Graduate / "economic opportunity" - Personal Statement for Masters of Environmental Management [4]

The personal statement is to be no more than 600 words and "describe your career objectives and how Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies can help you achieve them. Include other considerations that explain why you seek admission to the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies."

Please make suggestions, I'm on my first draft.

I grew up on a small farm in rural south central Pennsylvania, spent a lot of my time outside, hunted a little, but largely was ignorant to environmental issues. I knew by my senior year in high school that I wanted to attend law school after college, hoping to exploit a great passion of mine, technology, through specializing in technology law. During my second year of undergrad I studied abroad at the American College of Greece in Athens, Greece. While there I became privy to a major pollution problem in many of the nation's bays. The shores are plastered with signs reading, danger no swimming, due to the years of industrial pollution creating layers a few feet deep of chemicals on the bottom of the waters. Then during a semester break I traveled to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where I was again exposed to another major water problem, a shortage. Something else clicked though during this enlightening experience, one word, energy. Energy is what makes possible the marvelous technology we all enjoy, but wait energy is also a never ending cyclical cycle which all environmental issues stem from I realized.

I went back to my home institution with a radically different perspective of the world, and with much to learn and explore. I discussed with professors, took classes relating to sustainability and the environment, attended lectures, stayed abreast to the latest environmental concerns, and reinvigorated a long dormant environmental organization on campus that became the York Environmental Society. It was an ecology lab in the beauteous nation of Costa Rica and a colloquium on Free Market Environmentalism that brought everything together, helping me set a clear career goal.

My career goal is to become an authority in environmental consulting. Advising individuals, businesses, and governments across the world on a multitude of issues, from an African nation struggling with wild life management, to a Fortune 500 Company that wants to adopt more sustainable practices, creating vast economic, social, and environmental value. To achieve this goal I plan to pursue two professional degrees. Firstly I have not lost my desire to attend law school; in fact I now see law school as a necessary and powerful part of my professional training, building an understanding of the complex policies, laws, and issues encircling energy and ultimately the environment, and just as importantly providing professional training pertinent to the business world. The other crucial step is the Masters of Environmental Management at the renowned Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

The structure of this program being modeled after one of the greatest men of the twentieth century, Aldo Leopold's challenge to us all of "learning to think like a mountain," is surely reason enough for one to chose the program. From the beginning of the "ascent" it lies the perfect foundation for the diverse knowledge needed to address the multitude of dynamic and continuously evolving environmental issues facing the world ecosystem today and into the future. Everything reaches a climax at the "mountains peak," pulling all prior knowledge and experiences from the "mountain climb" into a real world situation. Such as evaluating a company's practices to make achievable recommendations to reduce their energy usage, both lowering the carbon emissions and increasing their bottom line in the Business and Environmental Consulting Clinic or establishing value of the natural biota in a developing nation through recommending a policy to promote eco-tourism and hunting, creating vast economic opportunity and protecting the natural ecology of the region in the Emerging Markets for Ecosystem Services Capstone.