Grad school or bust

I sent in my applications! I am done!

And I am super interested in social movements and also ended up putting Andrea on my list of professors I wanted to work with if I go to PSU because disaster response.

 

Hahahahahaha I didn't get in anywhere.

So, new list:

• inform people
• compile list of programs to apply to
• do well in all my classes
• figure out what I'm doing for the next year
• graduate
• apply more places in the fall
• apply all of the places
• all of them

 

Raising this thread from the dead because I'm working on an all-new statement of purpose that is making me wildly, deeply frustrated as part of working up for round 2 of applications. I have no idea if the tone works or if everything should be more formal. I know I have to include some more formal stuff, and idk. Like, I helped a friend edit her law school application a few months ago, and it was all layered and about her dedication to law and had a sort of storyline. And that feels - I mean, like, the really terrible thing is that I have a ton of drive but very little focus shown in my work. And, like, I've figured out more or less what I want to study? And actually done more research on projects, and Rutgers actually looks like an amazing fit in their Sociology program with the focus on Technology, Society, and Environment (the program description makes me make kettle noises).

Spoiler: very very rough statement of purpose help do i sound coherent

My dad told me once that there’s more social upheaval during hot weather. He was talking about the summer of 1968, and it fascinated me that the temperature could make that kind of difference. I grew up in British Columbia, far enough north that it never got hot enough to fry tempers even when the province was on fire. In Fall 2015 I got a chance to take a class in Environmental Sociology from Dr. Margarita Alario, which opened my dad’s anecdote into a whole field of study.

The sentiment of wanting to make the world a better place is a common one from what I’ve seen of the talented women I’ve met through my writing and editing and my dedicated fellow students in paramedic training and at university. From law students working towards being public defenders to vet students, I am lucky enough to know a lot of people with very distinct visions of how they can improve the world and the drive to get there. Professors I admire also seem to have channeled the same sentiment into research and teaching. The fact that the sentiment is common doesn’t make it less sincere when I say that I want to make the world a better place, and I think studying the interactions of societies with the environment is the best way for me to do that.

I had three papers I considered submitting as a writing sample, about the technology that makes water conservation more effective, the digital divide as manifested for students in the US, and social media in recent revolutions. I haven’t had the opportunity yet to research the three in tandem, to look into how drought and food insecurity and access to technology for organization interact with injustice and drive civil unrest or how closing the digital divide gives people the information and technology they need to survive and even thrive. I want that opportunity.

Climate change is inarguably the most overwhelming challenge we face right now as a society - as a species - and finding those social, technological, and legislative steps that could ameliorate the damage and then convincing people to take those steps through education and lobbying is what I want to be able to do. Graduate school would let me.

My academic background is in Liberal Studies, but that foundation in the narratives that make up our society translates well to studying society as a structure. My final cumulative GPA was also only 3.28, but I feel that the trajectory over time speaks for itself. I wasn’t ready for university when I graduated from high school, and didn’t know how to use the resources I had available. Four and a half years of work - including moving to a different country, starting my own business, and getting intensely involved with a literary magazine - gave me a much stronger position from which to resume my studies.



[something about university]

So, remaining to do:

• narrow down to list of ten programs to apply to (of Kansas (environmental soc), Michigan - Ann Arbor (environmental soc), Johns Hopkins (soc, global social change), Minnesota (environmental soc), Washington (environmental soc), University of Oregon (environmental studies, sociology as focus department), Rutgers (sociology), UAlberta (water and land resources), UNBC (natural resources, in case of trump election and decision to defect ONLY), Cornell (graduate field of development sociology), Northeastern (environment and health), Colorado State University (sociology), Madison (environmental sociology), and Michigan State (environmental sociology))
• write an actually coherent statement of purpose
• get feedback on coherent version
• apply
• actually get in somewhere??????

 

I would really appreciate it. I have a rough draft with commenting on here, and I know it still needs a lot of work, but I don't even know if it's in vaguely the right direction.