An 11 years old kid lying on the ground in a dark room crying, shaking, and trembling with intense pain in both of his ears. The pain was similar to as if someone was hitting with some sharp object inside his ears and every time he would feel the shock of pain, he would pull both of his ears while enduring the pain. The pain would raise every couple of second and with each shock of pain, the kid would lose part of the hope that he had of surviving. He would experience so intense pain that he had never anticipated and all he could think of that “he is about to die.” This was the experience that I felt when I had a severe ear infection in both of my ears.
My interest in public interest law, nonprofit advocacy, and social justice began at a very young age. My passion was influenced by my upbringing, as well as my journey down a path different from what my family and culture envisioned. It is this same divergent path that has led me to me to pursue the legal profession today.
For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be an encouraging influence for others. As a child I was very shy and unsure of myself partly due to my overwhelming fear of others and feelings of inadequacy. Nevertheless deep inside I knew of my true worth but was afraid to show the world who I really was because I may be rejected. Those feelings of rejection kept me from being who I am and sent me down a dark, lonely, and destructive path.
My commitment and motivation to pursue master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy is based on the extensive experiences that I have gained in human services in the past 2 years. Since long I have always held the belief that the application of psychological principles has the power to positively impact society. And I especially believe in its power to help children cope with the stresses and events of everyday life. My own life is a testament to this belief.
My decision to become a doctor did not come in a moment of blinding revelation, but as
The choices we make early in life have an enormous impact on our future. I have always known that I wanted to directly impact people’s lives. My personal experiences have had a large impact on my motivation to accomplish all my dreams. In the future, I would love to influence another generation of students to soar for their dreams.
“Sally, we need you over here.” Marisa, a nurse at City of Hope calls over for me. I grab a pair of
For some students a report card is an accurate reflection of their abilities, aspirations, and future work habits. Many friends of mine have flawless, or near flawless, report cards. Straight A's and weighted GPA's well over 4.0 grace their every progress report, and I am certain they will continue this streak of academic excellence well into the future. For others, C's, D's and fail's are a normal occurrence, and much like the straight A students, I have no doubt that they will continue down this path. But for some students, like myself, a report card is not an accurate picture of academic ability. I am not afraid to admit - to friends, family, or schools I intend to apply to - that my grades aren't good. I haven't had a GPA anywhere near 4.0 in at least 3 years, and at times this fact makes me proud. While I usually earn B's or C's in my classes, there are a few bright spots on my academic record. I am in the 98th percentile of the SAT test, and in the 99th on the ACT. I achieved a 5 on the AP Computer Science test, and despite a C in my AP Physics class, I managed a 4 on the final exam. On top of that, in my two years on El Camino Real High School's Academic Decathlon team I have been the highest scoring C Student in all of the Los Angeles Unified School District twice in a row, placed third in the state of California, and look forward to a promising season this year.
The Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT) is the statewide test that measures the academic achievement of public school students towards meeting the Sunshine State Standards benchmarks. The quarterly Reading and Mathematics Benchmark Assessment exams gauge student achievement on individual strands based on these Sunshine State Standards, which school districts require schools to administer to students within the appropriate content area. Teachers and administrators pour over the information at the conclusion of the exam and the data mining gets underway. The data is analyzed and scrutinized and teachers present their interpretation of the data to the administration to determine what modifications need to take place within their classrooms. The teachers, principal and school district utilize the data obtained from the Benchmark Assessments to determine the level of student achievement within the classroom and create a strategy that will target those benchmarks in which student performance was low. The vital issue with the data driven classroom is the effectiveness of the teachers and administrators at interpreting the data from these high stakes tests and constructing a successful plan that guides instruction based on the needs of the classroom, which continuously change.
My greatest talent is my ability to follow up on topics that I am interested in, usually by reading about them. For example, I became interested in how people become famous mathematicians so I read Men of Mathematics, a very long book that illustrates the lives of 30 different mathematicians. Also, a character on House is afflicted with a degenerative disease, Huntington’s chorea, a disease caused by having too many of a certain chromosome. This sparked my interest in genetics. To learn more about genes I read a book called Genome, which had a chapter on each of the 23 chromosomes. Finally, in Physics we are learning about motion and vectors, but nothing abstract, so I decided to am reading A Brief History of Time.
It was a cold autumn night in North Carolina when I realized that my youth was being taken away from me. I wanted to run away and go back to the life that I had known; where I had the opportunity to go to school was happy and understood the language. Instead I was in a foreign land with my family and we could not return for there was no future in my homeland. According to my father, we had to keep migrating because it was the best thing for our family. It was then when I realized that this is not what I wanted for my family and I asked my father that we needed to go somewhere where I can go to school because it was affecting everybody including my little brother. My father raised me to believe I could accomplish anything I set my mind to it. So I decided to work hard and enroll in school so I can become educated. It was a difficult journey because I wasn’t sure which route my life would take since migrating every couple of months was not uncommon.
My decision to pursue a PhD is derived from my passion for science and engineering paired with my abilities in the field of machine learning and applied statistics. I consider myself fortunate to be part of the Department of Computer Science, University of Florida for my master studies. More importantly, I am glad to have two excellent professors in this field as advisors, Dr. Pader and Dr. Jilson, who are guiding me throughout my graduate studies. They assisted me to decide and pursue the courses and topics that interested me. During my first semester, I took the course Mathematical methods for Intelligent Systems that gave me a strong base for applied mathematics in the field of intelligent systems. Similarly, the research course Computational Neuroscience gave me an insight into applications of statistics, neural networks, and linear dynamical systems in a biological perspective.
Please discuss the following items in the order given. Briefly respond to all areas listed.
Besides this immersion into a world of books, I credit my love of reading to the fact that my parents only let me watch an hour of TV a day. I learned to use my mind and imagination to entertain myself. It's not really surprising that literature became my vocation. When not reading or writing, I enjoy watching films, baking, going to the city to eat Thai and Ethiopian food, walking, and relaxing with my friends.
Since the beginning of my academic endeavors, I have long cherished a dream to be a member of the social science research community, which gives our society progressive insights into human ecology. I began my undergraduate studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey with a passion for ecological justice and with the intention of majoring in environmental studies. Ramapo College’s progressive liberal arts foundation provided me with ample room to explore the multifarious array of social science courses. As I took more social science courses, however, my understanding of human social groups underwent a metamorphosis. As a result, I decided to pursue a degree in Social Science, with minors in the two fields I felt most passionately interested in, Women’s Studies and African American Studies.