How to find personal stories for your application

Anecdotes are super important, both in your application (especially in the personal statement) and during the interview. When appropriately used, anecdotes:

1. Provide a personal flourish to make you stand out from other applicants
2. Make the activity or experience you're describing a lot easier to imagine
3. Show, instead of tell, the interviewer about your amazing personal qualities.

It can be pretty tough to remember these stories while you're crafting your application, though. To make this process loads easier, I started an anecdote tracker.

It was an incredibly simple exercise. I kept a page on my notes app where I listed the activities I was involved in, and added a couple bullet points to remind me of major milestones, tiny victories, and everything in between. It looked something like this:

JUDO:

09/14/2017: Awarded my brown belt. One step to go to black now!

11/10/2017: First tournament as a brown belt. 3 wins, 2 losses. Finished w/ bronze. Get 'em next time.

01/17/2018: Practiced kata for 3 months as Pat's training partner for his black belt exam. He passed today.

When I was looking for an anecdote to illustrate a point, or when I had to answer one of those pesky "tell me about a time when..." type questions, referencing this simple anecdote tracker made things loads easier. This exercise in mini-journalling was also really fun to remember and look back on past experiences that I'd forgotten.

Hope you find this helpful! As always, I'd love to hear from you - if there's anything you'd like to hear about next, leave a comment or send me a message on IG!