Conflict resolution and peace study - Statement of Purpose for PhD in IR

Can you work your magic on my SoP? Thanks!

I am a practitioner. In the last 21 years, I have studied security systems, indigenous survival, violent and non-violent social change, peace building, and conflict resolution. My classroom was not made of brick and mortar. My preliminary education came from being a soldier, under arms, in the field, sweating and freezing.

I aspire to study international relations in the XXXX PhD program. I want to graduate from practitioner to scholar, blending theory and practice to find alternatives to violence through study in XXXX. I propose to exchange ideas, work collaboratively and support the XXXX Center for Global Peace. I endeavor to graduate from working-class to scholar-class in my impassioned avocation. I intend to devote a lifetime to teaching undergraduate and graduate students. I would like to contribute and shape national security policy, when the opportunity presents itself. To this end, I would pursue the International Affairs degree with study and research in International Politics and International Peace and Conflict Resolution.

Conflict resolution and peace studies have always captivated me. I began my study of peace by joining the profession of arms in the United States Military Academy. After graduating in 1989, I was an infantryman assigned a sector of the NATO General Defense Plan in West Germany. Subsequently, I deployed to Desert Shield/Desert Storm and served as a platoon leader in that war. I later planned rescue contingencies for U.S and Coalition forces should peacekeeping operations fail in Bosnia. I deployed to the Balkans to protect the Kosovar Albanians from the Serbian ethnic slaughter. I supported peace and humanitarian relief to Monrovia in the Second Liberian Civil War and planned the non-combatant evacuation of Lebanon and the Levant. Later that year, I assisted planning for the invasion of Iraq, and gallingly waived an opportunity to plan "Phase IV" stability and reconstruction to cement my position in the "Liberation." I deployed to the contentious northern Iraq and managed Kurds, Turkomen, Sunni Arabs and Chaldo-Assyrians in the oil-rich region of Kirkuk. I served the joint military community by planning the consequence management of a terrorist attack upon the Panama Canal, and later operations in Cuba, post-Castro. I returned to Iraq and implemented counterinsurgency and reconciliation techniques in religious and ethnic- torn Sunni-Shiia Baghdad. In all, I have occupied a front-row seat in the collusion of identities, competing political philosophies and religious intolerance in a macedoine of nationalities.

I have prepared academically for this journey. I earned a Master of Arts in Military Studies and a Master of Science in International Relations. I spent a year as a fellow in the in the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation, a graduate-level institution focused on the political, historical, and human rights issues in the western hemisphere, as chartered by the Organization of American States. This fellowship and all academic work were conducted in Spanish. Later, I attended the Joint Forces Staff College and earned the Douglas MacArthur Writing Award for an essay in national security affairs. Additionally, I served as a professor for UUUU in the undergraduate international relations department, teaching courses in Technology in IR, Treaties, History of Latin American, and Government and Politics of Africa. I taught for two years before Operation Iraqi Freedom interrupted my service.

I have attended XXXX information sessions and have toured the facility. I have conducted office calls and communicated with several professors, and have spent time in the research facilities. I have found the XXXX program to be extremely competitive with other programs offered in universities in Washington DC. In the areas of human rights, stability and reconstruction, peace building through reconciliation, and peace studies, XXXX is peerless. My desire and commitment coupled with XXXX faculty and resources seems to be a perfect match. I sincerely hope to build a mutually benefiting association and contribute my best towards a successful research endeavor. Thank you for your consideration.

Given that you have such a strong background and are such a good match for the program to which you are applying, I assume that what you want from us are style editing tips.

I'm ambivalent about your first sentence. I understand why you wrote it as you did, but I feel that it weakens rather than paves the way for what follows. Perhaps that's because "am" is not an action verb. I'd encourage you to either come up with a more vivid first sentence or just start with "For the past 21 years..."

One statement I think needs clarification: "I began my study of peace by joining the profession of arms in the United States Military Academy." Few people set out to study peace by joining the army. Why not tell the reader by what reasoning you determined that path of action?

In so doing, you would begin to address my one overriding critique of this statement, which is that, while it describes your experience very thoroughly, it gives the reader no sense of you as a person who did and lived through all of these things. I'm not suggesting you bleed on the page, just that you allow the reader a glimpse of the unique, breathing, thinking person who made all of these choices and now wants to take the step of getting a PhD. Remember, admissions committees for graduate programs generally include the scholars who will be working with the students. They like to have a sense of the person behind the CV, if you know what I mean.

The first line is also weak because it doesn't make sense. You are trying to contrast "practitioner" with "scholar." However, you then immediately say that you have spent the past several years "studying," which is the province of the scholar, not the practitioner. Put another way, if you say you are a practitioner, you then have to go on to say what it is you practice. I see the distinction you are trying to make -- between learning in the real world and learning in a classroom, but the rhetorical constructions you use don't quite work. It is a solid distinction, though, and you can probably fix what you have with a bit of thought.

I like the idea that you decided to study peace by joining the army -- I don't know a better place to study it, come to that. But Simone is right -- you should probably elaborate on that a bit more, to make certain that your meaning is clear to all of your readers.

The main problem I see with this SOP is that it doesn't actually tell me that much about your purpose, which is the very thing you are supposed to be writing on. You have a lot of experience that would make you a valuable asset to the university, but what exactly do hope to accomplish? You indicate that you hope to become a professor, but what elements of International Affairs specifically do you hope to research? What do you hope to learn about them? Why? Unless you answer these questions, you will not have a true SOP so much as a very well-written cover letter.

You guys are good. Thanks much.