emerald91

My apologies for the length and many questions! So I just submitted my statement of purpose this week. I had been working on it for a few months (from early fall to a few days ago). I was VERY hesitant to let anyone read it, for fear of being judged and having too many opinions cloud my head. I had 3 people read and all 3 liked it very much, said it flowed well(2 were friends of over a decade, one of those friends just applied to a grad program at an ivy league, the 3rd person is a co-worker who has just started grad school, I say this just to point out that 2 of 3 have experience with SOPs and 2 know me well, so I trust all of their opinions). I had asked a 4th friend but he was taking a while to get back to me, the deadline was days away and I was over analyzing everything so I decided to just let go and breathe and submit. The next day after submitting, the 4th person tells me that there was room for improvement with my quality of writing, and that they took a year to write their SOP, and had several people edit it (fyi this person recently finished a masters). I'm personally not a big fan of having people edit it (i just prefer feedback/suggestion), as I believe it really needs to be your voice. His comment about my writing quality was especially shocking as I consider myself a very strong writer (I could improve on punctuation/grammar but my content and ability to analyze are strong). I've had teacher's my entire life describe me as an excellent writer, I was in an intensive writing program all years of high school and my undergrad major very centered around writing. Not to mention I specifically mentioned my writing skills in the SOP essay (that would be so awkward if my writing was actually not excellent in this paper). Now I've reread my paper, and kinda think it looks like shit and doesn't flow well. I'm the queen of over-thinking and I know it was just one person's opinion, but it still makes me nervous. Also my ego was just a little burned (lol). So, I have a few questions...First, should I have started writing much earlier (I just think its insane to spend more than a few months on a 2-3 page paper)? Should someone or a few people have edited it (should I have gotten more than 4 opinions)? Has anyone thought they submitted a crappy SOP or personal statement, but still ended up getting accepted to your program? Also, did you have differing/opposite opinions from the people who read your paper? Has anyone ever submitted without having anyone read?! Do you think it was a bad idea to not have someone working in academia read it? Am I just completely over-thinking? Thanks!