Statement of....Purpose??

I sincerely apologize for my last post (its not there anymore, so this apology is only there for those who were (un)fortunate enough to have read it). It was very uncharacteristic of me and was due to a momentary lapse of reason - as i told the person responsible for the whole post - my immense intellect has been clouded by emotion the last few days-not sure if she got the sarcasm. Despite my requests, I still received a few sympathetic messages and am grateful for the concern expressed by everyone. I'm doing fine now (wasnt doing too badly then, but tostitos, coke and ice cream are never good for health) and very much back on my feet.

I spent a month in Boston doing an observership at a hospital where I was pleasantly surprised by how friendly everyone was. I had expected I would stick out like a sore thumb(which i might have done, but i didnt really feel it). There were residents from all over the world and the time i spent there was as much a geography lesson as a medicine experience. It actually looks kind of like an advert for UCB. I guess something thats only possible in the US.

After a flurry of recommendations, personal statements, common application forms and endless lists of residency programs suddenly all is quiet. D-day, 1st September (yeah, Happy Birthday SPS) has come and gone. I survived it, as did I guess just about everyone else in the race for a residency spot in the US of A. Now begins a long and painful wait for programs to invite us for interview calls. Everyday that goes by without any word from them - neither rejecting, nor inviting, is full of an eerie sort of silence - emptiness, a void. It is this factor which over the next month or so will decide whether a day was good or bad. Or ugly (hope I don’t have any of those).

I seem to have become somewhat of an authority on personal statements. Having nearly lost my mind writing my own(which by the way I myself didnt think was too great), I subsequently had to write/edit/repair (for want of a better word-because I have seen some really bad ones too!) close to ten others (5 of them being variants of the same one as a friend of mine was applying to 5 branches- i hear there's a 6th one in the mix as well now! I could participate in the recitation tests I used to dread as a kid with one of her PS’s.). My spectrum expanded a couple of days back as I actually wrote out a PS for a friend applying for a fellowship in Cardiology and have already been warned by another who will be applying to B schools that I'll have to write his too!

"Statement Of Purpose" - These words have been echoing in my head for the last few weeks as I needed to sum up all the ambitions, desires, achievements of a lifetime(thus far, at least) in a solitary page to apply for a residency program. The problem is not one of plenty and of squeezing in stuff into those few hundred words, but rather how to write a statement of purpose when i believe I have the most purposeless existence known to mankind. I like to eat, sleep, play, read, write. All very fine pursuits, but somewhat lacking purpose. I figured all this wouldnt look too good on my application, so I had to be a little creative and mention something or the other about "helping humanity", "intellectual pursuits", and "career goals". Made me feel not unlike a Miss India contestant( "My idol is Mother Teresa..." - when actually its Rakhi Sawant or Isha Koppikar.)

It's virtually impossible to avoid these cliches when writing a Personal Statement, and that is precisely the problem I was facing. How do I make myself look different yet make it seem like I'm every PD's dream, while just about everyone else is doing the same, barring those who hired one website or another to do their dirty work for them. (I can do a better job than most-at half the price-anyone interested?)Its a mystery to me as to what they want in a Personal statement. They want some emotion, some passion in it, but don’t want it to be over the top. They also need you to be politically very correct, which of course poses a huge problem for someone like me.

So kids, if any of you ever need any help writing a personal statement, please dont hesitate to go elsewhere because i have had more than my fair share of them. If you're willing to pay, however, that is a different matter altogether.