The prompt is as follows:
In an essay, discuss how your personal background informs your decision to pursue a graduate degree. Please include any educational, familial, cultural, economic, or social experiences, challenges, community service, outreach activities or opportunities relevant to your academic journey; how your life experiences contribute to the social, intellectual, or cultural diversity within your chosen field; and/or how you might serve educationally underrepresented segments of society with your degree.
While I was writing my response, I thought about why I truly wanted to attend graduate school and the things that I am looking forward to once I complete my degree.
My Response:
Throughout high school I had participated in a variety of
education-based courses, ones that would allow high school students the opportunity
to learn techniques from other teachers in the district. At the time, I felt
like my path was drawn for me; I was going to be a math/science teacher and because
of that, I chose to attend Central Washington University due to their prestige regarding
their teaching program. Towards the middle of my junior year (of college), I came
to a realization that I did not want to become a teacher anymore. I was beginning
to take more advanced Chemistry courses and I was learning more in-depth about
topics that I could not pronounce in high school. Although I had always wanted
to become a teacher, at that moment, I decided that I wanted to be a “permanent”
student. The perplexing idea of graduate school was introduced to me when I
first made that epiphany, which coincides with my passion for learning. No
matter the subject or the professor teaching the course, I truly love to learn
and what better way to continue learning than by pursing higher education.
After all, is that not what college is for aspiring high school seniors?
As I mentioned before, the idea of a “permanent” student
seems counter-intuitive, but in academia, and more generally in the discipline
of science, are we not all permanent students? We are consistently searching
for answers, for cures, for reasons why the universe works the way it does. Our
curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge is what drives scientists to make remarkable
discoveries. Although we may think we are students because we do not take
quizzes/exams every three weeks, we continue to test ourselves and our hypotheses
through dozens of experiments and tests. The world of science is open to
change. By that I mean there is always some new experiment to do, some new
project or world-crisis that needs to be solved. A fresh perspective is all
that it takes to take a turn an already novel idea into an extraordinary one. My
passion to pursue higher education is fueled by the fact that I will be soon
become a hybrid of academia; the student who thirsts for knowledge and the
teacher who passes down his knowledge onto others. Graduate school would
provide me the opportunity to become that hybrid and it will allow me to make a
truly remarkable difference in the world of both education and science.
Just my $0.02
Have a good weekend!
NT
