Catchy PS intro...

[PSU5006]

I just need some insight on how to make my intro a more memorable so it sticks. I am not even sure where to start. My previous intro had something do to with how healthcare has been present all my life with because my mother has diabetes and my dad has been riddles with various medical ailments as well as my brother. I was just wondering if someone could help me give this thing some kind of structure or any pointers.

 

THANKS!

[Just Steve]

How is your outline looking? How many rough drafts are you into it? How many brainstorming pages do you have strewn about? How many hours have you been working on it? I drive an hour one way for work, and for my pre req classes. That's 2 hours a day in the car I have nothing but my thoughts and a voice recorder...I worked a month on my PS just in brainstorming and rough sketches. A thought would come into my head, I'd record it, then listen to it later at the laptop...Are you deep into this project or just starting fresh and feeling overwhelmed?

 

I recommend finding a memory that you want the AdCom to have of you. It's gotta be a hook, a zinger, something that makes you stand out. Everyone and their dog has helped their sick family, watched a friend get sick, found inspiration while watching ER and General Hospital. I don't think that sorta drivel needs to be in a PS...I think you need to tell them that you took your inspiration and pounded forward with your dream....

 

for example, instead of saying "I have great potential, I'm a great self starter, I'm a team player, I'm really into surgery" you tell them (truthfully, only if it really applies) that you shadowed a family practice PA for 24 hours, observed 4 surgeries with an ortho PA, volunteer 10 hours a week at the local nursing home reading 2 stories a day in the common lounge for the residents, volunteer 10 hours a month at the food bank packing 20 crates of food per visit, have organized food drives benefiting your food bank, assistant coach to the youth soccer league 10 hours per week, you got a C in a core science class but that was due to being over extended with family obligations and have since re taken that course for an A, have worked for 2 years as an urban EMT on an ambulance and have ran approx 1600 calls.

 

So pick how you are going to sell yourself, what about you is going to make them sit up and go "wow"? By giving them hard numbers to look at and weigh, it really helps drive the bullet points home. You are no longer the kid who has volunteered...but you are the kid who has volunteered by doing XYZ...people love hard data.

 

A catchy opening line isn't a memory until you support it. So find the data to build the memory you want to leave them with, then work on the opening line...reverse engineering if you will. After all, you can write the line "No ****, there I was, up to my elbows in piranha infested water, crocodiles eyeballin' me from the shore, while ducking divebombing cockatoos..." and it's nothing more than a funny fairy tale. But in the body of your statement you build on that opening line with "during that mission to Africa, I found myself naked, vulnerable, surrounded by hostile beauty, isolated by miles of wilderness comforted by the knowledge that if I can make it here, there is nothing in life that I cannot achieve." You have now made a connection with your reader...

 

Another spin...opening line of "Dad layed there in the ER, his lungs filling with fluid from another attack of his CHF, our whole family in panic mode. The one person who slowed down long enough in that busy ER to give us the comfort of their time, if even for a moment, was the attending PA...I knew then I wanted to be that person" or maybe something a bit less cheesy..but somehow convey where your motivation came from (briefly)...then in the body of your text tell us where your motivation has led you to. Just don't say you are motivated...show us with hard data/numbers. Make sense?