Hello everyone and thank you for downloading this episode of the EM Clerkship podcast. My name is Maddie Watts and I'm a graduating fourth year medical student going into emergency medicine.

This is the application series where we will be covering everything you need to know about applying and interviewing for emergency medicine residency. If you haven't checked out our

first episode covering the five do's and don'ts of the personal statement, I recommend you give

that a listen first. So what are we going to talk about today? The hardest part of writing my own

personal statement was not figuring out the general structure or what to do

and not to do. Although it helped to do some research on that subject so I could avoid any major

pitfalls, I still found myself in June staring at a blank word document thinking, okay, so now what?

If you found yourself in this position, then this episode is for you.

Today's episode is going to get a little bit more specific and help you to brainstorm topics to

write about in your personal statement. The trick is not to overthink it. As I said in the

previous episode, the personal statement is as simple as number one, making it personal, and number two, making a statement.

So I'm going to give you three brainstorming questions to consider for each of those aims.

We'll also talk briefly at the end about who you should have look over your personal statement

once you've completed your rough draft.

So let's get started with making it personal.

I want you to get out a pen and paper or your apple pencil or your keyboard or whatever you may use for note-taking

and write down these three questions.

Number one, what makes me unique?

Number two, what are some specific experiences I've had in my life

that have either made me want to do emergency medicine

or given me the skills that will prepare me well for emergency medicine training?

Number three, if a family member or friend were to describe me to a stranger, what would they

...