My first draft of my UCAS personal statement to get into university was, charitably, very bad. I steeped the piece in so much irony it was frustrating to read, it was written in third person and generally showed a contempt for the idea of the personal statement (especially the idea that you could even write one that was both personal and stuck to the myriad of rules required).

Why I chose to do that was, potentially, unclear to those who read it who often thought I just wasn’t taking the thing seriously (I wasn’t, but that’s beside the point). What I struggled with was the idea that I would have to sell myself. The third person was a way of writing about myself without writing about myself, the fact that I included a list of negatives a way of me managing my own conflicted thoughts about myself.

It’s a known fact I cannot take a compliment to save my life, and am generally uncomfortable whenever anyone does so, so if I have to essentially write out a list of compliments to myself in order to sell myself to a potential employer or university… it’s just not something I’m great at.

Hell, I’m a bad salesman in general, I sound incredibly unconvincing even when what I’m selling is pretty good. I live in, frankly, a damn good flat for a student… was I able to sell that to potential flatmates? Hell no.

You know what else I can’t do? Unsolicited emails. I am insanely uncomfortable with just emailing someone I very much don’t know and just sending them my (awful) CV.

Now, bearing in mind that I don’t really have any contacts in Northern Ireland (hell, I don’t have any contacts back home), would you believe that I struggled to find a placement this semester, and ended up doing my placement with the university as part of the SARC Video team?

So in order to fully explain how that happened let’s use Borton’s mode of reflection (as outlined in Beginning Reflective Practice (Jasper)) and work out how I can improve at not selling myself short via my own self-hatred.

Borton’s process starts with a ‘What Happened’ type of question (Jasper 99), so: what happened? Well, not much. I stalled, caught in a loop of not knowing what to do and not wanting to make any proactive measures to actually do anything. It wasn’t until a friend made a series of Facebook posts on my behalf that I even had an opportunity, and even then I still had to email them.

I will say, once I had emailed and they emailed back, the opportunity was promising, a 10 or so day long shoot on an indie film where I had the opportunity to do some rushes editing. Great! However, because the shoot was to take place in the last week or so of September (the same time Uni would start back up), because the shoot was taking place down south, and because the film didn’t have the budget for accommodation or transport (neither did I), it wasn’t really feasible unfortunately.

So, back to square one, and still with nothing by the time the deadline rolled around, I got a spot helping out with the SARC video team at Queen’s.

‘So What?’ is the next of Borton’s questions (Jasper 100). So… what caused this stalling?

Well, as previously stated I go into a complete mental block when I have to sell myself or do anything unsolicited, not that I have anything to lose, the worst thing would be that they wouldn’t email back, but that doesn’t matter to good ol’ Tom’s brain.

But it wasn’t just that that stopped me, no, part of it was my standards being too high. I didn’t want to work for an ad firm or work in factual (I’ve done enough journalism at this point in my time in Broadcast Production to know that I can’t stand it), but didn’t really know where to properly look for jobs in the fields I wanted to work in. The places I was looking were either barren or the jobs available weren’t suitable, and so I struggled.

Besides all of that, I lost track of time. Summer went by quickly and I didn’t properly start looking until it was too late. Jobs in broadcast or film often have a long lead time on them, and I wasn’t going to be able to find and be accepted into something before the deadline passed. (That’s completely ignoring the fact that I wasn’t about to be accepted into anywhere to begin with because, as previously stated, my CV is not good.)

And finally: ‘Now What?’ (Jasper 100). What do I do to not fail at what is a fairly simple task next time?

Well… start sooner for one. Reach out more, try and find people to help you, if I don’t have contacts, people I know probably do, that would help. Certainly I have to try and get better at doing things myself, had my friend not made that Facebook post I wouldn’t have even had that one opportunity.

But what about the selling myself part? It’s something I’m going to have to get good at if I even want to get anywhere in life, but how do I do that? Therapy is probably a good option there, try and work through whatever mental block prevents me from accepting that maybe I have things to compliment about myself. Maybe it’s just taking time to work on my CV’s and personal statements and, even if I can’t think of much to sell myself with, at least sell the stuff that I can think of in a way that is buyable.

But hey, let’s see if I get to that point any time soon, until that point I’ll just be in the same cycle of frustrated self-loathing and self-pity.

Works Cited

Jasper, Melanie. “Borton’s Developmental Framework.” Beginning Reflective Practice. Second Edition. Cengage Learning, 2013 . 99-104.