Please Help Me With My Pedantic and Longwinded Statement of Purpose
You heard me. I'm despairing over this thing. It seems really long, not concise and overly rambly. And after reading it 8 million times I have lost all capacity to judge it accurately. (I have NO idea how I am supposed to condense this to 500 words for Rutgers, additionally.)
Help me a little, please. I know it's probably not very good, I never know how to toot my own horn. I'm applying to anthropology ph.d programs.
Continuing my education by pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology is a vital aspect to my lifelong path of learning. It has and continues to be an integral part of my life to unearth and share ideas, to participate in the exchange and assembly of information to benefit our understanding of mankind. I have become deeply engaged in anthropological research because unlike many other fields of study, anthropology as a discipline has constantly morphed and changed throughout its existence; it might be seen as not just a discipline but also a manner of examining the human condition. This unique aspect has created a varied and changeable atmosphere of analysis that I find incredibly stimulating. When studying the mechanisms of human society and interaction, there is certainly never a scarcity of new information or new ways to examine and interpret that information.
I come from an undergraduate department that was seriously imbalanced in its four-field approach, as [MY UNDERGRAD] is heavily weighted towards cultural and linguistic anthropology at the expense of its biological and archaeological programs, and I desire to attend a school for graduate study which places equal weight on all aspects of the discipline. I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to attend a truly four-field program. Although I intend to focus on nutritional anthropology, I hope a rounded department will enable me to better myself in aspects of anthropology to which I have not yet been sufficiently exposed, as well as because my foci involve a fusion of cultural and biological approaches.
My specific research interest is in the effects of globalization and free trade on traditional foodways, food preparation techniques, and available foodstuffs as well as nutrition and nutrition-related disease. This research goal was inspired largely by my first fieldwork experience in Nicaragua. I was living in a small farming community, Chacraseca, which had a school that was completely supported by the local communal growing of beans and black-eyed peas. Students at the school ate these crops for lunch and they were also sold to garner funds for materials and teachers. However, with the advent of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (which had I traveled to Central America to chronicle the initial response to), Chacraseca was on the verge of being forced to switch from their subsistence farming to growing peanuts, cotton, and other inedible cash crops for export because the availability of much cheaper, imported foodstuffs would make their crops impossible to sell. It was going to alter the community's entire way of life and eliminate the carefully balanced subsistence farming they had practiced for generations . In this era of burgeoning "global cuisine" where Western-style chain restaurants and unfamiliar foods are making tremendous inroads into new marketplaces, I would like to study what effects are taking place on not only local cuisines, but also statistics of medical conditions. Additionally, I am very interested in the development and traditional methods of food preservation and preparation, and have done individual experimentation to this end. I have taught myself how to preserve meat with salt and smoke and prepare my own homemade yogurt and cheese using some of the manners in which these foods were originally developed.
I feel that I am capable of excelling at graduate studies; I have wanted to pursue a graduate degree since discovering my passion for anthropology, and I have several skills that I believe make me an ideal student. I have performed well as an undergraduate. At the beginning of my schooling at [CRAPPY LOCAL COLLEGE], where I was an English major, I felt unfulfilled, unchallenged and aimless. This is reflected in my early GPA, and the fact that my overall GPA is 3.35. But when I transferred to [BIG CITY UNDERGRAD] and entered the anthropology department, I rapidly improved as a student and my GPA climbed to 3.62 for my final two and a half years of study as well as 3.7 in my major (which culminated in a degree awarded cum laude). I believe the sudden upswing in my performance as a student is obvious, and it is all due to my discovery of anthropology.
During the time I spent completing my degree, I took six very challenging graduate-level anthropology seminars which all culminated in high marks. Reading is my most beloved and most finely honed skill; as a result of a lifetime of devouring book after book I now have an on-screen reading capability of over 700 words per minute as well as an on-paper reading capability of 800 WPM. My reading comprehension level has tested consistently at over 85%, so I have complete confidence in my abilities to keep up with large amounts of assigned reading. One of my professors dubbed it my "superpower." I've been reading anthropology textbooks for private edification since long before even considering it as a career.
I also have a great deal of personal dedication to my field. When I participated in my first archaeological fieldwork, I declined [MY UNDERGRAD]'s more conventional field school (where the students lived in dormitories and had phone service) and deliberately chose an experience that would challenge me. I camped at a prehistoric Shoshone site in the Wyoming mountain wilderness for two months with no electricity, running water or phone contact. I felt that sleeping in bear-infested woods with nothing but a nylon trapezoid protecting me from the elements was a rather thorough test of my dedication to the field of anthropology. The reason I took an extra semester to finish my degree was because upon the completion of my field school coursework, I was hired by my professor, [AWESOME ARCHAEOLOGIST], to perform additional work on the site instead of returning to [MY CITY] to take summer classes. Additionally, I spent over a year working for [ANOTHER AWESOME ARCHAEOLOGIST], a faculty member at [MY UNIVERSITY], in the archaeology laboratory. This job chiefly consisted of cataloging pottery and glass fragments from the site of a prison ceramic factory in Philadelphia which he had excavated previously. At [MY UNIVERSITY], I was exceptionally involved at the department level; I was elected to the academic search committee where I lobbied hard to help level out the university's four-field imbalance. I read hundreds of applications from potential new professors and participated in group interviews. I enjoyed the search committee not only as an opportunity to improve my department, but also because it gave me a good deal of insight into departmental dynamics, which is especially important for me because I hope to eventually become a professor myself. I was also elected to be one of two undergraduate representatives to the department council. Partially as a result of my efforts, [MY UNIVERSITY] now has a bioanthropologist on tenure track for the first time.
As for my academic and professional goals, I am particularly interested in expanding the current body of scholarship on nutritional anthropology, which is surprisingly small for such a fascinating field with an integral relationship to daily human life. I am also interested in motivating and expanding the hearts and minds of the next generation of anthropologists as a professor, through classroom and in-the-field instruction. I have always felt that my very best instructors were those who clearly had an passion for their subject matter, something I am certain I too possess when it comes to anthropology.
Help me a little, please. I know it's probably not very good, I never know how to toot my own horn. I'm applying to anthropology ph.d programs.
Continuing my education by pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology is a vital aspect to my lifelong path of learning. It has and continues to be an integral part of my life to unearth and share ideas, to participate in the exchange and assembly of information to benefit our understanding of mankind. I have become deeply engaged in anthropological research because unlike many other fields of study, anthropology as a discipline has constantly morphed and changed throughout its existence; it might be seen as not just a discipline but also a manner of examining the human condition. This unique aspect has created a varied and changeable atmosphere of analysis that I find incredibly stimulating. When studying the mechanisms of human society and interaction, there is certainly never a scarcity of new information or new ways to examine and interpret that information.
I come from an undergraduate department that was seriously imbalanced in its four-field approach, as [MY UNDERGRAD] is heavily weighted towards cultural and linguistic anthropology at the expense of its biological and archaeological programs, and I desire to attend a school for graduate study which places equal weight on all aspects of the discipline. I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to attend a truly four-field program. Although I intend to focus on nutritional anthropology, I hope a rounded department will enable me to better myself in aspects of anthropology to which I have not yet been sufficiently exposed, as well as because my foci involve a fusion of cultural and biological approaches.
My specific research interest is in the effects of globalization and free trade on traditional foodways, food preparation techniques, and available foodstuffs as well as nutrition and nutrition-related disease. This research goal was inspired largely by my first fieldwork experience in Nicaragua. I was living in a small farming community, Chacraseca, which had a school that was completely supported by the local communal growing of beans and black-eyed peas. Students at the school ate these crops for lunch and they were also sold to garner funds for materials and teachers. However, with the advent of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (which had I traveled to Central America to chronicle the initial response to), Chacraseca was on the verge of being forced to switch from their subsistence farming to growing peanuts, cotton, and other inedible cash crops for export because the availability of much cheaper, imported foodstuffs would make their crops impossible to sell. It was going to alter the community's entire way of life and eliminate the carefully balanced subsistence farming they had practiced for generations . In this era of burgeoning "global cuisine" where Western-style chain restaurants and unfamiliar foods are making tremendous inroads into new marketplaces, I would like to study what effects are taking place on not only local cuisines, but also statistics of medical conditions. Additionally, I am very interested in the development and traditional methods of food preservation and preparation, and have done individual experimentation to this end. I have taught myself how to preserve meat with salt and smoke and prepare my own homemade yogurt and cheese using some of the manners in which these foods were originally developed.
I feel that I am capable of excelling at graduate studies; I have wanted to pursue a graduate degree since discovering my passion for anthropology, and I have several skills that I believe make me an ideal student. I have performed well as an undergraduate. At the beginning of my schooling at [CRAPPY LOCAL COLLEGE], where I was an English major, I felt unfulfilled, unchallenged and aimless. This is reflected in my early GPA, and the fact that my overall GPA is 3.35. But when I transferred to [BIG CITY UNDERGRAD] and entered the anthropology department, I rapidly improved as a student and my GPA climbed to 3.62 for my final two and a half years of study as well as 3.7 in my major (which culminated in a degree awarded cum laude). I believe the sudden upswing in my performance as a student is obvious, and it is all due to my discovery of anthropology.
During the time I spent completing my degree, I took six very challenging graduate-level anthropology seminars which all culminated in high marks. Reading is my most beloved and most finely honed skill; as a result of a lifetime of devouring book after book I now have an on-screen reading capability of over 700 words per minute as well as an on-paper reading capability of 800 WPM. My reading comprehension level has tested consistently at over 85%, so I have complete confidence in my abilities to keep up with large amounts of assigned reading. One of my professors dubbed it my "superpower." I've been reading anthropology textbooks for private edification since long before even considering it as a career.
I also have a great deal of personal dedication to my field. When I participated in my first archaeological fieldwork, I declined [MY UNDERGRAD]'s more conventional field school (where the students lived in dormitories and had phone service) and deliberately chose an experience that would challenge me. I camped at a prehistoric Shoshone site in the Wyoming mountain wilderness for two months with no electricity, running water or phone contact. I felt that sleeping in bear-infested woods with nothing but a nylon trapezoid protecting me from the elements was a rather thorough test of my dedication to the field of anthropology. The reason I took an extra semester to finish my degree was because upon the completion of my field school coursework, I was hired by my professor, [AWESOME ARCHAEOLOGIST], to perform additional work on the site instead of returning to [MY CITY] to take summer classes. Additionally, I spent over a year working for [ANOTHER AWESOME ARCHAEOLOGIST], a faculty member at [MY UNIVERSITY], in the archaeology laboratory. This job chiefly consisted of cataloging pottery and glass fragments from the site of a prison ceramic factory in Philadelphia which he had excavated previously. At [MY UNIVERSITY], I was exceptionally involved at the department level; I was elected to the academic search committee where I lobbied hard to help level out the university's four-field imbalance. I read hundreds of applications from potential new professors and participated in group interviews. I enjoyed the search committee not only as an opportunity to improve my department, but also because it gave me a good deal of insight into departmental dynamics, which is especially important for me because I hope to eventually become a professor myself. I was also elected to be one of two undergraduate representatives to the department council. Partially as a result of my efforts, [MY UNIVERSITY] now has a bioanthropologist on tenure track for the first time.
As for my academic and professional goals, I am particularly interested in expanding the current body of scholarship on nutritional anthropology, which is surprisingly small for such a fascinating field with an integral relationship to daily human life. I am also interested in motivating and expanding the hearts and minds of the next generation of anthropologists as a professor, through classroom and in-the-field instruction. I have always felt that my very best instructors were those who clearly had an passion for their subject matter, something I am certain I too possess when it comes to anthropology.