first reply made paranoid nvm
First of all, you shouldn’t post your personal statements online, it’s just not the best idea.
Secondly, either of the two would be good, but both need direction. For the first one, I’d talk more about how leaving an abusive relationship made you feel empowered, etc., how doing art made you feel, and how the experience motivated you to do better entirely. Don’t worry about switching from history to art - talk about how art was your means of expression, how you used that to develop positive work habits and a good work ethic, etc. etc., and then how this motivated you to want to do well academically. You don’t even have to talk about history, you can talk about that for the major prompt.
Focus on the specific act of creating art and the role it played in who you are today.
The second one is strong as well, but again, it needs direction. And you’re going to want to talk more about you than how your grandmother motivated you - explain how you recognized the role she played, and what you learned from her, and how you as an individual grew from that experience.
Hi thank you! You made me kind of scared so I deleted it. Anyway, I will focus on what you’ve said. I was having a hard time trying to focus and figure out what I was supposed to write.
Good move.
The UCs that actually read the PS are looking to understand you as a person. Always talk about how an experience impacted you in terms of you, not in terms of how hard something was, etc. They like to see personal growth.
The personal statement should not just be giving a story - it should be explaining how this story impacted you. I understand that, with these major life occurrences, we often want to go into as much detail as we can - but ultimately, they want to learn about YOU as a person, and focusing on the story too much can take away from that.
As someone with a legitimate fear of writing personal essays I think I’ll just share my experience. Writing a personal statement is like going to the dentist. It’s something that I’m going to have to do, and it’s never going to be comfortable, so I should just get it over with. So I force myself to get going. Once I get going, I can do okay. I just need to not overthink it, or think of how uncomfortable I’m going to feel about it, and I should just start writing.