How did you find your "hook?"

[harrisonfjord]

I have been desperately trying to come up with a hook or attention grabbing introduction for my essay, but I am really struggling. I have substantial research experience and teaching assistant experience, but I am struggling with the intro and conclusion of my SOP. I don't want to use a quote because almost every personal statement book/article I have read strongly suggests against using a quote or some other gimmicky kind of introduction. Any tips? I have the meat of my essay but I am struggling to finish it and make it sound cohesive without a strong introduction.

Edited May 10, 2014 by harrisonfjord

[Academicat]

I thought I needed some sort of catchy hook as well, based on the books and articles I'd read about personal statements. I changed my mind when I talked to colleagues who had gotten into good programs and read their personal statements. I realized that the kind of hook I was trying to write would sound cheesy compared to what they were writing and that, for my field, a more direct opening was the norm. You might want to take a look at the personal statements of some friends who are a few years ahead of you before banging your head against a wall trying to come up with a non-hokey sounding hook. If nothing else, start with a strong statement that showcases your awesomeness as an applicant rather than a quote that is only tangentially related to your suitability for the program.

 

Here's what I ended up coming up with for an introduction after many, many revisions. It's a strong, direct statement that showcases my strengths as an applicant. Keep in mind, this is what personal statements in my field look like, but psychology may be different:

 

I’ve been immersed in writing centers for over a decade – for most of my academic and professional careers – as a writer, a director, and most recently, as the coordinator of several writing centers across three campuses. This body of experience reinforces my belief in the mission of writing centers – that learning takes place collaboratively and that all writers need readers. As a natural extension of my work, my research interests include the intersection of writing centers and multiliteracies – specifically, how writing centers are evolving both in structure and in practice to support multimodal composers, in many cases, organically shifting from a space of revision to a space of production, and to a studio model that encourages increased group collaboration alongside the traditional one-on-one approach.  In light of an increasingingly multiliterate culture, my goal is to investigate, and potentially answer the question of what the “new normal” of writing center studies is going to look like in face of the technology revolution – we are already seeing whispers of the changes that are yet to come.

 

Hope this helps!

[Lisa44201]

Here's mine: During the course of my time as a student of psychology, I have developed a profound interest in the ontological struggle that lies in defining a construct, and the resulting challenges in measuring that construct. Operational definitions are one of the elementary cornerstones of psychological research; and yet, there is still a great amount of uncertainty in the psychology field regarding the very nature of certain constructs. 

 

Personally I think catchy hooks are over-rated; perhaps re-frame it in terms of a strong introduction, rather than an attempt to be catchy.

[toasterazzi]

I had a few different versions of my SOP, and I get where people are coming from with the quote thing, but I did actually successfully (I think lol) use a quote in my introduction. My quote wasn't like motivational or anything like that though. It was specifically tied to my research interests, which I think is possibly reasonable.

[danieleWrites]

"Hooks" are personal, so you find your hook in your personal story. Everyone has a story about how much the love to read, and how Moby Dick changed their lives, so they want to be a literature professor now. Not a good hook cause it's cliche. Probably true (at least for literature majors with an unhealthy obsession with Moby Dick), but still banal.

I'd suggest doing some free writing. We call it writing as discovery sometimes. Just sit down and write or type anything that comes to mind about why you're into the field, into your research, into the possible career you're looking at, into school, into the subject you're most into (as in, not I love math because it's better than a Xanax for my OCD, but rather I love linear algebra because Susskind used it to turn the world on its ear in his attic), anything that comes to mind at all. Even if it's I don't really know why I'm doing this. Help!!!

Call it a personal inventory.

Once you've got some ideas to work with, then it's a matter of figuring out what question to answer. I went with the "why is graduate school right for me?" Moby Dick may have [not] changed my life, but it doesn't explain why I can't get a BA in literature and trot off to work in the field while reading Moby Dick every day. The hook should answer the same question that your SOP answers: why should you (you lovely adcomm folks) pick me to offer admission and funding to? You're a huge risk in time, reputation, and money, even if you pay for it yourself. We all are. Your hook is a good place to explain your personal investment in the process, aside from the exact same investment everyone else in every discipline has made to get to the grad school point (time and money and it's-always-been-my-dream).

I would also suggest that you look over the research that you've done on the faculty in each program and consider what the program seems to be interested in. For example, a faded cliche in sociology is that Harvard is a macro-theory school and Chicago is a micro-theory school. It's true, to an extent, since these schools have very serious history as foundational schools in American sociology. I would not wax poetic about my love of Talcott Parsons (he's my creative muse and I hate him for it) to the Chicago school because the odds are that the people in Chicago would be more interested in my BFF feelings for Herbert Blumer. Of course, I wouldn't apply to the Chicago school to begin with because I wouldn't fit so much, but there's the example for you.

Disclaimer: I'm a rhetoric-oriented person who has never been on an adcomm and can't begin to anticipate what the adcomms you're looking at are looking for.

[harrisonfjord]

Academicat, thank you so much! You definitely made me feel so much better! I have been freaking out, but I am going to take your advice and read some of my friends' SOPs to get a feel for what the department wants. Thank you for sharing yours with me as well. 

 

Lisa44201, thank you as well. I've just read some stories about adcomms that just throw your SOP at the bottom of the pile if it doesn't pique their interest right away, so I realize that a cheesy hook isn't the way to go. Thanks for sharing your opening statement with me! I appreciate it.

 

I had a few different versions of my SOP, and I get where people are coming from with the quote thing, but I did actually successfully (I think lol) use a quote in my introduction. My quote wasn't like motivational or anything like that though. It was specifically tied to my research interests, which I think is possibly reasonable.

 

Toasterazzi, that's what I want thinking about doing. I found a great quote that would tie in my SOP extremely well, but I didn't want to use it if it is frowned upon. It isn't motivational or inspirational. It's a quote by a famous researcher regarding the field of research I would like to pursue. Good to know it is still ok to use.

[btsulliv]

Just my two cents, employing a quote in your SOP need not always come off as cheesy or amateur. The problem is that most people attempt to gain credibility by the renown or fame of the person being quoted, and fail to unambiguously link their own thinking and motivation for pursuing a graduate degree to the actual ideas contained within the quote itself. If the concepts contained within the quote are in no way germane to the burden of your SOP, then why should the adcom care about who you are quoting? The philosopher and author A.C. Grayling was so cognizant of this fact that in one of his collections of pithy maxims and aphorisms (The Good Book) he deliberately chose NOT include the names of the original authors, just so that the ideas can stand or fall on their own, independent of their provenance.

Edited August 31, 2014 by btsulliv

[jayem]

Does anyone think there is some unsaid "limit" to how long the hook should be?

[lyrehc]

My entire SoP was 1 page.  Depending on length I'd say keeping the hook to 10% or less of your total statement.

[Academicat]

Does anyone think there is some unsaid "limit" to how long the hook should be?

 

I don't know if there's a concrete "limit," but when the hook stops being a hook and starts being a distraction/spacehog, it's too long.