 All right, I'm excited. So this is Brian from my PA resource. They've got all kinds of prepaid services. You should check them out. This video is not sponsored by them. This is more of a collaboration between my channel and his channel and his company. So I'm definitely really excited to see what he has to say about my essay. You know, I've been helping people edit their essays, but of course, as I always say, I'm just a second year student. You know, people reach out to me because they like how my essay sounded and obviously it got me into PA school. But it's definitely not at the level that Brian's at. He's been doing this professionally for a number of years and he's edited hundreds and thousands of essays. I've edited probably 60 to 60 to 100 at this point. So I've done a few, but this guy's definitely a pro. So I basically reached out to him. I wanted to see what he would do with my essay, how he liked it. You know, a lot of people seem to like it. I'm really curious what a professional would think. So that's why we're doing this. And without further ado, let's see what Brian thinks. Hey Boris, Brian Pong with my PA resource. Hey ma'am, I appreciate you reaching out. I'm really excited to take a look at your personal statement. I know that it was from a couple of cycles ago, but hopefully your audience kind of gained some insight on the ins and outs, do's and don'ts when putting together the personal statement for either this or the next cycle or for future cycles. Myself, I love editing personal statements. I've been doing it for six or seven years, sat on admissions committees and all that. The reason why I got into it in the first place was because I was not a good applicant. I was very below average. And so for below average applicants or even average applicants, a good personal statement can kind of make that difference between schools interviewing versus not interviewing you. So let's jump in. And like I said, hopefully your audience gained some insight about what to do and what not to do. So I'm excited. You know, I'm going to pause right there just to make one comment. If you saw the interview I did with the Dean of Admission from my PA school, she definitely said the same thing. If you have any kind of struggles, any kind of, as she called them, blemishes, you know, on your application, the personal statement is definitely a great place to put those in to kind of explain yourself and to basically make an average or a below average applicant have a chance at getting in, kind of like Brian just said. All right, so let's do this. So I went ahead and marked through all this information up here, which was like your name, your address, your social security number, bank account numbers. We don't need all that. Even if you put your bank account information on there, it's not going to help you get an interview with the school because, you know, you paying them off isn't going to help. Just kidding. All right, this guy is hilarious. I didn't put any of that on there. I think so my essay was made on the same letterhead as my resume. So it had like my address and my email address. No, I didn't give him my social security number or bank account number or try to bribe him. Yeah, he's being funny. Definitely don't do that. But when you do write an essay, like don't worry about a fancy header, it's not a big deal. Do keep in mind that you want to put like a character count at the top. That way, while you're writing drafts, like every time you finish a draft, you can put a character count like right up here, and that'll kind of help you stay in the guidelines of, you know, whatever, just put a character count up top so you know where you're going because you don't want to write a five page essay and then realize, oh, I've got to cut it down, you know, by three quarters just to get it within the standard 5000 character limit. So anyway, that's my recommendation. Another thing too at the top here is you can write the prompt, just like the one line prompt that Casper gives you just to kind of keep you focused while you're kind of writing things out. But that's just like draft stuff. We'll focus on the essay itself here. All right, so let's get started here. Good try, Brian. Boris, believe it or not, I am not fluent in Russian. So, but I have no idea how to pronounce this. I watch your YouTube videos and I'm embarrassing a number of times just to get the pronunciation even 10% correct, which is I'm sure what I did. It gave you like a 45%, Brian. I think that was pretty good. But anyway, but starting off your essay with this, we'll kind of get the reader's attention somewhat. And it kind of did because I wanted to know what you said here. A lot of applicants, you know, have something that they say in Spanish or in a language in which the applicant traveled for like a mission trip or something. So that's a good way to like hook the reader's attention. But immediately after once I figure out what it is, so like the cat walks by herself, I want to know what the purpose of that is, right? So you hook my attention with the characters that I'm not familiar with. But now I want to know like a cat walks by herself. So why are you including this in there in the first place other than to hook the reader's attention based on the language that you're using, right? If that makes sense, everything that you put in your essay needs to relate to your journey and like why you want to become a PA. So, so immediately I'm drawn to this first sentence that, you know, mentions a cat walks by herself. It's a Russian song by a Russian artist or singer or band. Most of my early life in the first generation in a first generation Russian American household is a blur, but that song continues to resonate within me to this day. So after I read that, I'm wondering why, why does it resonate with you to this day, what you go into it really captures my experience in figuring out my personal academic and professional life and a culture that is very different from the one I was raised then. So, so my main thing here or my main concern here is that in the sentence before you mentioned how most of your early life is a blur, but then you talk about how the song really captures your experience in figuring out your personal academic and professional life and a culture that is very different from the one I was raised in. So you make it sound like you're, you do remember like how you were raised and everything whereas before you say it's mostly a blur. So that's one thing that you don't want to contradict what you're saying in your essay. That is very nitpicky of me, but I am here to nitpick. That is my whole purpose in life is to nitpick personal statements and so you're welcome. But overall, like with your introduction as you may or may not know or want to do or if you did this back in 2018 when you applied, you really want to hook the reader's attention and that's why most of my focus initially was on hooking my attention. You really want to focus on hooking the reader's attention in the first paragraph. This is like your first impression, as I've said before. You really want to make the reader interested in learning more about you and finding out more about your journey, how you decided you wanted to become a PA. So that in and of itself, like being raised in a Russian-American household or being raised in Russia, is if you were or if you were just here all the time. I don't know if you like immigrated from Russia or what, but you want to make sure that you're hooking the reader's attention. And so this in and of itself, you being raised in a Russian-American household is very unique. Like I don't know a lot of applicants that were raised in a Russian-American household. So you've got that going for you. But I want to know more. I'm already like, okay, well, tell me about your journey. Like how did you being raised in this Russian-American household? How did this help steer you in a direction of wanting to become a physician assistant? Or even if it's not related, right? How is your upbringing related to you wanting to become a physician assistant? That's immediately where I'm drawn to. My upbringing was based on survival rather than personal fulfillment. I was taught that a career was for supporting oneself and his family financially. Okay, Russian boys find something they are good at, obtain the necessary training, find a job close to their parents' house, and then start a family. This is why my parents were utterly shocked when I decided to transfer out of the industrial and systems engineering program at the Rochester Institute of Technology in major in biology at Allegheny College. Allegheny? Or Allegheny? Either way. So I feel like you're, I'll keep going and then we'll kind of take a step back. I could not bear the thought of streamlining faceless assembly lines for the rest of my life. I craved humanity in my work. This is good. So I decided that I was going to enter the medical field. My parents did not understand or support this decision and I certainly did not approve, did not provide any guidance for me in reaching my goal. A few years later, I found the guidance I needed while serving in the military. All right, so there's a lot to kind of unpack here, right? So let's get up this highlighter tool here. So things like this, you got to think about why you're including it in this personal statement, right? Then there was something else up here. My parents were utterly shocked when you decided to transfer out. I'm not as concerned about your parents and you kind of re, you kind of focus on them twice in this paragraph because you talk about they were shocked and then you talk about how they didn't provide any guidance, but like, so clear there's a reason, right? Like that must have had a big effect on you when you were in college, but I want to know like how does this matter or like how does this relate to your journey, I guess? So like, do we, can we take this out? Like, can we just like not talked about, talk about at all how your parents were shocked and how they didn't support you? Because ultimately, like those are characters that we're taking up that don't help me understand. As the reader, they don't help me understand why you want to be a PA. Like it sucks that your parents didn't like help you or give you the guidance that you wanted or needed, but it sounds like you are focusing more on like placing blame or like highlighting how they weren't good parents, if that makes sense. Like that's what I feel like from the reader's perspective, I don't know your upbringing, right? I don't know everything that you had to go through, but I wouldn't focus so much on like your parents either approving or disapproving of your career choice. I understand because you talk about good Russian boys here and this is different than what was expected of you and like their, your parents culture and everything, but I don't think that we need to focus as much on that. Just want to respond to that really quickly. So I think Brian's definitely completely right in that this came off probably negative and probably like I was placing blame. And if you've seen any of my, you know, my videos about advice and things not to do in your CASPA personal statement, I definitely say don't include anything negative unless you put a very serious positive spin on it, like how this helped you grow, how it helped you become a better person, better applicant. So I definitely agree. I shouldn't have put that in as negatively as I did. And I definitely don't think that I wanted to assign any blame to my parents or say that they were bad parents by any means necessary, like at all. Like no, they definitely weren't, they were, there's very supportive people. They just had no like medical knowledge or experience. They had no idea how to become a doctor or a PA. So I basically, the reason I put all that in there is kind of going along with the first paragraph, which is, you know, the cat walks by herself. Basically what I'm trying to say is I had to figure everything out on my own. You know, I had to do everything by myself. I had to get all the knowledge, all the mentorship. I had to go and get it. You know, none of it was really provided for me. Like it is for a lot of people that I know are PA school applicants and things like that. Like their dad might be a doctor, their mom might be a doctor, they might have a PA in the family or like a family friend. I had none of that. So I think that's what I was trying to communicate. And I thought that I did a good job with that. But from Brian's perspective, I could definitely see how I could have done a much better job. You know, you definitely should not be quite as negative. You should not assign blame. There definitely would have been better ways to do that. So I do agree with Brian in that regard. Instead, we need to talk about the humanity in your work that you craved. Like, tell me more about that. Like, what was it? Why did you crave that humanity in your work? Why didn't you want to do the industrial and systems engineering program? Right. So like you mentioned, you could not bear the thought of streamlined faceless assembly lines. Good. But there's like, there's a ton of different careers that you could pursue that, that where you don't do that, where you don't streamline faceless assembly lines, right? And so why humanity? Like, what about humanity? Like, what was it? Like, that's that's the kind of stuff that I try to help people get to is like, what is the root? What is the reason why you crave this humanity in your work? Right? Like, I'm not saying you want to just go out and do nothing with your life. But like, why, why the humanity? Okay. So that's something to think that's something for your audience to kind of think about. So like, there's a reason why you didn't want to do the same thing over and over again. But but why did you choose medicine? Like, how did this, you know, this desire for humanity in your career kind of transition to a career one and healthcare and two as a physician assistant, right? So that's what that's kind of where I'm where I'm drawn to is why did you crave this humanity in your work? Right? And like, that's not so it's not such a strange thing, right? I think by and large, people want to make a difference. They want to help people, they want to do things that matter. And so maybe it has to do with that. But I want to hear it from you, right? Or I would want to hear from you if, you know, you are applying to CASPA this cycle. But like, what is it? You see, I'm saying like, I want you to dig deep. This is the kind of stuff you want to get a little vulnerable in this essay, you want to tell tell the reader someone that doesn't know you doesn't know your story. Why? Why you've kind of how you got here? Like, what about this humanity? What in your life made you want to crave humanity in your work in your career? Right? Yeah, I could see why he's underlining and circling humanity so many times. And why also at the beginning he said, while you're drafting your essay, you should put the prompt, why do you want to be a PA right at the top? Because that's something you should focus on and kind of getting away from that too much doesn't make your essay sound good. And so I think he's completely right. Like it's good that I put in the I craved humanity in my work, and that I didn't want to, you know, streamline faceless assembly lines as an engineer. But what is it about humanity that I wanted? I could have I could have included things like, oh, let's see. I could have said something like I really wanted to connect with a person on a human level every single day. I wanted to see someone's face when I made the difference in their life every single day. I wanted to take people's pain away every single day. I wanted to make people feel cared for every single day, you know, something like that, you know, like there was a negative in that again, like I didn't want to do this, I didn't want to do engineering, but there was not much of a positive. It's I wanted to crave or I craved humanity. But what is it about humanity? So yeah, Brian's right, I should have definitely included something like that. Like, yeah, some of those examples that I just gave, I definitely think that I should have focused more on the prompt, why you want to be a PA, the positive sides of it, why humanity, what did I want? Connection, make a difference, you know, take a pain away, anything like that. I should have included that. He's absolutely right. Okay. So good, I feel like we're getting somewhere, getting somewhere with someone who applied two years ago. So you're in the military during my time in the Navy. I operated in a variety of truly zero fail environments. And I can already tell you full disclosure, I've read through your essay like half a dozen times before doing the video just because that's how I do things. And so if we so let's just I'm just going to highlight everything here, right? All of this is where you're talking about your job, right? You're talking about what you did in the Navy, training people, where you excelled, I learned to lead all this, right? If you sent me this essay, like before you applied to CASPA, I would have like just completely marked through it. And that's my favorite thing to do. Oh, that's, that's brutal, Brian, with a red pen. It's just fun. Go ahead, cross it out some more. So the reason being the reason why I wouldn't focus as much on this, like you can talk about your time in the Navy, that's fine. But I want it to relate back again to this humanity, right? This humanity. So like all you're doing here is you're basically just kind of laying out what you did, like what your job responsibilities are. If you were to take this, this part where you talk about how you're in the Navy out and like the actual specific job and substituted it for say, like how you were a CNA, and you talked about your job responsibilities as a CNA, right? So I took vital signs, I transported patients, I turned over rooms and, you know, all this other stuff. Like that doesn't help me, that doesn't help me understand anything, right? So you want to make sure that everything that you're talking about in your essay relates back to your journey and why you want to become a PA, because that's what I want to know. That's what I want to know as a reader as an admissions panel member is like, why do you want to become a PA specifically? And how did your experiences that you've had, how did they kind of connect the dots and help you come to this decision to devote your entire life to pursuing a career as a physician assistant and helping people, right? That's what we need to figure out. And this paragraph here doesn't help me figure that out, doesn't tell me anything. It just tells me that like your experience in the Navy and what you did. Now, first of all, I appreciate everything you did in the Navy, and it sounds like a nightmare having to do all this stuff that you had to go through. But for the purpose of CASPA, you want to make sure that everything that you put in this essay relates to your interest in becoming a physician assistant. So I think that for other audience members that other audience members, like we're selling tickets here, other people in your audience that have served in the military, I think it's great to include that you're in the military. But you need to make sure that you connect the dots here and tell me how this military experience helped you decide that you want to become a physician assistant. I know we'll get there again. I've read through this essay a bunch of times, but we could use these characters somewhere else. And that's the thing is that you can write about whatever the hell you want in this personal statement, but you need to make sure that it all relates to why you want to become a PA. Like don't just tell me about your job or like what you used to do. I want to know about how that job made you want to become a PA and like how it got you there. You have to see what I'm saying. So I just want to respond to that. I see two problems with that paragraph that one of which he pointed out and another one that I thought of on my own. So one that he pointed out was that I'm basically just describing my job, you know, whether it was in the Navy or like he said, if it was a CNA job and I was just kind of describing things as if it was a resume, like either of those is incorrect to do because it goes in the experiences part of CASPA. So you already have, you know, characters in a box to go write all that stuff in what you did at your job. And it doesn't really need to go in your CASPA personal statement, unless it's extremely pertinent to why you want to be a PA, you know, what made you want to be a PA. So he's definitely right about that. And I definitely call people out on that all the time in their essays, like, Hey, I don't need to know that you changed bedsheets and I don't need to know that you took vitals. Like we know what a CNA did and you can put that in your experience section. What I do want to know is how that made you feel and why it made you want to be a PA. So he's completely right about that. The other thing that I don't think he mentioned is I think I was answering the wrong question. I was legitimately answering the wrong question in my entire essay. And I wasn't answering at least at this point, why do you want to be a PA? I was answering how did you become the person that you are? I made it a personal statement just about me. Like, Hey, these are all my experiences. I had to figure this out on my own. These are the experiences in the Navy that made me who I am today. Like, okay, that's probably good if you were writing about, you know, how did you become who you are today? Or what experiences in your life have really molded you? Like that's a different prompt. But the prompt is why do you want to be a PA? So honestly, the first time I listened to Brian's review, I was kind of confused because I thought all of that was really important. And I thought that they were really good things and unique things about me that I did in the Navy that most people didn't do, you know, that I really wanted to include. But then on second and third time that I listened to it, I realized why he wanted to cross that whole paragraph out. And it's because it doesn't actually answer the question, why do you want to be a PA? So, yeah, it took me a few lessons, Brian, but I'm with you there. I do agree with you. All right. So I was very enthusiastic about my work in the Navy, but I never stopped thinking about my goal to become a medical provider. Okay, so this is good, right? So this kind of brings me back to the humble, we are just destroying this humanity section here. But you mentioned that you wanted humanity in my work, right? And, but you didn't talk about medicine, right? Just humanity, right? Like you talk about, you were going to enter the medical field. But if we talk more about the humanity, we can kind of get there and connect those dots like how the humanity went to the medical field. And then down here, I won't have as much of a question about you becoming a medical provider. Okay. So during the service, during your certain, during my service, I received on-the-job training from nurses, physician assistants, and doctors at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and Tripler Army Hospital. So this is an amazing, this is, oops, I'm on, okay. This is an amazing experience right here. Look at that straight line. This is an amazing experience right here, experience at Walter Reed phenomenal. Like that is something that like nobody has. So good on you for getting this experience. It's so weird to hear because when I was stationed in DC, that's just kind of where you went for your healthcare. You know, there was a little clinic on base, but if it was anything specialty or anything remotely serious, like you go to Walter Reed, that's just the nearest military medical hospital. I didn't realize it was that big a deal until after I got out of the Navy and realized, oh, that's like where they take the president, you know, when he's sick or like, I didn't realize how big of a deal Walter Reed was until I left the Navy. And then it kind of just makes you look back and go, like, man, that was actually an amazing experience. And I'm really grateful for it. Just at the time, it seemed just kind of like a normal experience. Yeah, I feel that way about a lot of things. Another thing to think about, I know you kind of talked about it multiple times, or you mentioned multiple times is the, the abbreviation here, the OJT. So you save some characters because you got another one down here, I think. For those out there that do other abbreviations, right, like PAs for the first time, I think this is the first time you say PA here. You want to like do the parentheses like he does with the on the job training parentheses, OJT and parentheses. The first time you mentioned physician assistance, you can do the same kind of thing, right, physician assistance, and then in parentheses, write PA and then you'll be good to go. And then the rest of the time you can just write PA, PA, I'm on a racer again, there we go, PA, PA, et cetera. Okay. So where were we? I put an IVs assisted with suturing and witnessed a variety of bedside manner styles. Okay. So again, like you're just, just tell me about your job, like I don't, I don't care as much. I want to know how this experience made you want to become a PA, right? So I don't care as much about like what your job responsibilities are. It's great. You put an IV is cool. But how did the, how did this make you want to become a physician assistant? Okay. My most mineral experience was holding together a screaming two-year-olds, lacerated forehead as an RVPA, expertly applied liquid stitches. So this is great, right? Terrible. I work in the ER like I hate sewing up kids just because it's traumatic, like for everybody, the kids cry. I cry sometimes that doesn't matter. But it's just, it's hard, right? It's hard like torturing a child in that sense, because they don't know you're trying to help them. I can, me as a medical provider, I can imagine how that would be memorable, unfortunately, memorable. Yeah, that's why Peds is probably, if it's not last on my list, it's definitely close to last on my list of places I'd want to work, because it's not that I don't like kids. I do like kids, but like, especially if you have to do something painful, like they just don't understand. And yeah, like Brian said, it's just, it's something that I could not see myself doing regularly because I just feel so bad about myself every day, you know, causing a kid pain that they just don't understand. You know, like to an adult, you can understand, they can understand, hey, this lidocaine is going to sting a little bit, and then you're not going to feel the sutures, and then you're going to feel better and look better in just like a week or two. So like they can understand that a kid, they just know like, oh, you're hurting me and why are you doing this? I don't know, it just sounds terrible. And yeah, I guess I'm not going anywhere with that. It was just, it's true. Um, but, but anyway, also liquid stitches are a godsend. My OJT experiences allowed me to work with every kind of healthcare provider. I would be careful with saying this every kind, like, because as you know now, because you're a student probably, like there's no such thing as 100% or 0% in medicine or in life period. So I would be careful saying things like every kind, I would say like various kinds or the multiple different healthcare providers. Just a side note, but I, and I quickly realized that the physician assistant role was perfect for me. Okay. So say it's perfect. So why is it perfect? This is, so like you said it, and I know that I have more to read, but as, as somebody who's reading your essay, as somebody who has experience with admissions panels, like I want to know why is it perfect for you? Why? So like, why? Cause you've told me nothing about it so far. You've told me nothing about why it's perfect for you or really any of the duties of PAs up until this point other than that a PA can apply liquid stitches, right? So I fell in love with the PAs, with the PAs ability to spend quality time caring for and educating the most important member of the healthcare team. I would put a colon here instead of a comma, the patient. I cannot wait to perform procedures and use the latest literature, excuse me, to render diagnoses and care plans. I had finally found my niche. Okay. So, so this is good, right? I really like this part where you say educating, because as PAs are like one of our main jobs is to educate patients on the management of their chronic illnesses, like hypertension, diabetes, etc. So, so this is good. Overall, I think we need to expand more on this. And this is where the character count comes into play, because if we had more space, we could, if we've removed this paragraph where we just talk about your job responsibilities, we could go into detail about you following with this Army PA and talking about the different medical providers that you shadowed with and what interests you about PA, the PA profession as opposed to different other medical professions or healthcare provider professions. So that's why it's important to kind of keep in mind the character count, because if we remove all these characters, that's a solid amount of characters that we can go into more detail about why you want to become a PA, which is the whole purpose of this essay, right? That's the whole purpose is to go into detail about how your experiences like this one at Walter Reed, how your experiences that you have had have made you want to become a PA. That's the goal. That's the whole point of this essay right here is how your experiences have made you want to become a PA. And then we can talk about how it's perfect for you. But anyway, educating is good. Just wanted to respond to that. So if I was applying all over again, pretend I wasn't already in PA school, pretend that I was following Brian's advice and I was redoing my essay and my application to give me the best chance of admission this year. Let's say I'm applying again. Things that I would practically do is definitely remove most of that job description from the Navy and also from my volunteering that he's looking at right now, put that into the experiences section, you know, just bullet points and even say something like truly zero fail environment as one of the bullet points. That's totally fine. And then, you know, like the things that I actually had to do on the job, which I think I did, but I wouldn't put them in the essay as well. Take those out and then highly expand on the humanity. What is it about the humanity, the human connection that I really wanted in my work and also talk much more about, you know, the different experiences I had with the different PAs, different care styles, maybe multiple patient stories. I definitely think Brian's completely right on this. I should have like hinted more at the other stuff and expanded much more on the stuff that actually answers the question. Why do you want to be a PA? What is it about medicine that you like? And then specifically, what is it about the PA role that you like? Because that's the whole prompt for the essay. So yeah, I definitely could have and should have done much better. And you're focused on patient care here, which is good too. You mentioned that you cannot wait to perform procedures and use the latest literature to render diagnoses and care plans. This is kind of out of place. I thought like, you don't really talk about how this PA rendered a diagnosis or a care plan. Like all you talked about was that he applied liquid stitches. Like you mentioned before that this was your most memorable experience, but I don't understand why. Like other than like, was this that moment that you had like that spark where you realized, hey, I want to become a PA when you are helping this PA apply the liquid stitches. Like that's the kind of stuff that I want to understand, right? But neither of those has anything to do with rendering diagnoses and care plans. So again, if we had more characters, we could go into more detail here and add it on and answer those questions that I have. I think what I was trying to do there is like communicate that I understand what the provider's role is. And I especially wanted to use like a buzzword, like what did that say? Like latest literature, you know, evidence-based medicine. I just wanted to use one of those buzzwords. So I'm glad I did that, but at the same time, yeah, it does seem out of place in the context of the whole paragraph. So yeah, I mean, you do want to do those things, but you want them to make sense in your essay. And I don't think it makes as much sense in the essay as I thought it did when I wrote it. So yeah, I definitely would have changed that or I would change that if I had the opportunity to now. Okay, so we're getting there. Striving to become a medical provider made sense because the job combines my love of problem solving with my fascination of the human body. Okay, this is pretty good. This is a good statement here. As I gained medical experience through the OJT in the Navy, my work as a certified nurse aide and my current job is an emergency room scribe. My desire to become provider morphed into a whole hearted yearning. So this is good. Keep in mind that like I know now we are in the last paragraph of your essay, and we still haven't really explained like why you want to become a PA, particularly. So I'll kind of explain that. So up until this point, we've really talked about how you want the humanity, right? That's like, I'm going to put a star there too. How you want the humanity in your work and how you want to care for people you want to career in medicine, but I don't know why you want to become a PA specifically, you mentioned that you want to perform procedures and use the latest literature to render diagnoses and care plans. This is good. You can also do that as a physician. But I want to I want to hear more about like why you want to become a physician assistant specifically like what is it about their role in healthcare other than what you've mentioned already, right? Like their relationship with their collaborating physician or their ability to change specialties. I would like to hear more about like other PAs that you shadowed or, you know, learned from different things like that. Let's see. During a particularly memorable shift I typed 58 year old female with a history of malignancy diabetes hypertension amputation of the left lower extremity presents to the ED with a complaint of dyspnea as the doctor spoke to the patient after the doctor left the patient's tired eyes looked directly into mine and she wheezed am I going to be okay? I've never wanted to learn wanted to know the answer to a question so badly before in my entire life. Okay, so so this is a patient experience that you had with a doctor as a scribe. But it doesn't tell me anything. And I'll explore I'll go into this right so like it doesn't tell me anything about like why you want to become a why you want to become a P I keep repeating myself. And that's the problem that I have is that like I keep going back to the same thing if my questions aren't answered. But so you're a scribe here you're following with a doctor and the patient wanted to know if she was going to be okay. So this is an emotional story, right? But at this point in your essay, like we should already know why you want to become a physician assistant, but we're just not there yet. Like we're still talking about patient experiences that don't really relate to you wanting to become a physician assistant specifically, right? We're still going to like now we're on an experience you had as a scribe. And you wanting to know like is she going to be okay? I never wanted to know the answer to so quit that question before in my entire life. I just really wanted to have the knowledge to take her complex medical history science and okay here we go. All right. Take her complex medical history science and symptoms laboratory and imaging studies into account and render an informed response. So this is kind of like kind of a strange phrase like I get what you're trying to say. But again, I don't know like you again you can do this as a doctor and with you talking about shadowing a doctor here and scribing for him and then wanting to do what the doctor does like when I go to medical school, you see what I'm saying? I also wanted the opportunity to explain to her younger self that a poor diet center lifestyle. Yes, I longed to help her and I knew that I had to become a PA to do so, but you didn't because you could have become a doctor and MP or multiple other careers where you could talk about her poor diet center lifestyle and family history diabetes. But you can do that as a nutritionist, right? Like you don't have to be a PA to do that kind of stuff. And then like you you just kind of squeeze in this this quote from Martin Luther King like without any other kind of like that's it, right? Without without any other kind of I guess you have this you have this little section down here, but without any other like reasoning behind it. Like I don't like quotes personally like I'll just go just flat out say I don't like quotes in the essay because you know there's only like five people that people quote and it's usually they're Donby, Martin Luther King, a president or like Maya Angelou and like one other person like there's there's only a handful of people that people quote and so I don't I don't like quotes like I think this is a good quote in general but not for your essay because we just kind of like stop here like your your your explanation just kind of stops so anyway. So in my attempt to not be basic I basically was super basic so the whole reason I didn't really go into things like why I want to be a PA because they can change specialties because I can get you know expertise and training and lots of different specialties and then expand my knowledge base and benefit patients that way. Things like that like I just kind of thought everybody says things like that because it's such a common reason you know why why do you want to be a PA is almost always lateral mobility being able to change your specialty and just the length of training you know not going through 10 years of med school and residency so I didn't want to say any of that because I didn't want to be basic but then sure enough I use a quote from one of the top five people that people always quote and I become basic anyway oh boy okay bring it home Brian. I humbly ask the admissions committee for a chance to take my final step in becoming a physician assistant I promise to dedicate my tireless work ethic attention to detail creativity and broad personal and professional experience to the pursuit of medical excellence I will always take pride in being a provider that my community can count on I will make your program proud. So I mean that's good to say typically in the conclusion I like to focus on like the strengths your strengths as an applicant and so you kind of talk about your like responsibility up here in this god this pigsty of a paragraph you talk about how you have leadership experience about how you suggest how you're able to like work under pressure and etc but like down here you're kind of like it kind of comes off like you're almost begging like I know you're not because based on your history in the military I know you're not that kind of person but you want to instead of saying like you have a tireless work ethic you have attention to detail you are creative you have a broad personal and professional experience like I want to hear about that in your essay and tell me about like what it is that's gonna make you what's unique about you regarding like a diverse class so you know PA programs they want all their classes to be diverse they want people from various different backgrounds with different experiences and like you know all this stuff like how what makes you diverse as an applicant and you also want to instill confidence like in your abilities as a future PA student so like tell me about your strong academic history you know like upward trend in GPA talk about your confidence and excelling as a student as opposed to like for you know other people out there you don't really do this as opposed to like how you'll be as a physician assistant because like the position that you're applying for you're not trying to convince them that you'll be a good PA one day they're not interested in that they're going to be interested in like are you going to be a good student and so those are the types of like characteristics you want to list in your essay are like you know why why as an admissions committee why should they take you as opposed to somebody else and like layout facts like you know why are you creative why do you have like proof to me that you have tireless work ethic you know things like that so just one thing I need to push back on there I definitely agree with most of Brian's edits all of Brian's edits actually up until now this right here however at the end I do have to kind of disagree at least to some extent and that's because like my upward trend in GPA the fact that I did a post back and did very very well in the post back but not so well in my undergrad like you could see all that for my transcripts and you can see that from my CASPA GPA and you know you could just see that so I didn't really feel the need to mention it again and then things that make me diverse think the things that make me different from every other applicant I mean first off just the military and just the jobs that I held and those that were explained in my CASPA but also the things that I said in that paragraph that was crossed out you know the things that I've done some of those things that I was really proud of and that were the most difficult and that did show that tireless work ethic I think that that's where I did that so I understand why we crossed out the essay or why we crossed out that paragraph but then at the end if you do want proof of me you know having tireless work ethic being super committed being you know the qualities that I described I actually described them in that paragraph so I guess what could have been done better is I could have showed how I was that way in medical jobs maybe and then maybe related that more to why I want to be a PA but I do feel like I described a lot of those things in the in the paragraph that we crossed out so let's see what he says at the end here overall I mean this is a god I mean other than this terrible this terrible markup of a paragraph and I'm sorry it's okay I understand I think overall like your essay is is pretty good I need some work but you know what like I got you in the school no complaints here so again hopefully like I said at the beginning I mean hopefully your audience kind of gained something from this live edit we'll call it of your essay but but yeah if you have any questions or if anybody else has any questions you guys can look me up it's mypresource.com we've got a ton of resources on our website about writing your personal statements and everything and I would be happy to help any way that I can thanks Boris all right so yeah I'm gonna link mypresource in the info for this video I'm also gonna put a card up above or there wherever it goes so yeah if you guys like how Brian edited my essay if you think that he knows what he's doing which I really think he does definitely reach out to him for help if you still by any chance think I know what I'm doing you know reach out to me I'm happy to edit essays just now that I'm in the second year and I'm definitely really busy with rotations I don't take on more than maybe one per week so unfortunately there is a waiting list of like two to three weeks on average but I'm still very happy to help in any way that I can as well so yeah I really hope you guys got a lot out of this you know people on my channel have been hearing me give my advice for writing essays and things like that so it's really good to get a fresh perspective and a much more experienced perspective like someone from Brian like from someone like Brian from IPA resource and I'll see if I can do some more of these if you guys think they're important you know I'll see if another professional essay editing service can edit mine live like this and maybe see if they agree with Brian see if they disagree on some things see if I agree with them it would just be really good to see as the diverse range of opinions as possible because you know you can take the average of them and do what works best for you you know so anyway if you can comment below just let me know what you guys think did this really help was this good do you want to see more of this and like I said please reach out to Brian through my PA resource reach out to me through boristhepia.com uh yeah all of us would be very happy to help get you into PA school okay so I hope you enjoyed that and we'll see you in the next one