| This professional statement of goals was written for the Texts and Technologies English Ph.D. program at UCF. The graduate library at the UWC has several texts about writing personal statements, which also include samples for medical school, law school, and various graduate programs. (Special thanks to Katie Grigg for her permission to use this statement as a sample.) |
| Poor communication helped me find my calling in life. One memorable misunderstanding in my early years of school helped shape my perspective about teaching and learning, and eventually ignited a passionate search for the "how-to's" of communication. |
| Growing up, I found education to be dissatisfying and often brutal. Having come from a family that was lukewarm about it--my father was a dropout and my mother's educational peak was nursing school--I didn't feel strongly about any kind of learning. The only area that I was actually interested in was writing; it was the one medium in which I felt comfortable, although I was initially a poor writer. As my skills began to improve, however, I started to share my work with teachers. I thought all was going well until one English teacher misinterpreted my response to a personification essay as a suicide warning. She called the principal, who then called my mother, and the situation escalated out of control. It turns out that the "suicide note" wasn't a plea for help after all--just a young student experimenting with different shades of description. When the fuss died down, though, I found that I had lost interest in communicating with my instructors. Why should I bother to write if my words caused teachers to respond with alarm? |
| Although still wary of school, I eventually began community college, but was frustrated with the fragmented community of students and educators. I came close to quitting many times--I had toyed with the idea of continuing my education, perhaps going into the field of writing, but I couldn't bear the thought of spending years in such an empty environment. It wasn't until I reached UCF that I realized how much I could enjoy learning: The students in my classes were interesting, the teachers were demanding yet attentive, and for the first time I was acknowledged for my writing skills-people actually liked what I had to say, and because they were so encouraging and receptive, I blossomed. Soon after starting the university I became a voracious student. I read everything I could get my hands on, asked endless questions in class, and got to know my professors. My appetite for knowledge led me to investigate the area of communications, and as a result, I've become fascinated with the processes of writing and learning: Because of my experiences, I realize how important it is for students to communicate effectively, and how important it is for teachers to be receptive to this communication. A breakdown in the pathway either leads to students who don't care about learning or writing, or teachers who don't connect with their students or mistake creativity with personal tragedy. My professional objective, as a result of my exposure to these types of discordant relationships, is to help facilitate the link between teacher and student so no one gets lost in the process. |
| This is where the Texts and Technology program comes in. By deconstructing and reexamining how we communicate, whether written or verbal communication, we can evaluate the effectiveness of our own learning and teaching processes. With this knowledge, we become better instructors and better students, and, ideally, more responsive to weaknesses within the "system." If the teacher I had, for example, had access to a database of student essays dealing with personification, she might have realized that my response wasn't as bleak as she'd originally thought. Or, if she had a network of other instructors to discuss her concerns with, she may have ended up learning something about writing herself, thus becoming a better instructor. On the other hand, had I been able to communicate with students from other schools, other disciplines, other educational levels, I might have had a different outlook about education altogether. |
| With the marriage of technology and traditional classroom learning, the possibilities are endless. My own vision is to create a national network of students, authors and teachers from all writing disciplines--composition, poetry, expository writing, fiction, creative-non fiction, magazine writing--so the scholarly community can be strengthened through connection. Imagine the novice writing student having access to an online forum where established writers hold scheduled chats. The same student might even be able to get feedback on his/her work from any number of instructors at universities around the nation, or even the world. While not intended to replace the traditional classroom, certainly technology-infused education such as this would help students feel like a part of something larger, a part of the ongoing academic discourse, instead of perceiving themselves as components of a static entity. Ultimately I feel that the union of technology and scholastics will help create a community that offers both inspiration and refuge to students and educators. The Texts and Technology program, as an educational vanguard, can help construct this reality. |