No tengo nada en la cabeza para escribir así que por si a alguien le interesa éste fue un "Personal Statement" que escribí al aplicar a un par de universidades en un país donde se hablá inglés. El tema es de por qué quiero estudiar Ciencias Ambientales. si lo leen por favor dejar críticas malas ó buenas, necesito feedback. :
Personal Statement
I want to study Environmental Sciences because after spending a year in Chicago as an exchange student in highschool almost 4 years ago I experienced my first winter and fell in love. Not in the way people usually fall in love with snow when they see it for the first time, I was amazed, and from that winter on, the "cold" became the object of my thoughts, I found my self researching about average annual temperatures and precipitation of every city I found interesting, I started relating everything to the weather, I eventually came to realize for example the relation that exists between countries with manifesting winters and the high standards of living in them. I come from the second poorest country in the second poorest continent, and because the political and social problems here greatly outrank anything else that may come up, it's sad to see that hardly anyone is aware of climate change at all, and even fewer people do anything about it. 80 percent of glaciers in my country have been disappearing in the last few years and it has been foreseen that as soon as next year we will start lacking water due to the glaciers' meltdown, also because of this, 80 percent of the capital city's power will be lost, since this is triggered by glacier water runoff. I personally think that's a heavy price to pay for emitting only a 0.03 percent of the world's total carbon emissions. This is a problem not just in Bolivia but in the rest of the Andean countries as well, and it affects tens of millions of people. Also, in contrast to the Andean west, the eastern side of my country is a very tropical and fertile land, which, as the rest of the Amazonian region is one of the major and vastest "lungs of earth", but in the past years this region has been recklessly deforested. I know these facts aren't as overwhelming as some others may be, but that is the reality I live.
Another example of my county's lack of awareness is that there are virtually no careers in undergraduate levels that address this subject and the very few Masters programs out there are short and entirely theorical.
In my country very few students give much thought to their professional career choices before enrolling, often times they choose a career the same day that they go and register. After graduating I found safe not to rush into just any career in my country, but instead I took a year off and worked as a coordinator for the Daniels Hamant Foundation in Santa Cruz among other things. This is an American-Bolivian Foundation entirely funded by private donations from Bolivia and the U.S. which provides primary healthcare and health education to rural communities around Santa Cruz and is based on a small clinic and 20 hectares of jungle that were donated outside Santa Cruz, we have taken a strong position against the cutting of trees around the clinic, even so that the Foundation is soon to buy fifteen hundred hectares of jungle as a way to both stop deforestation on this area and give jobs to many locals taking care of these lands and reforesting.
I know we are just beginning to understand how much us and every other living being out there depend directly on weather, and are starting to give it the respect it deserves at last. All the facts I have mentioned affect only a small part of our immense planet, and it makes me desperate to do something to somehow remedy this phenomenon, and although there might already not be a way back I am willing to make this the task of my life and the purpose of my every action. I have the will to make a great change, all I need now is the place to start.
Personal Statement
I want to study Environmental Sciences because after spending a year in Chicago as an exchange student in highschool almost 4 years ago I experienced my first winter and fell in love. Not in the way people usually fall in love with snow when they see it for the first time, I was amazed, and from that winter on, the "cold" became the object of my thoughts, I found my self researching about average annual temperatures and precipitation of every city I found interesting, I started relating everything to the weather, I eventually came to realize for example the relation that exists between countries with manifesting winters and the high standards of living in them. I come from the second poorest country in the second poorest continent, and because the political and social problems here greatly outrank anything else that may come up, it's sad to see that hardly anyone is aware of climate change at all, and even fewer people do anything about it. 80 percent of glaciers in my country have been disappearing in the last few years and it has been foreseen that as soon as next year we will start lacking water due to the glaciers' meltdown, also because of this, 80 percent of the capital city's power will be lost, since this is triggered by glacier water runoff. I personally think that's a heavy price to pay for emitting only a 0.03 percent of the world's total carbon emissions. This is a problem not just in Bolivia but in the rest of the Andean countries as well, and it affects tens of millions of people. Also, in contrast to the Andean west, the eastern side of my country is a very tropical and fertile land, which, as the rest of the Amazonian region is one of the major and vastest "lungs of earth", but in the past years this region has been recklessly deforested. I know these facts aren't as overwhelming as some others may be, but that is the reality I live.
Another example of my county's lack of awareness is that there are virtually no careers in undergraduate levels that address this subject and the very few Masters programs out there are short and entirely theorical.
In my country very few students give much thought to their professional career choices before enrolling, often times they choose a career the same day that they go and register. After graduating I found safe not to rush into just any career in my country, but instead I took a year off and worked as a coordinator for the Daniels Hamant Foundation in Santa Cruz among other things. This is an American-Bolivian Foundation entirely funded by private donations from Bolivia and the U.S. which provides primary healthcare and health education to rural communities around Santa Cruz and is based on a small clinic and 20 hectares of jungle that were donated outside Santa Cruz, we have taken a strong position against the cutting of trees around the clinic, even so that the Foundation is soon to buy fifteen hundred hectares of jungle as a way to both stop deforestation on this area and give jobs to many locals taking care of these lands and reforesting.
I know we are just beginning to understand how much us and every other living being out there depend directly on weather, and are starting to give it the respect it deserves at last. All the facts I have mentioned affect only a small part of our immense planet, and it makes me desperate to do something to somehow remedy this phenomenon, and although there might already not be a way back I am willing to make this the task of my life and the purpose of my every action. I have the will to make a great change, all I need now is the place to start.
