One of the reasons I signed up for this seminar was because I did not know what a personal statement was used for. Was it for job applications? Grad school? Something else? What i learned was that a personal statement is used usually when applying to grad schools and that you include your interests in terms of where you want to go and what you want to do once you get there. Basically, it is a business proposal in which you are asking for a school to invest in you. This differs from a cover letter because a cover letter is written in response to a specific job advertisement in which you write why you are the best candidate for the job/internship. I was glad to clear up this distinction because I did not know whether personal statements should be included when applying for internships. That would have been great to hear that i have been missing something in my applications for the last 3 years. Nevertheless, this information was very helpful.

When cover letters came up, what was discussed wasn’t so shocking to me. When Dr. Hill said that most letters are read by computer programs and also by the slim chance it actually reaches a human being to read it, they only look at it for about 5-7 seconds, many people were shocked. I was not shocking to me. My dad once told me that some companies when they are looking for their interns, have a program that scans resumes and if the word “excel” is not on the sheet in any capacity, it instantly gets tossed aside in the rejection bin. This process seems cruel after all of the time spent by people crafting their letters, but to businesses time is money.

In the future, I hope there is a second part to this discussion as I would like to see some examples of personal statements as well as time to try and write my own. Overall, it was a great discussion in which I learned something new.