Wholly unwarranted, but typical me.....
Okay, I haven't posted in forever, but I've been to
busy to write down
all the funny that has happened lately. However, I sat down
recently and wrote a personal statement to send to the multitude of
schools I am applying to. It's way overconfident and
self-aggrandizing, but that may just be what I need. :-P Since I
know the only ones reading this
are possibly a english major cutie and a crack journalist, i figured
i'd open my draft to professional critique:
From the moment I started my college career, I knew what my undergraduate plan of action was. I was an advanced mathematical and scientific scholar in high school, and I was going to pursue an engineering degree. Having the advantage of numerous advance placement and transfer credits coming in, I knew I could continue a rigorous curriculum and still exit in the expected four years with two diplomas. This allowed me to follow both my potential and my passion. Engineering is something I find comes fairly naturally to me. I am able to pick up technical skills and concepts quickly, and can organize information enough to sit down and visualize options in a fairly methodical manner: to analyze a process. However, I am always looking for balance in my life, taking full advantage of appreciating the human element in everything. The counseling, mentoring, education, and general understanding of others are a passion that has risen from an enthusiastic interest to an academic pursuit. It is my goal to continue to use my rounded educational background and understanding to further improve the lives of people around me.
For one, I see myself as a teacher, most likely a professor in some capacity in the near future. I have spent ten years in young childhood education doing everything from simply play and organization, to teaching chemifluorescence to elementary school children, and even one-on-one work with challenged individuals (be that physically, mentally, or learning disabled). After the many years of hard work in this area, I can only imagine the immense impact of taking an expertise in a field and using it to instruct motivated, proven, and capable minds. Teaching is a profession of two plain, but difficult, guidelines that have this point allowed for my success: interminable patience and keeping one’s word towards others above all else.
I see myself as an effective researcher in a field of scientific behavioral study, most likely pharmaceutically centered. It seems the natural course for my educational evolution is from the combination of psychology and chemical processes into the study of chemical agents, and their effects on behavior. The current work I do in a psychopharmacology lab is extremely fulfilling to me, as I can see how the extensive work and time put into such endeavors can conclude with a result that can impact the decision making of doctors, medical patients, certain demographics, or even the general public at large. Most every study uses some form of animal/human model in hopes of making a direct correlation to common human activity that may affect their very quality of living. I have cleared up time in my busy schedule this year to make sure I am a valuable contributing member of our lab, driving many times a week across the river in all weather conditions to our lab at a neighboring college. I have also cleared up a window every day next semester to allow me to personally be involved in every aspect of a study that shall be of my design and result in an undergraduate research thesis. However, we currently have neither the facilities, nor the expertise to realize the full scientific potential available in such a field. Psychopharmacology is one of the most important and directly applicable fields around, and to some degree appears to be evaporating as a specialty over time. This is due to the emergence of advanced chemical and biological processes that allow behavioral scientists to examine beyond the surface actions of a model. To reach this fusion of techniques, I see how this training I am receiving in such a lab is a first step to a greater prospective. I am also taking chemical laboratory courses in preparing and analyzing chemical assays by optical density and fluorescence intensity, and am hoping to learn more this following semester in genetic expression and bioprocessing methods in our biotechnology labs. There are a broad number of tests and techniques of this type; the likes of these merely scratch the surface.
Transgenic models, DNA chip arrays, and radio immune assays are a few technologies I find could augment the methods we use in the psychopharmacology lab to not just make observations and statistical hypotheses, but clinically scientific and definitive results. The ability is not only to take the animal models and manipulate their behavior through chemical or environmental change; but to be able to alter the genetics, the internal biology, to test for chemical levels and elimination, to discover targets in functional areas is the most exciting way to further medical science and research as it is today. While I may never see myself as any type of great pure cellular biologist, or even a leading organic chemist, it is at the nexus of these many fields that I find both my passions and my talent merge. And I seek out programs such as this one because I can see these same qualities: professors who are members of an interdisciplinary mesh of biology, psychology, pharmacology, physiology, chemistry, systems analysis, or whatever it takes to collectively achieve the necessary goals. I believe I have the academic ability to learn just about anything, and the drive to learn whatever is necessary, and I hope wherever my future leads allows me the focus and ability to use both these attributes to my benefit.
I accredit strength to my academic ability not without some modesty, but with fair confidence. I am the president of my university’s chapter of Omega Chi Epsilon, the national honor society in the field of chemical engineering. I was chosen by my peers by being one of the top academic achievers in my department, as a responsible and trusted individual as a team member, as well by my ability to easily convey ideas and planning to others. I used this position to organize the small, newly-founded group so that it has a base of infrastructure and identity to build on for future years. I also contributed as a representative to a committee to form a council of societies, which would be an organized body to act as a forum to share resources, and opinions on the academic state of our university, among all the academic societies. Our efforts have produced a charter now awaiting the administration’s approval. All the while, I have maintained myself amongst at least the top five in my class (a department known for its tough evaluation, averaging about a 2.8 cumulative GPA).
I also hope that you take into consideration an additional recommendation I thought necessary for your proper evaluation of me beyond the three academic: my civilian army employer from the position I have held for the past three years. I started as a summer-hire for a part-time position, and have remained on as a permanent employee with the flexibility to return to work whenever on vacation from school. I have recently this past summer been promoted to now be the youngest member of six full-fledged staff averaging an age of about thirty to forty years old. I have earned the respect as a peer and a team member, and I felt it necessary for any prospective professor to see not only my academic potential, but my ability as an employee. It is important to me that my education not only be an exercise in academia, but a training ground for a marketable set of skills and abilities learned in a work-like atmosphere, and applicable beyond any achieved degree. Thank you for your consideration.
From the moment I started my college career, I knew what my undergraduate plan of action was. I was an advanced mathematical and scientific scholar in high school, and I was going to pursue an engineering degree. Having the advantage of numerous advance placement and transfer credits coming in, I knew I could continue a rigorous curriculum and still exit in the expected four years with two diplomas. This allowed me to follow both my potential and my passion. Engineering is something I find comes fairly naturally to me. I am able to pick up technical skills and concepts quickly, and can organize information enough to sit down and visualize options in a fairly methodical manner: to analyze a process. However, I am always looking for balance in my life, taking full advantage of appreciating the human element in everything. The counseling, mentoring, education, and general understanding of others are a passion that has risen from an enthusiastic interest to an academic pursuit. It is my goal to continue to use my rounded educational background and understanding to further improve the lives of people around me.
For one, I see myself as a teacher, most likely a professor in some capacity in the near future. I have spent ten years in young childhood education doing everything from simply play and organization, to teaching chemifluorescence to elementary school children, and even one-on-one work with challenged individuals (be that physically, mentally, or learning disabled). After the many years of hard work in this area, I can only imagine the immense impact of taking an expertise in a field and using it to instruct motivated, proven, and capable minds. Teaching is a profession of two plain, but difficult, guidelines that have this point allowed for my success: interminable patience and keeping one’s word towards others above all else.
I see myself as an effective researcher in a field of scientific behavioral study, most likely pharmaceutically centered. It seems the natural course for my educational evolution is from the combination of psychology and chemical processes into the study of chemical agents, and their effects on behavior. The current work I do in a psychopharmacology lab is extremely fulfilling to me, as I can see how the extensive work and time put into such endeavors can conclude with a result that can impact the decision making of doctors, medical patients, certain demographics, or even the general public at large. Most every study uses some form of animal/human model in hopes of making a direct correlation to common human activity that may affect their very quality of living. I have cleared up time in my busy schedule this year to make sure I am a valuable contributing member of our lab, driving many times a week across the river in all weather conditions to our lab at a neighboring college. I have also cleared up a window every day next semester to allow me to personally be involved in every aspect of a study that shall be of my design and result in an undergraduate research thesis. However, we currently have neither the facilities, nor the expertise to realize the full scientific potential available in such a field. Psychopharmacology is one of the most important and directly applicable fields around, and to some degree appears to be evaporating as a specialty over time. This is due to the emergence of advanced chemical and biological processes that allow behavioral scientists to examine beyond the surface actions of a model. To reach this fusion of techniques, I see how this training I am receiving in such a lab is a first step to a greater prospective. I am also taking chemical laboratory courses in preparing and analyzing chemical assays by optical density and fluorescence intensity, and am hoping to learn more this following semester in genetic expression and bioprocessing methods in our biotechnology labs. There are a broad number of tests and techniques of this type; the likes of these merely scratch the surface.
Transgenic models, DNA chip arrays, and radio immune assays are a few technologies I find could augment the methods we use in the psychopharmacology lab to not just make observations and statistical hypotheses, but clinically scientific and definitive results. The ability is not only to take the animal models and manipulate their behavior through chemical or environmental change; but to be able to alter the genetics, the internal biology, to test for chemical levels and elimination, to discover targets in functional areas is the most exciting way to further medical science and research as it is today. While I may never see myself as any type of great pure cellular biologist, or even a leading organic chemist, it is at the nexus of these many fields that I find both my passions and my talent merge. And I seek out programs such as this one because I can see these same qualities: professors who are members of an interdisciplinary mesh of biology, psychology, pharmacology, physiology, chemistry, systems analysis, or whatever it takes to collectively achieve the necessary goals. I believe I have the academic ability to learn just about anything, and the drive to learn whatever is necessary, and I hope wherever my future leads allows me the focus and ability to use both these attributes to my benefit.
I accredit strength to my academic ability not without some modesty, but with fair confidence. I am the president of my university’s chapter of Omega Chi Epsilon, the national honor society in the field of chemical engineering. I was chosen by my peers by being one of the top academic achievers in my department, as a responsible and trusted individual as a team member, as well by my ability to easily convey ideas and planning to others. I used this position to organize the small, newly-founded group so that it has a base of infrastructure and identity to build on for future years. I also contributed as a representative to a committee to form a council of societies, which would be an organized body to act as a forum to share resources, and opinions on the academic state of our university, among all the academic societies. Our efforts have produced a charter now awaiting the administration’s approval. All the while, I have maintained myself amongst at least the top five in my class (a department known for its tough evaluation, averaging about a 2.8 cumulative GPA).
I also hope that you take into consideration an additional recommendation I thought necessary for your proper evaluation of me beyond the three academic: my civilian army employer from the position I have held for the past three years. I started as a summer-hire for a part-time position, and have remained on as a permanent employee with the flexibility to return to work whenever on vacation from school. I have recently this past summer been promoted to now be the youngest member of six full-fledged staff averaging an age of about thirty to forty years old. I have earned the respect as a peer and a team member, and I felt it necessary for any prospective professor to see not only my academic potential, but my ability as an employee. It is important to me that my education not only be an exercise in academia, but a training ground for a marketable set of skills and abilities learned in a work-like atmosphere, and applicable beyond any achieved degree. Thank you for your consideration.