Question on the amount of personality within my Digital Media Arts Graduate Statement of Purpose

application for Digital Media Arts program

Please respond to the following.
·What is your purpose in applying for graduate study in your specified degree program? Describe your area(s) of interest, including any subfield(s) or interdisciplinary interests.

·What experiences have prepared you for advanced study or research in this degree program? What relevant skills have you gained from these experiences? Have your experiences led to specific or tangible outcomes that would support your potential to contribute to this field (examples: performances, publications, presentations, awards or recognitions)?

·What additional information about your past experience may aid the selection committee in evaluating your preparation and aptitude for graduate study at UCLA? For example, you may wish to describe research, employment, teaching, service, artistic or international experiences through which you have developed skills in leadership, communication, project management, teamwork, or other areas.

·Why is the UCLA graduate program to which you are applying is the best place for you to pursue your academic goals? If you are applying for a research master's or doctoral program, we encourage you to indicate specific research interests and potential faculty mentors.

·What are your plans for your career after earning this degree?

My purpose in applying to the Digital Media Art MFA program is three-fold. First and foremost, I want to take advantage of every opportunity that is afforded me, for many years I was lost, as I describe in my personal statement, and I have an insatiable desire to learn. Second I want to push the limits of my practice outside the scope of my comfort level, lastly, and most importantly, I want to use my MFA to teach at a college level in order to share with young students and artists how I found my voice in the hopes that they can find theirs.

Coming back to my education later in life, I have a deep appreciation for the quest for knowledge. Along with creative classes, I thrived within academia, specifically in classes that explored the seemingly incongruent dichotomy of humanity. Themes such as oppression, post-colonialism and privilege seeped out from the traditional construct of the academic classroom and began to heavily influence my work. I want to use my electives to continue to research and further extrapolate more understanding of these heady subjects and allow space for my work to reflect such understanding.

I am most interested in using digital media to change the narrative around pressing social justice issues. The majority of my classes at the University of San Francisco were built on the foundation of equality and a striving towards a just world. I was challenged to use each assignment not just as a chance to make something but to make something that had the potential to make a difference. This hyper-focused point of view paired with conceptual classes led me down a path pairing issues like climate change and gun violence together with corresponding data to create immersive and comprehensive media experiences. However, I came up against the limitations of a small program within a small school and stretched my education to the capacity of what was offered technically. I want to take advantage of the breadth of experience within the realm of not just digital media, but UCLA to widen my trajectory to include my other artistic areas of interest, specifically combining conceptual photography, sculpture and generative art into user-driven installation pieces.

The arc of my education has not been the status quo. I lived a life enriched with a diversity of experiences before I returned to finish my degree. Initially it was jarring to be in a classroom surrounded by people half my age. However, I humbly discovered along the way that my classmates often turned to me for help and inspiration, drawing on my experiences I found I was able to help in ways that the professors could not. In addition to the passion I found for creating work using digital media and art that pushes a new narrative around issues like climate change and gun violence I also discovered that I want to keep using my experiences to teach others how to find and use their voices.

I believe I am a good candidate for the Digital Media Arts program because I bring to it a life of rich and diverse experiences that will only promote a deeper understanding of the curriculum. My work has been drawn into the scope of what is offered and with the guidance and mentorship available I think that I have the potential to start a new dialogue around important issues both through the work itself and my desire to teach.

@jwoakley
Welcome to the forum! I'm here to provide feedback on your writing. Please don't hesitate to approach just in case you have any other additional questions that you'd like me to work on.

I appreciate the formatting that you used on the first part paragraph of the write-up. However, I do wish that you were a bit more consistent in terms of how you were writing. For instance, it was quite baffling how you transitioned here from one point up until the third one. Try to make use of more standardized and consistent transitions such as firstly, secondly, and lastly.. Doing this will make your writing appear a lot more polished.

When you introduce values into your writing, try to make sure that they're more consistent. For instance, the second paragraph's introduction of social justice still appeared to be rather vague. Try to be more specific - what are these values and how do they achieve equality. Once you've established it, then you can tackle how media can be of assistance to such ventures. Doing this will certainly give you a more logical writing pattern.

Again, avoid being vague when introducing yourself because you'll end up selling yourself short. For example, what can you bring forward concretely (not just values such as giving 'diverse experiences' to the curriculum) that's deeply attached to the core of these concerns? If you can be more specific, it will go a long way in your writing.