Review

Your shitty first draft is just an overflow of thoughts. That is your raw material. Now you need to begin to carve out the specifics of your responses from this raw material. And the single-most powerful tool that is going to help you here is Reviewing your application.

Often times, when we are extremely focussed on a particular topic, our thinking gets pointed and we tend to miss out on a lot of things. A review draws our attention to these things we missed to notice. Involving others who know you well in reviewing your application can also bring to light different perspectives about the experiences you have had. You may never have thought about your own experiences in the angles that they perceived it, which is exactly why widening your understanding based on feedback is important.

Once you finish your SFD, you may first do a self-review and iterate to version 1. Once you get to a version of your application that you are comfortable with sharing, you may reach out to your peers and well-wishers in helping your review your application.

Let’s talk about these in detail: