I became the youngest person to oversee a newspaper section on my own, and was named the "Best Journalist of the Year" two years in a row.
Now, our newspaper wasn't all too shabby. We would go to competitions and sweep everything. We would have awards in every category, except for one thing.
My category.
I was always entered into the feature/human interest race. And I always lost.
Maybe it's because writing under pressure never appealed to me. The things I wrote about were fun, fluffy. There were never any consequences to my articles, except during competitions. Then, it was WRITE or DIE.
And so those articles were terrible. I would sit there for fifteen of my allotted 45 minutes, just writing and rewriting the first paragraph, because I knew how important it was that my sentences grab the reader and drag them into a world I would then create. A world that never completely materialized. A world that never won the prize.
Fast forward 10 years, and I'm still writing. Fluff pieces on my blog about patients and my life in medical school. Things just for fun. Things of no significance.
But now I have to write my personal statement. Something that DOES matter. Something that residencies will look at to determine if I'm a good fit for their school.
I've been trying to write the same thing for the last month, and every time I read it, I know it's not right. It doesn't have the right gravitas, the right tone, the right amount of yearning without turning sappy. It's not award-winning.
Bottom line? I have writer's block. But I must finish this personal statement today. I'm just worried because I know it's not going to be any good. And that stresses me out.
