August 7, 2020

Okay. I’m only going to say this once.. Remember Zadie Smith talking about how style is not a question of technique or flourishes but is the imprint of who you are in the world, the manner of your being?

So: If you love something enough — mathematics, or sculpting wood, or marine biology, or dance, or whatever it is you love, and you want to do that something with all your heart, and have been working to make yourself good at it — then that life which you are living, and the person who you are (and are becoming each day) is the person that you cannot help being.

Because this thing that you love, if you love it enough, naturally permeates everything that you do, you cannot help but see the world through what and how you think about it, because in a way, you cannot be anything else, it is part of your manner of being in this world.

So it is meaningless to ask me how you should “present your autobiography” to the grad school committee, because if you have made this thing your life’s work then whatever you write about yourself is not in a sense separate from what that thing you love is, the autobiography of yourself is the autobiography of that love and that work.

And if it is separable from who you are then do not go to grad school because you don’t love it enough. That’s all there is to be said about autobiographical writing for graduate school. Really.

/end rant (because this time of year people keep asking me to read their personal statements and applications.)

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