Writing Statement of Purpose is the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. That’s for my case, though.

I need words! It is hard to combine those words into a strong and extraordinary essay. Well, basically what happened to me is just myself being perfectionist and my mind just wandering around without even start to type any single word. And which is why Mr. Ruli Manurung, my beloved lecturer, scold me right in my face, telling me to STOP thinking and START typing.

He said that we cannot make what is so-called a perfect essay. All we can do is just start making one, and shape it along the way to perfection. If we do not start from now, you will never start forever. Okay, that’s directly slap me. All these years I’ve been doing nothing because worrying if I am not perfect enough to start applying for university.

But then again, I have to start NOW or NEVER. Okay, let me share a little bit of my progress and what I’ve been doing so far:

Research Your Target

You need to research to your target universities for information, and read the university requirements for statement of purpose. Each university may have their own requirements and standards, which makes you cannot make one fit for all. You have to read the instruction carefully before you start writing. It is good idea to note down every instruction from every university you are planning to apply. It will help you to find similarity between them.

Don’t Focus on Reading Samples on Internet

It is useless and only make you not confident with yourself. You will waste your time comparing yourself with other people who seem so perfect. After all, not all those perfect essay writer is admitted to top school. You should not worry your capability although you do not possess any gold medal from any competition. You have to be confident of yourself and show the truly you that you are capable in your field. It was my problem few months back and I am struggling not to Google any perfect essay anymore and start writing my own.

Jot Down the Outline

After you read carefully the instruction, write down the outline before you start writing the full essay. It will help you to elaborate the main idea and develop a structured writing. Each outline should represent the idea of one paragraph in your essay, and the bullet points is the elaboration of it. Do not write directly as you are writing a blog post (which what I am doing right now). If you directly write your essay, your idea might be flooding anywhere unstructured, and it will degrade your essay.

So far, those are things that I have been doing so far. Once I make more progress, I will let you know 😉