but it was like so sweet and made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and enabled me to do more research that I don’t really understand that has everything to do with Your Area!!! I mean, not everything, exactly, but, well, you know.
Name Drop, Name Drop, and one more Name Drop for good measure.
[DON'T FORGET -- PUT PARAGRAPH ON UNDERGRADUATE THESIS HERE! BUT FIRST REMEMBER TO FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR UNDERGRADUATE THESIS WAS ABOUT, IF IT WAS IN FACT ABOUT ANYTHING]
This project was deeply influenced by your thinking and I am very grateful for that will you please advise my Ph.D. dissertation.
Oh!!!! And Your Institution also has that Awesome Institute/Center/Program-Thing! Which I know absolutely nothing about but am totally totally prepared to praise to the skies because I just know it will be crucial to my research!!! Oh, man. Sweet.
SO now here I am over here working on these run of the mill MA term papers two really really exciting innovative original interesting research projects that just happen to involve the edgiest areas of the field! Look how eeeedgy I am. Neat! [NOTE: DEVELOP TERM PAPER TOPICS BEFORE FINALIZING DRAFT!!] These will dovetail seamlessly into a gorgeous innovative original exciting dissertation on [MAKE UP DISSERTATION TOPIC! QUICK QUICK!]
And then I’ve got all this other awesome experience that actually has nothing to do with the field, your area, or the academy at all but I’m throwing in here because there’s this awkward space between now and the end of the page and THERE now it’s full.
Oh right yeah and I have teaching experience? And am deeply invested in continuing the Great Tradition of Learning by teaching freshman comp at Your Institution? And stuff? Sweet!
See you in the fall, Prof!
hugs and kisses!!!!!!
<3 mouse
16 comments
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October 29, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Flavia
No, *this* is awesometastic:
“You know what else I really love, I mean besides mint-chocolate chip ice cream? I really really really love this Really Exciting Thing That’s Happening In The Field Right Now but That You Hate Because It Was Inaugurated By Your Evil Nemesis Whose Name I’m About to Drop as My Personal Hero. I’m using the work of Your Nemesis, whose work changed my life and rescued me from the brink of suicide, to do toootally awesometastic research, well not really research so much as vague thinking, in Area You Hate. How neat is that!”
And if it makes you feel any better: both of my SoPs (for my MA and then for my PhD, written within a year of each other, for the same institution) were totally inappropriate, and much more college-application-essay-y–or now that I think of it, blog-post-y–than anything an actual grad program would want.
One of them (I don’t recall which) involved my talking about how, hey, there I was being a paralegal, and I was actually applying to law school & all, but you know, I’d been re-reading The Faerie Queene online for, like, a month now during my down time, and my friends thought maybe that was a sign I should go to grad school instead. I do know, though, that I opened my PhD SoP by describing how totally totally strung out I’d been for the previous month, writing seminar papers and not leaving my apartment and listing to Glenn Miller (at the time, the only thing I could write to) for days on end, with the blinds drawn–but my god, I LOVED it! And that was so a sign that I should stay for the PhD program!
I don’t know that the quality-control on the admissions committee is always that low, but. . . man.
October 30, 2007 at 12:20 am
hilaire
God, that is funny. “How neat is that!” You slay me. It is so making me wish I still had my Things Like That. But you know, I don’t even need them – basically what you’ve written is a distillation, I think, of the workings of such “pick me” documents at every stage of the game – including the faculty stage. Sigh.
And Flavia’s story is also priceless!
October 30, 2007 at 10:27 am
neophyte
Thanks, gals. I aim to please.
And yes, Flavia, while I’m sure you executed yourself with substantially more style than you admit, that does make me feel better.
October 31, 2007 at 3:38 am
Bardiac
Brilliant!
But, did you miss the part about walking on water and not getting your shoelaces wet?
October 31, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Nabil
an instant classic.
I really wish “dykeitude” would achieve greater prominence in your tag cloud. The salience of “affective disturbances” is pretty amusing.
October 31, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Fretful Porpentine
Hee. Best Statement of Purpose ever. (Certainly a lot better than mine, since I don’t think I knew what research was when I applied to grad school, and therefore spent the entire statement of purpose talking about my summer job at a tutoring center.)
October 31, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Sisyphus
Yeah, well, there may be something in that —- I didn’t get in anywhere where I used my boilerplate Commitment to Deep and Serious Research statement, and I got in here, where I wrote a totally random one saying “How cool is it that you have someone who teaches classes on Star Trek? I love cultural studies. I am interdisciplinary.”
All this makes me think that the writing sample is way more important then the SoP.
October 31, 2007 at 11:13 pm
New Kid on the Hallway
Hee, excellent! This is way better a SoP than mine was (I talked about wanting to write biography. What the hell was I thinking? Medieval biography?) – you have MUCH more of a clue how the system works already!
October 31, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Hannah
Hee! And also, oh God I really need to get going on where the hell I want to apply for PhDs, and making sure all my tutors know who the hell I really am, and what I want to write about and argh.
Also, Leeds? You still up for meeting? If not, no worries.
November 1, 2007 at 1:04 am
squadratomagico
Loverly! I like the part about name-dropping the nemesis!
November 1, 2007 at 2:13 am
SEK
DON’T FORGET — PUT PARAGRAPH ON UNDERGRADUATE THESIS HERE! BUT FIRST REMEMBER TO FIGURE OUT WHAT YOUR UNDERGRADUATE THESIS WAS ABOUT, IF IT WAS IN FACT ABOUT ANYTHING
Truer words have never been written.
November 1, 2007 at 11:48 am
Maria
I LOVE it! I am currently in the SoP editing boat as well and sometimes I feel like they are just going to laugh at me and chuck my whole application out the window.
You should also include (dunno if this applies but it does for me) “And then I spent a year abroad at this really famous university in my field, and your former advisee was my adviser at the school? Remember me? We actually met in another country, different from the one that I study abroad-ed in, yep I have lived in three different countries, doesn’t THAT make me feel special! I totally acted like an ass but that was because I was too nervous and mentioned that silly little connection we have!”
(Believe it or not, that is a true story)
Good luck! May I ask what field you are in? I am in Japanese history, myself.
November 1, 2007 at 12:05 pm
neophyte
All y’all are too sweet.
Sis — yes, I think I should be spending more time dressing up my writing sample (oyyy such repetition! and such grammar! oy!), but that’s too scary an endeavor even to think about until… well, just a couple of hours from now, actually. There it is on my schedule (which I’ve finally started using). It must be done.
Bardiac — Actually. I just got back from my morning hike on the Channel. Chilly out there, today.
Porpentine, New Kid — Welcome! And thanks — I don’t believe any of you who go on about how poorly you represented your magnificent selves in your Ss.o.P., but it sure takes some of the pressure off.
SEK — Your presence honors me, and I blush.
Maria — Welcome to you, too. Frightening, I mean really frightening, how closely your story resembles one that I am too embarrassed to tell. I’m in early modern (English/European) studies, teetering over the disciplinary windowsill with my tiptoes in a literary garden but my face in a freshly baked historical pie.
November 3, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Horace
Oh, this is totally going into the grad compendium, which I have just remembered must be updated very soon!
November 12, 2007 at 12:38 am
zach
mouse, you crack me up. I have great faith in you and your ability to write this thing (or maybe you’ve made progress on it already, since I just found your post and you wrote it two weeks ago). I, on the other hand, am relieved to have put off this process for another year or so. Best of luck!
ps. can you jsut recycle some of the SOP you wrote to get your MA? i have no idea if it works that way, but I recycle client letters all of the time.
December 10, 2007 at 4:31 am
Emily
God bless all of you, but especially neophyte for this glorious sharing session! A friend of mine sent me this link and I burst out laughing (and crying – simultaneously).
I’m an MA student applying to PhD programs, one of which I got into at the MA level and rejected citing monetary issues, after which I promptly launched into weeks of Soul Searching and My Academic Career Defines Me What Have I Done? And now I get to recreate the entire experience with the added bonus of explaining Why I Did Not Choose Your School and Am Now Here to Grovel. Good times.
I’m wondering whether I shouldn’t simply submit my most promising muffin recipe and resume of my baking skills along with the writing sample. At least it would be useful.
Sigh, instead I will continue filling in your lovely template and hope the committee is either drunk or high. I’m pretty sure anything will be better than my MA SoP, which opened with references to Bruce Springsteen and my obsession with “crossing boundaries.” :o)