Write About Yourself: Important Rules to Follow

A man cannot live in isolation from the world around him; he is an integral part of society, which draws its boundaries, lives according to specific rules, laws, and norms. Based on this, certain paradigms are formed: what is good and what is bad; what is normal behavior and what is abnormal behavior. In everyday life, we constantly interact with different people, communicate with friends, colleagues, comrades, any interaction begins with an acquaintance, and further communication depends on how well it succeeds. Therefore, the ability to write about yourself is highly valued today.

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Each person should be able to advertise himself, write about his achievements and strengths. The main purpose of such writing is to build the interaction in such a way as to achieve the desired result (for example, enter college or university, get a job).

The basic principles of writing usually include the following:

• Positivity – you need to write only positively about yourself, name your strengths. No advertising characterizes the product from the worst side;
• Individuality – it is important to talk about your features, advantages over competitors;
• Concreteness – the story should be clear; there no need to use unnecessary details and comments;
• Brevity – the presentation should not be stretched, so you can lose the attention of the reader, the story should not exceed 2-4 minutes;
• Activity – it is necessary to use verbs that reflect your energy (for example, know, can, did, participated, borrowed, received, etc.);
• Honesty is one of the important principles. Everything secret always becomes clear, so it is important to avoid false information.

General Peculiarities of Writing 

Despite their documentary nature, autobiographical texts are a type of specifically constructed text subjected to general rules. The main feature of these texts is that they are written in the first person; in them, the author demonstrates his technique of language use, creates his own verbal self-portrait. The purpose of any autobiographical writing– to convey to the reader the most vivid impressions of life, allowing as few inaccuracies as possible. The author creates only a model of an object that already exists in nature, reflects reality. This is not only a verbal construction but also a social phenomenon. It includes the text in the essence of human relations.

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Such writing occurs when the author feels the need to artistically objectify himself and his life and knows how to do it. There are many reasons to write such a text: to describe events, facts that happened in life; explain the reasons for certain actions; reconsider own life and find out why it turned out that way; declare own participation in certain events. In other words, autobiographical writing is associated with self-knowledge. This is the truest of the verbal genres.

The reader’s interest in such texts is caused by the need to see a beautiful and rich human personality. The more interesting and deeper a person is, the more interesting is the description of his life, in which he appears not as a passive recorder of events but as an action figure, a man of his time. Everything depicted is evaluated from the point of view of the author, and he has the right to interpret events in his own way. The autobiographical ‘I’ is actually a textual duplicate of a real person, as well as a textual construction that speaks for itself.

Such text can be a significant historical form of self-expression – a person chooses from his life those crumbs of experience that most vividly describe the past. Personality reflects own time. Writing about yourself is a hybrid of history and text. Often it is not just a description of one life but also a biography of a generation. And although historians are skeptical of using autobiographical material as a source of information about epoch and age, believing that the description of life is too subjective, for a linguist, it is interesting in terms of the linguistic personality of the author, his idiosyncrasy, concepts, and ideas that make up his concept sphere, goals, motives, intentions, attitudes that express communicative and activity needs, strategies and tactics of speech behavior.

The form of representation of autobiographical writing is monologue texts in the conditions of indirect, delayed communication. Indirect – because communicators do not communicate directly, communication is delayed in the time of perception of the message compared to the time of its creation. The participants of communication are the author and the reader. Behind each autobiographical text is a linguistic personality – its creator. Each such text is determined by the individuality of its author and, thus, needs comprehension and description in the personal aspect. The text about yourself is a specific form of the author’s existence in the word.

Linguistic studies of life descriptions can be conducted from the standpoint of the author – their subject, the producer of the text, their object – the picture of the world modeled in the text, and the one who perceives the text (recipient, reader). A comprehensive description of the language personality as the creator of the autobiographical text allows to solve two problems: synthesis of the image of a specific language personality – construction of its characteristic system of advantages, determination of language use strategies; manifestation of language patterns – whether the language personality, constructing his self-portrait, can contribute to the creation of a generalized image of the native speaker as an object of verbal influence.

How to Write Good Text about Yourself?

To write a good text, you need to define its purpose and decide who will read it, to whom it will be addressed:

• To a specific person (for example, when applying for a job);
• To a group of people (for example, at the first meeting with the team);
• To Internet users (to create the necessary image), etc.

The writing, no matter how great it may seem to the author and no matter how skillfully it is composed, must necessarily be audience-oriented and fully correspond to the situation – otherwise, all efforts will be wasted.

Plan of The Text About Yourself During Employment

The outline below is based on the example of a job interview, but it can be applied to other situations as well:

1. Introduce yourself (full name);
2. Be kind;
3. Tell about your experience and skills (where and when you were born, place of work/study, hobbies, and interests);
4. Tell about your successes and achievements (success in school, work, sports, hobbies, etc.);
5. Tell about your goals and aspirations;
6. Explain why you offer your skills and time (why you want to work in this particular company, study at this particular institute, cooperate with this particular person, etc.);
7. Tell about the benefits of working with you (what you can give, why you are unique, etc.);
8. Express your gratitude for the attention.

Plan of The Text About Yourself for Graduates

Below is an outline that students and graduates can use:

1. Full name, faculty, specialty, course;
2. Achievements (indicate if they are of interest);
3. Participation in olympiads, contests, competitions (indicate only those events or works that are related to education);
4. Practice, work experience (indicate the type and place of practice; indicate the place of work and position);
5. Participation in social work (social activities within the university, excluding studies);
6. Additional education (courses);
7. Knowledge of foreign languages ​​(indicate language and level of proficiency);
8. Computer skills (list the computer programs that you own);
9. Hobbies;
10. Plans to continue the education (indicate what kind of education you plan to receive after graduation);
11. Employment plans (you can indicate the type and field of activity in which you would like to work or the name of the positions that interest you);
12. Life credo (the motto that you always follow).

Errors in Writing Text about Yourself

Within the framework of this article, it seems appropriate to give a list of the most typical mistakes made when writing:

• Writing about anything / about anyone other than yourself. You write an autobiographical story, so try to remember this;
• Using too many negative words and expressions. A particle ‘not’ is perceived by people negatively at a subconscious level. If you insert a lot of ‘not’ into your story, your reader will not like it, and he himself may not even understand why. Think over the narrative so that there are no negative statements in it, and it will become much easier to write;
• Embellishing information. Everything that you write must correspond to the real state of affairs. Do not write about what you do not know, what did not happen. Even if you can initially achieve success using these tactics, in the future, everything will fall into place anyway. You just need to know about your advantages and skillfully present them.

Text About Yourself: An Interesting Sample

To make it easier for you to write a good story, consider an example of a good text:

Hello everyone! My name is Oliver, and I will be part of your team. We are still strangers, but I already feel sympathy for you and have no doubt that we will become friends. For this purpose, I will tell you a little about myself.

Currently, I work at the Research Institute of Cardioelectronics. Currently, I work at the Research Institute of Cardioelectronics. Prior to that, I was a practicing physician at London Central Hospital and later taught at the Medical University of the same city.

Several years ago, I graduated from university with honors and several thanks from the internship. While studying, I participated in inter-university competitions in volleyball and artistic gymnastics, as well as several Olympiads in specialty and humanitarian disciplines.

In my free time, I go in for race walking, and I am fond of photography. I also like reading books and listening to classical music. I will not say that I have achieved noticeable success in at least one of my hobbies; they just give me pleasure.

The main quality that I value in myself is friendliness. I am sure that we will find common topics for conversation and will be able to enjoy communication for more than one year. Thank you very much for the attention. If you have any questions, do not hesitate; I will be glad to talk with new acquaintances.

Start writing interesting autobiographical text. You will definitely succeed, and the tips provided in this article will make your task easier!