Please help: Issues with making my personal statement 'personal'

[PotGoblinsales10]

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I really just did the AMCAS prompt; I answered the question why I want to be a doctor directly.

I didn't use a catchy introduction, I just talked about how health problems can destroy lives and I want to have a positive impact on people. I talked about how I love science and have experience with patient care that only strengthened my desire to be a doctor. basically, I just spoke about how much I am committed to lifelong medical service and care.

Basically, it is set up like this:

Paragraph 1: Explain how damaging health problems are to a person and family's health and how I want to provide the best possible life for people so that they have the opportunity to enjoy life.

Paragraph 2: Explain the activities I participated in and how I have developed into a person suitable for medicine.

Paragraph 3: Explain my free clinic volunteering and how I have developed an even stronger desire to further my clinical skills to be of service to people and increase the quality of their lives.

Paragraph 4: I don't just want to increase lifespan, I want to increase the amount of time patients live healthy. This is followed by a conclusion restating my dedication to service and care for patients.

As you can see this personal statement takes on a very different path compared to the ones we see online. The ones we see online talk about a specific grand experience with a catchy introduction and a somewhat cliche conclusion wrapping it up. I took the approach of directly answering the question, but it not as personal as the online personal statements are.

I'm having trouble with rewriting this into a more personal personal statement. I don't have that one experience. I could talk about some experience and explain the meaning of it, but its meaning is not as huge and exaggerating its meaning might actually hurt my personal statement. Furthermore, I don't like to BS and I fear that if I write a catchy personal statement, that Adcoms would see right through it.

Any advice from adcoms, @LizzyM @Goro @gyngyn @Catalystik would be much appreciated. Do I start over and try to exaggerate meaning from an experience, or do I keep with this current personal statement I have?

 

[LizzyM]

Do you know anyone, perhaps a neighbor, a classmate, a classmate's parent or someone else not related to you, who has had a health problem? Can you take that first sentence describing paragraph one and put an anecdote with it? Ideally, not someone related to you (by definition we love our loved ones, it is a greater leap to dedicate one's life to helping strangers). To your essay, just graft a story about your friend "Emily" and how her mom's chronic condition took a toll on the family. Add a fifth paragraph saying that you are pursing medicine for all the "Emilys" out there who need their parents, grandparents and siblings to be their best, healthiest selves.

This doesn't have to be a single moment, which is what I think you have been looking for, but perhaps years of observations about how a chronic condition robbed Emily's mother of her ability to function in the world and looking back that observation helped you to realize how damaging health problems are to a person and family's health.

Or did you just get this idea from a book... I don't think you did, I think that if you dig down, you can find stories and experiences in your own life that will bring some color to your prose.

 

[Med Ed]

Paragraph 1: Explain how damaging health problems are to a person and family's health

We're doctors, we already know this.

and how I want to provide the best possible life for people so that they have the opportunity to enjoy life.

Show, don't tell.

Paragraph 2: Explain the activities I participated in

Can already see those in your ECs.

and how I have developed into a person suitable for medicine.

Presumptuous.

Paragraph 3: Explain my free clinic volunteering and how I have developed an even stronger desire to further my clinical skills to be of service to people and increase the quality of their lives.

Paragraph 4: I don't just want to increase lifespan, I want to increase the amount of time patients live healthy. This is followed by a conclusion restating my dedication to service and care for patients.

Sounds really bland. If the rest of your application is solid it wouldn't be a deal breaker, but to say this is uninspired would be an understatement.

If you were standing at a party and an attractive stranger approached, started making small talk, and ultimately said "So, what's your deal?", what would you say?