As it comes time to write personal for scholarship and graduate opportunities, I struggle to find the right words. The reason why so many autobiographies are written in the third person by the author is because it’s difficult to really sell oneself as being intelligent, likeable, sociable, whatever, without totally sounding like a narcissistic son of a bitch. By turning the ‘I’ to a ‘he’, the author is able to considerably soften the lies he or she is about to unleash on the reader.

Now nothing would please me more than to hand in a blank page for my personal statement except for the the phrase printed at the top in 12 point Arial font:

But if I know anything about proper manners and modesty — and boy do I ever — the right thing to do would be to go with:

Because the latter is so much less presumptuous. And more polite too.