I have always been a physically active person; Physical Therapy/ PStatement

Hi! This is my very FIRST..very ROUGH draft. I was hoping people could read and just give me their opinions on the general basis/idea of the esasy? I know I have a lot of work to do, but I'd like to see what people think and what impression they get of me just from reading a personal statement.

A young teenage boy sat strapped into a wheel chair; PT personal statement

Been editing a bit and this is my second rough draft. The question for the personal statement basically asks why PT. Any advice welcome! I'd love to know what kind of opinion you get of me by reading it and if you like it.

Anything missing that I should add? Just let me know! :)

I have always been a physically active person, enjoying my ability to move independently with ease. So it was not until I lived at the special education center in Thailand for one month that I realized how easy it is to take human movement for granted. Doing home visits with the center's physical therapist, we approached the first "home", lacking four walls and covered by a rusting, deteriorating tin roof. A young teenage boy sat strapped into a wheel chair that much to large for him. He had cerebral palsy, requiring therapy from birth that his parents were unable to afford and provide him. Because he had not received physical therapy, I was told he would never be able to walk or even sit up on his own. In that moment, I fully understood the life-changing impact physical therapy could have on an individual, and the devastating obstacles a person may face without it.

And while I came across a great deal of challenging and heartbreaking situations in Thailand, I encountered just as many uplifting moments. To me, I found no better feeling than watching the pure joy on a mother's face as her child with downs syndrome stood on his own for the first time, or the motivation I saw in a patient post-shoulder surgery to raise her arm above her head. And in everything I saw, what was most inspiring to me was watching the physical therapist at the special education child treat each child as her own or the therapist at the veteran hospital treat each patient as if they were his sister or his grandfather. Despite the challenges I faced with the language barrier, I needed no translation to understand the compassion, care and patience given to every patient that entered the room. It gave me perfect examples of why I want to be a physical therapist, and the type I aspire to be one day.

Having this eye-opening experience abroad, I was able to connect it to what I had seen over the past three years teaching health in Chicago public high schools. While I spotted great poverty in Thailand, it was not the first time I had seen such shocking health disparities before. Joining the peer health exchange as a freshman, I was eager to "give teenagers the skills and knowledge they need to make healthy decisions". No matter how many times I taught in a classroom, I was still shocked to see that 15-year-olds did not know that birth control would not prevent the transmission of STIs or that drugs could cause brain and heart damage. It made me determined to stick with the program and continue to make an impact. I became more involved, eventually selected to co-coordinate the program. I volunteered full-time, helping to recruit health educators, run meetings, train college students, and teach health. Having hundreds of hours with this organization and observing the hardships in Thailand, I know that a career in the health field is exactly what I want. It is a perfect match for my desire to assist others in leading a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle.

Unsure of what healthcare profession best fit my desires to make a difference, I decided to gain experience through shadowing and research. Beginning as a research assistant in the UIC PT department, I had the opportunity to work on multiple studies regarding gait and balance in individuals who have suffered a stroke. I was given opportunities to run trials on patients and quickly learned how to analyze data using motion analysis software, spss, gaitrite, and other programs. And through my work, the process of analyzing human movement and injury in participants intrigued me.

While my passion for science and the human body had my entire family knowing I would end up in healthcare, it was my college experiences that I came to see physical therapy as my calling. Unlike other health professions, I saw the opportunity to not take someone apart in order to heal, but to heal through building a person up and making them stronger. It has lit a spark in me, and has given me something to be truly passionate about. As a profession, it offered everything I have ever desired all in one career. Physical therapy will allow me to analyze human movement using critical thinking in order to create an individualized treatment plan for every patient I encounter. And most importantly, physical therapy will give me a chance to build a close, strong relationship with patients, instilling confidence, support, and inspiration for them to return to maximal function once again.

Without rereading your work, list three big things that make you want to become a PT.

jkjeremy
1) I love working closely with others
2) The human body and analyzing movement intrigues me
3) I want to impact people and PT can really make a difference in someone's life

Change #3 to something else. It doesn't mean anything. (You can "make a difference in someone's life" working at McDonald's.)

Also change #1, as "working closely with others" can happen in almost any profession.

Your big reasons need to be a little more specific.

Ok I didn't know how detailed you wanted this let me retry hahah

1) PT gives you the opportunity to work closely with patients, forming strong relationships highly based on trust. Patients will trust you to make their goals their own and support them in their efforts to regain mobility

2) The same still-I love human anatomy and analyzing movements and how it can cause injury and damage

3) PT makes a difference in someones life in the way that you have the opportunity to give someone back the ability to walk, work, hold their child, etc. As opposed to other healthcare professions where you take someone apart to heal them, PT lets you just strengthen and build someone up back to their true potential. I had a PT and she definitely made an impact on my life. She gave me the opportunity to get back on a diving board so I consider her having have made a big difference in my life

What do you think about my personal statement overall..?

Better.

Now turn this into three complete sentences, each about a separate and distinct idea.

Overall this essay is very average. It's fair.

Let's make it into an upper-half paper.

Okay well I definitely appreciate the input. I know I have plenty of work to do on it. Draft one of plenty hahah!

Do you have experience with PT apps or grad schools apps in general?

I've been teaching expository writing for nearly thirty years.

Almost all writing "advice" is wrong.

As I said, what you have here isn't bad. However, you need to make your reader take notice for all the right reasons.

Wow! I didn't mean to question your input on my essay at all, just curious where the suggestions were coming from. I understand exactly what you mean though. I feel like I need to narrow down the personal stories more and incorporate the 3 main reasons for wanting to do PT into the essay a lot more. Thanks for your assistance, I appreciate it! :)

I didn't take it that way.


You're very welcome.

I need to grab some breakfast. If you have questions, I'll gladly answer them in about half an hour.

What's the word count requirement (and how many words do you have now)?

4500 (characters+ spaces) max. Draft two is about 4300.

Opinions on the second one?

The word "passion" shows up more than once in the conclusion (once as a noun, once as an adjective).

This stuff isn't personal, so it doesn't belong in a personal statement.

Also, the word "make" doesn't mean much (unless you're making a cake, in which case the proper verb would still be "bake"). "Make" (or some form thereof) appears several times in your essay.

I understand what you are saying...however the word "make" only appears 3 times in my essay. And one of those times it is in the mission statement of a program I run so I can't change that. I don't think using it 2 times outside that is excessive. Also, thank you for pointing out the conclusion for me to edit. While it may not be "personal" I am choosing to leave the sentence in there about research (personal call I suppose and I like having it there to emphasize what I learned over the year).

I was just looking for an overall opinion of the essay though...perhaps you could give me that?