Beginning your Application

Once you finish up your research and familiarise with the application process, it is time to begin the application.

In this section, we will cover 4 important segments on writing your application.

1. Laying down the groundwork before you begin

2. Thinking through what you will be writing

3. Writing your shitty first draft

4. Reviewing your application

You will first need to finish up some basic prep before you begin to write the responses. As you start writing, you will need to spend some time thinking about yourself, your goals and how this opportunity really fits in your story. This part may be the most difficult or uncertain but it is going to be the most rewarding one too.

As you begin to write, you may feel stuck, lost or confused. You may feel overwhelmed with all that you wish to write in but then somehow not flowing out. In some cases, it could be the opposite too. You may want to write about everything you’ve done but wouldn’t know how to fit it all in.

A part of making progress comes from accepting that you might feel uncomfortable and that whatever you write in your first draft is going to be messy and might even be shitty. This is where you allow yourself to make mistakes and write a shitty first draft of your application, just to get all the content in your head out there.

What you must also realise is that your final application may look nothing like your shitty first draft (SFD). Your SFD is your version 0. Once you wrap this up, you will need to do a series of reviews - you will review yourself, your friends, mentors or recommenders may also review your application.

After each review, you will iterate your application based on the feedback you receive to create version 1, 2, 3… and finally your final draft.

Further in this segment, we shall delve deeper into each of these, understand why they are necessary and how they can really impact your application.Markdown 1964 bytes 342 words 38 lines Ln 3, Col 2HTML 1553 characters 338 words 12 paragraphs