Why Write Academic Statements? Annual Academic Statement: • It has multiple drafts. You are expected to write one annual draft each year. If you enrolled at Evergreen as a first-year student, you might write 3-4 Annual Academic Statements. If you are a transfer student and have two years to study at Evergreen, you’ll only write one Annual Academic Statement (and one Final). By investing in writing your annual statements, your final statement will benefit from your practice. • It’s your own running record. It’s easier to write down concrete details on experiences, projects, and lessons as they happen than it is to try and remember them later. Writing your annual drafts provides an opportunity to reflect and create a record as you go. By engaging in an ongoing writing process, you will be able to see growth, change, and common threads throughout your cumulative time at Evergreen. • It can help you make decisions. Looking back at specific details you find important can help you determine your goals and the next steps you need to take in order to achieve them. Having these ideas and experiences synthesized can help you make decisions about what to do next in your education. Final Academic Statement: • A shared snapshot in time. Once submitted, your Academic Statement is a fixed, published document. Unlike many other schools, official Evergreen transcripts begin with the student’s own voice. Years after completing your education, you can look back at your Final Academic Statement to reminisce and reflect on the skills, abilities, and knowledge you gained at Evergreen. • It’s great material. You can draw on your Academic Statement to help you write other relevant material. The Final Academic Statement is unique in that it is both a professional and personal document. This means that you can use it to write a wide variety of documents such as: cover letters, resumes, application essays, personal biographies, or a memoir— it’s not plagiarizing if you wrote it! • Translate your learning. It’s one thing to talk to someone who’s gone to Evergreen about your education, but another to describe your academic experience to someone outside the context of Evergreen. Your Final Academic Statement is a chance to reflect on your entire time in college and synthesize, explore, and highlight key themes of your education for audiences in the wider world. (Read more about Using the Goals of a Liberal Arts Education and the Six Expectations to Frame Your Academic Statement on page 25. • It can be what you need it to be. It’s up to you how you use your Academic Statement. How you shape it will be based on what you pursue in life after Evergreen. It’s important to write your statement with your goals in mind, so you can tailor it to best suit your needs. Some students (typically in the sciences) design their Academic Statement to be less personal, more concise, and centered in acquired skills and knowledge. Others (typically in the humanities) choose to have a narrative structure rooted in what they did and what that means to them personally. Neither of these approaches are incorrect—use whatever works for your needs.
14 | The Evergreen State College | Writing Center
