“My name is Oscar Romano. I was born and raised in Cliffside Park, NJ. I was Valedictorian and graduated from Harvard University.” This personal narrative wouldn’t be enough to get people bought into me.
Personal Narrative Mishaps
What does that tell you? It’s just biographical data, easily forgotten and open to interpretation. More than anything, you might assume a number of things. You might think I’m a genius, that I went to a top private or public school, that my parents are wealthy, or that my family is full of college graduates.
What if I told you all those assumptions would all be incorrect? In actuality, my parents are members of the working class and any intelligence I have is due to hard work more than any innate ability I may have. There were also many times in college when I doubted my place there, and thought my acceptance was a mistake.
There’s no way anybody would have been able to glean that information from my original “bio,” but what about this next one?
Personal Narrative Exemplar
“My name is Oscar Romano and I believe in the value of hard work. My parents were both immigrants from El Salvador and I grew up speaking Spanish as my first language. I started out in ESL programs for the first few years of school in Cliffside Park, NJ and had to work hard to keep up with my classmates. It all paid off when it was time to apply college, as I had solid grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities.
Unfortunately, nobody in my family had ever navigated the college application process and there weren’t too many resources available in my high school. In the end, it was a childhood friend who saved me. He went to a private high school and offered to give me some intensive college application support. If it wasn’t for him, I definitely wouldn’t have gotten into Harvard University.
The challenges weren’t over, however, as I really struggled during my first two years of college. I realized that I wasn’t as prepared as many of peers who attended some of the most prestigious private and public high schools in the country. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, but that I didn’t know how. It took a lot of extra work, but I was able to turn things around for my last two years. Not only did I become the first person in my family to go to college, but the first person in my family to graduate from college as well.”
Impact of the Right Approach
I’m sure you got a much better sense of who I am as a person in the second “bio.” That’s what happens when you leave out the story; you lose control of your narrative, of who you are in the eyes of others. I’m not telling you to create a perfect image of who you are. To the contrary, it’s important to be authentic when talking about yourself. The idea is to provide others with the information they need to know who you are.
Questions to Craft Your Personal Narrative
Here are some questions you can use to create your personal narrative:
- What moments in your past have been instrumental to your development?
- What values do you want others to hear through your story?
- Which stories reflect who you are as a person?
- What would you like others to know about you?
Next time you have an opportunity to tell somebody about you, don’t forget the context. This is what allows others to get a little closer to getting to know the real you. Each story told will add another piece to the puzzle that is YOU.
(The image at the top is of my father and I at my college graduation.)
