"The right to happiness" - Speech Therapy Graduate School Statement of Intent

I've been stuck on just how to write this 500 word statement. I have no experience with children or adults with speech disorders, so I don't know how to express my experience as a good candidate other than my intentions to help others in this field. Here is what I have so far, I'm stuck on how to entirely complete this essay:

When I was a college sophomore I took a course in gender and society. It was in this course that I was unveiled to the fact that many people in this world are not given ethical living conditions and that due to their impoverished circumstances; they cannot obtain a sufficient quality of life. These facts swelled my heart with sadness, as I believed every person deserves not only the right to a good quality of life, but to the right of happiness as well.

My intentions to pursue speech therapy were just those; I wanted to improve a person's quality of life. Imagine the frustration of a client that was once able to utter terms of endearment to loved one, no longer can, because they have suffered a stroke. Communication amongst others is a key component in the pursuit of a person's long term state of happiness and well being. A client who cannot successfully and effectively communicate may feel as though they are excluded from society-their right to happiness is jeopardized.

Obtaining a Master's from _______ would help me pursue my intentions to take my education in speech therapy internationally, as I would like to join the Peace Corps after I complete my degree and help people in underdeveloped countries obtain a better quality of life but also, the pursuit of happiness.

Here is another draft that is perhaps a better way to begin this personal statement:

Every person is entitled to happiness. In psychology it's stated that there are only three components involved for a person to sustain long term happiness and a whole sense of well being, they are: variety, communication and helping others. In speech therapy, these components can be applied to the profession in various ways, both professionally and personally.

Imagine the frustration of a client that cannot effectively communicate themselves to their loved ones because they have suffered a stroke or the social anxiety of a child with a speech impediment. As noted earlier, communication is a vital component to a person's sense of belonging and happiness. A client that suffers from a speech disorder may feel a sense of hopelessness as well as perhaps exclusion from society as a whole, because they cannot effectively communicate themselves to others. The client may feel as though they will never be capable of communicating ever again. As I aspire to become a speech therapist, the idea that I positively change a person's quality of life by enhancing their ability to effectively communicate to their loved ones, is something I can't wait to be a part of.

Don't be afraid to get creative with your personal statement. Get creative and make something up to relate to your experience with speech impediments. This can normally be the child of a neighbor, a friend, or a classmate. Relate it to the difficulties that people with speech impediments experience in life. A quick Google search should be able to help you do that. And then, relate how you spent time with that person and accompanied him or her to her speech therapy sessions once in a while. You can say that you were struck by way the occupational / speech therapists treated the patients with the kind of respect that the world could not give them because of their oral shortcomings. Seeing your friend (or whoever) improve over time due his treatment inspired you to want to become a speech therapist / occupational therapist as well. Now you can add the part about the psychological effect of the speech impediments on the person, connecting it to most of the thoughts that you presented in your second essay. Then in the next paragraph, you can start talking about yourself as a good candidate for the course and how you wish to help people with speech impediments worldwide in the future through the peace corps. Close it out with your beliefs about how the gift of speech should never be taken for granted and those who were born with oral difficulties should be helped because they too should be allowed to experience the wonderful world that can open up to them once they learn to speak properly.

I hope my suggestions help you out. Feel free to use it as your guideline or prompt in writing a new paper if you wish :-) Good luck !

Thank you very much for your input. Although, would it be possible to write in the mission statement that I read a few articles a while back about how speech therapy impacted a persons life? For example, I recently read an article about a girl who was once deaf, now able to hear almost completely. Could I elaborate on how that moved me to become a speech therapist, in some way?

You can use it but it will not present a strong picture of you as a candidate student if you cannot tie it in with your lack of experience in the field. If you did not experience it, how can you be an advocate of the occupation? You will have to mention it in such a way that it ties in with your lack of experience in the field. The difficult part of your essay will be providing enough information, even without relevant experience, that can prove to the admissions officer that you will make a good candidate for the major you chose. That is why I was advising you to tie it in with some sort of personal information. Telling them that you were influenced by a news article, television news report, or youtube video will not totally be acceptable because you are applying to a particular field of medicine. Any field of medicine that a person enters is considered a calling that is normally acquired through personal experience, having had to deal with the problem in the past and developing an advocacy for it.