Personal Statement on a School of Choice

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A personal statement to a school of choice has shown to be hard to write. You want to be able to give the school a glimpse of who you are, how you came to be this person who is applying to their program, and who you want to eventually be. You want to be able to show the passion and drive you have for learning, for mastering your aspired career. You want to show the school why they shouldn’t just accept you, they should want you. The task is intimidating, to say the least. But I am most willing to give it my best shot.
The path that has led me through my education, and this very application to Adler, has been a bit unconventional. While in my senior year of high school, I realized that I wasn’t ready for college. This wasn’t to say that I didn’t want to do something ambitious. So after some thought, I enlisted in the United States Navy as a Cryptologic Technician and left for boot camp a month after graduation. It was a hard transition, but once I arrived in Florida to begin my job training, for the first time, I began to academically apply myself. I graduated second in my class, and began my four-year tour at NSA Kunia in Hawaii. Throughout my tour I took college courses and CLEP tests, and began to feel the drive to further my formal education. While I enjoyed my job, and the satisfaction I got from serving my country, I had come to recognize that it was not my career choice. Before joining the Navy, I was lucky enough to have a school that offered psychology courses, and during those classes was the only time I actually felt myself wanting to actively learn. I contemplated pursing an education in psychology, but it seemed very intimidating. As an 18-year-old, the time commitment that a career in psychology dem...

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...I think that Adler’s clinical psychology program can give me the resources to do that.
It is hard to pin down where my interests in psychology will take my career. Psychology is a field so multi-faceted and dynamic, things are always changing and developing, which is what makes it so exciting. My career focus is in clinical psychology, with research and practice interests in social and personality psychology. I can see myself working in a private practice, treating a range of disorders, from severe schizophrenia to mild depression. I see myself volunteering services to low-income community clinics and VA hospitals. With that being said, I am looking forward to the experiences I will gain in graduate school that will expand my career interests and goals, and I can say with complete sincerity, that I hope that school is Adler School of Professional Psychology.

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