What I Would Write To Them If I Could
Grad School Applications: Almost done!
Today I have attacked the torturous task of writing personal statements. These require me to consolidate my many and varied philosophical interests into 500 words or less, often also including information on honors/awards/scholarships from my undergraduate days (Phi Eta Sigma Delta Zeta Theta... How am I supposed to remember which combination of Greek letters made up those completely useless honor societies??), my foreign language training and proficiency, my career plans and goals, and then, as the cherry on the sundae of my conception of myself as a philosopher, why I want to study at this particular program at this particular school in this particular city with these particular professors. How I am supposed to fit all this into 500 words or less, I simply do not know. And then there's the question of my philosophical interests. Am I just supposed to name some philosophers and some schools of thought that I'm interested in? How much detail am I supposed to give? When discussing my interest in the intersections between philosophy and literature and philosophy and feminism, I have to resist the itch to launch into three page diatribes on why I think these things are important. How do I consolidate their importance into five sentences or less and still sound like I know what I'm talking about?
Which raises another question: Do I in fact know what I'm talking about?
Most of the time I feel like I sort of know what I'm talking about, but not really. I have some vague notions, some shadows in my mind that I guiltily dare to call ideas. I find myself wondering if the application readers will see through my thin facade of knowledge. I hope to God that they don't, because this lack of knowledge, this realization that I know so little coupled with my desire to know so much, is what impassions me to study philosophy at the graduate level. I want to attack each of the questions that keeps me awake at night one by one so that I can start to figure out how it all fits together, conceive a sense of coherence from this tangled mess of questions.
"Discuss Your Choice of Philosophy An Area of Continued Study"
This desire to study philosophy is very physical for me. I feel it in every ounce of my being. It emnates from the very core of who I am and spreads into my gut, pulses to the ends of my hands and feet. Strangely, it's all or nothing. It has to be my life's work, or else I have to go do something completely different and try to forget that I ever asked myself these questions.
I'm crazy. I'm crazy about these questions, I'm crazy about this tangled mess of ideas that I'm trying to pull apart and puzzle together. I want this. More than (almost) anything.