Undergraduate / My writing, my music, my self-expression - Transfer Statement! (Emerson College) [4]

Q: Please provide a statement (250 words minimum) that addresses your reasons for transferring and the objectives you hope to achieve.

R: Creating, and then communicating-this is what I love, and this is what I want to master. Outside of school, I produce music, I write an opinionated blog and I work to get it across to an audience. My writing has stirred up emotion and response in its readers, maybe now my cynics or admirers. My sound has drawn in artists and unexpected acknowledgement. These are my passions. I want these passions to grow with me into a prosperous future. At Emerson College, I would seek to have my expressive prowess bolstered into a goal-driven undertaking. My unyielding, creative ideology can be broadened, questioned and honed best by Emerson College while still receiving an influx of interdisciplinary knowledge.

For the past two years at American University I majored in Audio Production. And although their program has help mold my technical understanding of recording music, I feel limited. The emotional and behavioral connection that can be made from creator to audience can be more than audio technology: also sound design in film and live, theater mixing, readily available in Emersons' Media Arts. And through the ProArts Consortium, I plan to continue music production studies at Berklee. While keeping my focus on audio if attending Emerson, I hope to learn the technical aspects of all media art so that it becomes easier to free my imagination into tangible work.

Your department of Writing, Literature and Publishing greatly appeals to me because of its creative depth, covering everything from magazine writing to screenwriting and beyond. Because of my vigor to write opinionative and observational blog pieces as a hobby, I lust to learn amongst a professionally motivated Emerson, writing community sharing the common goal of excelling in the study and development of literature. And because part of the department's tradition is to "reshape ourselves according to our best designs," as Chair Daniel Tobin puts it, I am even more compelled to study under Emerson's professors, as this statement encompasses the way in which I strive to live, day to day.

My passion for writing and media arts lead me to believe that communicating these messages may be the most vital component to a successful future. Thus my inevitable interest in Emerson's School of Communication. Whether wanting to write Op-Ed's for the Berkeley Beacon or learn how to build a website to exhibit my writing or creative work, SCOM is essential to a complete, academic experience with its accomplished professors and a focus on dealing with one's professional career.

In currently being absorbed in my writing, my music and ultimately in self-expression, a school that heavily illuminates an education in the arts and communication without straying from a comprehensive, liberal arts program seems to be most befitting in stimulating my academic and personal growth. Emerson College's mission to bring innovation and depth to the arts and communication impeccably matches my aspiration to become a leader in expression.

Undergraduate / Once The 'Me' Fought Its Way Out, Story of your life(Emerson Transfer Statement) [2]

Q: If you were to write the story of your life until now, what would you title it? Why? (400-600 words).

Once The 'Me' Fought Its Way Out

Let's go back to the worst of it: the window, the clouds outside, the locked door, my mother knocking while my tears fell, searing against the radiator in the dead of winter. Therapy? What was it good for? Sedatives and antidepressants: what did they do? They numbed the pain. Would I gain anything from the pills: pill after pill after pill? But how much longer could I live thinking with such unrest? When would I just scream? Now, I was crying, but suicide soon? Maybe. The rain didn't help either. Nor did living in suburban New Jersey. But this has become commonplace in neighborhoods such as mine, no? Privileged adolescents grasping at the air for help, even-you can picture the prescription bottles being knocked over, spilling drugs to the floor, clickedy-clack go Xanax and Zoloft capsules. Again, it was that grim. I was pondering a life without this anguish; I was pondering ending it.

Not only did I seek a remedy to cope with this psychological distress, but also did I thirst for the what, why and how of it. I didn't want to relieve the pain any more than I wanted to understand the pain's inner-makings and complexities. What I felt? "It" (which I will continue to refer to my "case" as) will forever go without a diagnosis. Tell me, if institutionally-trained physicians and psychoanalysts galore appear dumbfounded after describing to them furious trains of clashing ideology roaming in chaos in my burning head as reoccurring sensations, then would YOU grasp my experience? Probably not, but would I stop pursuing an explanation for myself? No. I didn't stop.

With that refusal, came an epic dig. I began digging from the outside-in. I dug for some perspective. I dug for my identity trapped within. The apprehension and trepidation that leached to my mental grief and hindered my self-expression began shedding itself the more I exposed my vulnerability and weakness. True to its derivation, once you strip yourself of everything-once you've given into your fears totally-you learn the most about yourself. The "me" was finally in the reach. With an ultimate vulnerability, came my ultimate self-realization. What did I have to hide anymore from a judgmental and discerning audience?

The person (the A.J. that hand-shaking strangers meet and interact with initially) in which the 'me' had been carried in-an obsessively worried, paranoid and confused persona that attempted to fit into modern society-had finally been vanquished allowing the real "ME" to emerge. The me was burying "ME, "and I lived with it, until I started suffocating in the anxiety and paranoia that consumed my day-to-day existence. The "me" struggled to surface, but eventually the "me" emerged in I, and in whom I flourish today.

Yes, quite a transformation it was. But oh how this transformation took years of my life: dedicated and determined years. The transformation took the energy and informed opinion of countless doctor's, my mother's unwillingness to allow her son this discomfort and my willingness to be embarrassed; to be analyzed and critiqued; to be put down and to be mentally drained and drugged and flip it into a building process: to build a confidence in this person I just recently met for this first time.

And this person walked away from adversity appreciative of the experience: thanking a higher power that "it" happened because without it's harsh timeliness when would have the "me" broken through. The experience has made me all too content in my own skin. This "over-complacency" has me hailing words of criticism and concern onto anything I see or hear as objectionable. I have been called "brutally honest and hurtful" in my writing for a blog. But there is an underlying beauty in this, being that my outspokenness is testament to my new profound self-understanding and self-assurance. So once the "me" fought its way out, I am loud and real and unyielding in expressing my creative ideas. This is my life, now: loud, real, inspired and artful.

-Any criticism would be helpful. Thanks.