Personal Statement: ADHD, pretentiousness, self-consciousness etc.

rosymindedfuzz
Wed, 31 Jul 2013 03:34:11 +0000

I am currently a student at a community college. Ideally, I’d like to transfer to UCB as a political economy major. However, my grades have been a little shaky due to certain circumstances, among these being ADHD, hanging out with the wrong crowd, apathy and general slacking. UCB says it takes into consideration “any unusual circumstances or hardships you have faced and the ways in which you have overcome or responded to them.” Unfortunately, the hardships I’ve faced are nowhere near as a great as those of other students I’d be in competition with. And my hardships certainly don’t strike as original or unusual either. So I figure that if I can’t write about unusual hardships, perhaps I could write about hardships in an unusual way. The problem is that I have no idea how to write about these “hardships” without sounding too pretentious or self-conscious about myself as well as the essay criteria.

Recently, I had to write an essay for an honors application with a prompt that asked for me to detail challenges or circumstances that might have impeded my academic achievement in college. Not too dissimilar from what UCB is looking for in a personal statement. I’ve included the essay below. I don’t intend on completely reusing it for my personal statement, but I do kind of want to keep the general feel/theme of it. I know the essay is superfluous (understatement), especially the introduction, but I had little time for editing in order to meet the application deadline. So whoever has the time and patience to critique it and suggest what I should keep or remove for my personal statement, I would greatly appreciate your help.

Bad Faith

There is a slight cognitive dissonance that arises in electing to detail prior circumstances that may have resulted in the impediment of my academic achievement. Part of me feels compelled to attempt to convince the Honors Department that, because of certain conditions and resulting incidents that I have had the misfortune to endure, I should be excluded from the same judgment that will be placed upon other applicants. In other words, I am tempted to describe myself as perhaps being an exception and appeal for leniency. But in doing so, I run the risk of exaggerating my own recovery from past failures and implicitly trivializing those of others. I concede instead that there are many individuals who have been forced to deal with far greater burdens than I could ever imagine having to shoulder. However, I also do not wish to delegitimize the challenges I have had to face as a student. Although these challenges may not be as tangible or as deserving of sympathy as, say, growing up in poverty, I feel that their limitations were just as genuine, made evident by their consequences.

I am fortunate enough to have been raised – some would say spoiled – by two loving parents, in a middle class home and afforded the opportunity to attend programs such as GATE and the International Baccalaureate. Despite having these luxuries, I have succeeded in abandoning whatever benefits they had provided and nigh completely wasted my first two years of college, resulting in multiple failing grades and withdrawals. Sometime during the spring semester of 2011, I felt compelled to visit my psychiatrist after coming across some information regarding Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. According to medical literature, ADHD is associated with the impairment of the executive functions of the brain, which include processes such as attention, time management, memory, planning, organization and other cognitive skills. I was astonished at how closely the descriptions of ADHD behavior matched my own. After several visits to a psychiatrist, I was somewhat unsurprisingly diagnosed with the disorder.

Not only did ADHD affect my cognitive capabilities, it also altered my perspective on education and life in general. Sometimes something as seemingly insignificant as a misguided life philosophy might be problematic enough of a challenge to derail a promising future. Further research on ADHD helped foster the realization that, prior to my diagnosis, I found comfort in the delusory notion that my intelligence might redeem my disciplinary shortcomings. Consequently, this notion soon gave way to a bleak, fatalist belief that, among other things, a flawed educational system had doomed me to never realize my full potential. It goes without saying that having this sort of nihilistic mentality at such a precarious stage in life is not exactly conducive to success. Anytime I was confronted with a challenging obligation, I was determined to find any excuse to convince myself that the reward for overcoming it was not worth the effort.

Since my diagnosis, my GPA has increased to a 3.39. Although the medication I have since been prescribed has certainly been beneficial, the extent of which my academic improvement can be attributed to the medication alone remains unclear. Was the medication the catalyst for such a change via the alleviation of symptoms? Was this change brought about due to a better understanding of the disorder? Or was it perhaps brought about by mere experience and maturity? All I can objectively state is that not long after my diagnosis, my perspective on life and education had undergone a drastic transformation. Previously I had been acting on, what Jean-Paul Sartre called mauvaise foi, or “bad faith.” Concisely put, I had deluded myself with the false belief that I was devoid of the freedom to choose my path in life as a result of external pressures, namely academic and societal obligations. With this self-defeating mentality, I believed that I was successful in deflecting responsibility for my past academic failures and shifting the blame onto anyone and anything other than myself. I have since realized that, ultimately, this responsibility is inescapable and that I alone am accountable for every decision I make. To elaborate, everyone is a victim of circumstance in some way and, granted, some of us are more limited by them than others. However, there is always a choice to be made no matter how seemingly insurmountable the situation. Surrendering in the face of adversity or criticism is a choice. Even the act of adopting the belief that choice or freedom does not exist is itself a choice. But today, I choose to believe that I do have control over my future. Although it may be limited, I am aware that the no individual, challenge, or circumstance may decide its direction for me. Furthermore I also choose to claim responsibility for my past failures and to overcome any challenge that I am met with. Most importantly, I choose to strive toward my fullest potential, instead of allowing doubt or, perhaps even rationality, convince me otherwise. I am certain that this newfound mentality will provide me with the perseverance to, not only succeed, but thrive if admitted to the Honors Program.