First paragraph help please

[criscamino]

Getting utterly sick and tired of the rejigging of my SOP and given that's it's nearly 3am here and I'm hopped up on caffeine I've come up with an entirely new first paragraph that is rather more jazzy (and probably remarkably more stupid) than the old one. Thoughts please!

My fascination with the United States has very deep, grape-flavoured roots. When I was four, my uncle moved to Austin, Texas, to get married and from then on my brothers and I periodically received gift packages from him and his in-laws. While the many and varied knick-knacks entertained us and turned our friends green with envy, one particular thing caused utter befuddlement – the peculiar American penchant for grape-flavoured confectionery. Nearly twenty years later, that fascination remains undimmed and follows surprisingly similar lines. The sweetie-obsessed pre-teen may have blossomed into a twenty-something with a love of politics and history, but my essential interest – the often-bewildering differences between two seemingly similar nations – remains.

(It then goes into my interest in late twentieth century US history, especially the big social change of the sixties and the rise of conservatism)

Please help. I think my brain might actually be broken

[fuzzylogician]

Though in general I am not a fan of hook openings, I think this one is pretty good.

You can probably tweak this a bit later on; two things that I found disturbing were:

- the often-bewildering differences between two seemingly similar nations -- The US and which other nation??

- The sweetie-obsessed pre-teen may have blossomed into a twenty-something with a love of politics and history -- twenty-something year-old? Also, how is a four-yr-old pre-teen?

If you have space issues, as always, I think the fluff should go first. But otherwise, I actually like this.

Of course, I know nothing about how History SOPs usually look, but I'm guessing that this is unusual enough to catch someone's attention.

Just my $0.02.

[criscamino]

Though in general I am not a fan of hook openings, I think this one is pretty good.

You can probably tweak this a bit later on; two things that I found disturbing were:

- the often-bewildering differences between two seemingly similar nations -- The US and which other nation??

- The sweetie-obsessed pre-teen may have blossomed into a twenty-something with a love of politics and history -- twenty-something year-old? Also, how is a four-yr-old pre-teen?

If you have space issues, as always, I think the fluff should go first. But otherwise, I actually like this.

Of course, I know nothing about how History SOPs usually look, but I'm guessing that this is unusual enough to catch someone's attention.

Just my $0.02.

My apologies. I'm English, so that is the point of comparison. I don't like pre-teen but i was trying to think of a word that covers the period up to about 10-to-12 yrs old. Also I would definitely use twenty-something as opposed to twenty-something-yr-old, but that may be a difference in style between my kind of english and yours.

I was worried this was just too stupid to be worth keeping, but I actually kind of like it now. I feel like (although I'd love to get in this year) that my current applications are more of a dry run for next year than anything else (by which time I'll have more research experience and language skills) so I may as well go for this and see what happens.

Edit: Oh, and thank you very much. Where are my manners?

Edited December 14, 2010 by criscamino

[GK Chesterton]

Getting utterly sick and tired of the rejigging of my SOP and given that's it's nearly 3am here and I'm hopped up on caffeine I've come up with an entirely new first paragraph that is rather more jazzy (and probably remarkably more stupid) than the old one. Thoughts please!

My fascination with the United States has very deep, grape-flavoured roots. When I was four, my uncle moved to Austin, Texas, to get married and from then on my brothers and I periodically received gift packages from him and his in-laws. While the many and varied knick-knacks entertained us and turned our friends green with envy, one particular thing caused utter befuddlement – the peculiar American penchant for grape-flavoured confectionery. Nearly twenty years later, that fascination remains undimmed and follows surprisingly similar lines. The sweetie-obsessed pre-teen may have blossomed into a twenty-something with a love of politics and history, but my essential interest – the often-bewildering differences between two seemingly similar nations – remains.

(It then goes into my interest in late twentieth century US history, especially the big social change of the sixties and the rise of conservatism)

Please help. I think my brain might actually be broken

I think I'm missing an important part. What is the nature of the connection between grape-flavoured candies and the United States? If you were trying to study viticulture or something this might make more sense, but this kind of leaves me scratching my head. It's like if I really wanted to study Chaucer and Milton and I told the committee I fell in love with England when I first ate bangers and mash. Non-sequitur.

[GK Chesterton]

Getting utterly sick and tired of the rejigging of my SOP and given that's it's nearly 3am here and I'm hopped up on caffeine I've come up with an entirely new first paragraph that is rather more jazzy (and probably remarkably more stupid) than the old one. Thoughts please!

My fascination with the United States has very deep, grape-flavoured roots. When I was four, my uncle moved to Austin, Texas, to get married and from then on my brothers and I periodically received gift packages from him and his in-laws. While the many and varied knick-knacks entertained us and turned our friends green with envy, one particular thing caused utter befuddlement – the peculiar American penchant for grape-flavoured confectionery. Nearly twenty years later, that fascination remains undimmed and follows surprisingly similar lines. The sweetie-obsessed pre-teen may have blossomed into a twenty-something with a love of politics and history, but my essential interest – the often-bewildering differences between two seemingly similar nations – remains.

(It then goes into my interest in late twentieth century US history, especially the big social change of the sixties and the rise of conservatism)

Please help. I think my brain might actually be broken

I think I'm missing an important part. What is the nature of the connection between grape-flavoured candies and the United States? If you were trying to study viticulture or something this might make more sense, but this kind of leaves me scratching my head. It's like if I really wanted to study Chaucer and Milton and I told the committee I fell in love with England when I first ate bangers and mash. Non-sequitur.

[criscamino]

I think I'm missing an important part. What is the nature of the connection between grape-flavoured candies and the United States? If you were trying to study viticulture or something this might make more sense, but this kind of leaves me scratching my head. It's like if I really wanted to study Chaucer and Milton and I told the committee I fell in love with England when I first ate bangers and mash. Non-sequitur.

Except the issue is not the eating of the candy but the exploration of quite striking differences between superficially similar countries, this being the sort of difference that engaged me back then. I don't know if I can be bothered to try and explain it because I'm probably going with a more sober, less caffeine-brain-frazzle-inspired angle

[GK Chesterton]

Except the issue is not the eating of the candy but the exploration of quite striking differences between superficially similar countries, this being the sort of difference that engaged me back then. I don't know if I can be bothered to try and explain it because I'm probably going with a more sober, less caffeine-brain-frazzle-inspired angle

I suppose this is slightly more logical, but you've basically just made a strictly mechanical metaphor: one could just as easily substitute grape flavor for strawberry flavor or swap the whole thing out for an anecdote about the pronunciation of the word aluminum. There is no necessary link between the content of the metaphor and your statement that you draw from it. When the connection is that tenuous, just say what you want to say (although I'm not convinced that the United States and Great Britain are at all superficially similar countries, either politically or historically - separation between executive and legislative, monarchy, geopolitics, size, wealth, class history, frontiers, etc.)

I don't think the idea is very good unless you can develop it a lot farther.

Edited December 16, 2010 by GK Chesterton