While personal statements aren’t impersonal, you don’t quite have much creative control over how you present yourself. I’m working on mine for a graduate assistantship and am cringing at what I have written on this page. This plain, alphabetic text full, black and white, standard doc page. I suppose it’s not bad, because it is what I’ve done and what I want to do, but it’s bland. 

Why is it that straying from the norm only seems acceptable within an art curriculum? I don’t want to do anything too wild, like send in a hand sewn book of scans of my face with text composed of dry spaghetti, but something different would be nice. Especially considering my academic/pedagogical interests in the teaching of writing as pushing beyond this.

A Cornell box would do nicely, I think. Associations of jotted teaching aspirations and explanations of intent with objects that represent me personally. I would live up to these things. I could return to these things and add to them. re-arrange them. Make them my teaching fo writing philosophy and credentials.

Cornell box image from Creativity Fuse