Graduate / From music to public health; SOP for MPH [3]

Hi all - I've been having a tremendously terrible time writing this essay. I'm coming to public health via a totally unrelated field (music) and have no background in public health. The "why a MPH" question has been particularly hard for me. I feel like I might have begun to capture it below, as well as the other questions asked by the Uni I'm applying to. I very much welcome all sorts of criticism, so please don't be shy. This is a rough first draft, so don't hold back!

The questions asked for the sop:
What are your reasons for pursuing a Master of Public Health?
Why do you wish to pursue your MPH at XXX University School of Public Health?
How do you intend to leverage your MPH in a career of public health practice?

I recall a time when I knew exactly what I was going to do and how my life was going to unfold. I was thirteen and all-knowing, as thirteen year-olds are wont to be. I announced once, in the presence of adults, that I had my future mapped out and that it would proceed as planned. They laughed and told me to just wait and see. I sniffed with teenaged moral superiority and went on my way.

As a young woman, I grappled with depression and self-harm. Aimless and disinterested in my own life and well-being I limped through college classes, unable to invest in or care about the course I had so ardently believed in just a few short years before. A family move back to my home state shook me up enough that I knew I had to change, however I still struggled, trying to force myself into the mold I had created for myself as a child. Doing so, though, led to continued academic struggles and suffocating unhappiness.

I slowly realized that the problem wasn't me, it was what I was trying to force myself to be. I talked to my parents and grandmother. I talked to the friends I had left behind in Texas. The next semester, I enrolled in the music program at XXX College. The next several years were ones of growth and maturation. I came out to myself, my friends, and family. I met the woman who would eventually become my wife. I learned to face difficulties head-on rather than running and hiding from them. It was absolutely terrifying and absolutely the best thing ever to happen to me.

I continued my musical education through the Master's degree and then pursued a career in opera. I took several jobs, many of them titular roles. Eventually, however, it became apparent that I would never be able to support myself, let alone my family, through singing. I was faced with a decision. Stay in the administrative job that supported me financially and afforded me the flexibility to take gigs but didn't fulfill me or look for something new. It wasn't an easy decision. My choice to major in music had set in motion a series of events that led to a woman who was happy and confident in herself -- the exact opposite of the girl who had made that decision. Music had made me the person I was. What would giving that up mean?

It meant a serious time of mourning and anger. I hadn't just invested my hopes in this career, I'd invested my entire identity. Finding out who I was without music -- opera -- was hard. I poked and prodded at myself for a long while trying things out, until I could find something that resonated like music did.

I became an opera singer because I loved it. I loved the pageantry and the music, the travel and working with other amazing musicians. I loved the catharsis of singing and I loved that I could bring that beauty, emotion, and feeling of transcendence to a theatre-full of people. I knew that this joy is what had propelled me forward and I knew that I wanted to do the same for others.

What I should do became the question. I looked seriously at engineering, but I realized I was trying once again to stuff myself into an old mold of what I thought I should be. So I scrutinized my reasons for choosing music and engineering and what I came up with is this: I wanted to give people the tools to enhance their lives. I wanted people to be better off than I was when I was their age. I wanted to spare them the pain of my experience.

Again, my mother was my friend. As an administrator at the XXX School of Veterinary Medicine, she was able to listen to what I wanted and to give advice. This time, familiar with the MPH offered as part of XXX's Veterinary Medicine program, she was able to hear the gestalt of what I desired and boil it down to a singular pursuit: Public Health.

To be honest, I had never considered a career in public health. Public health initiatives are so ubiquitous, the benefits so pervasive, that most people -- including me -- don't realize they're benefiting from them. But as I researched public health and all the aspects of society it encompasses, I got excited. Public health impacted me in so many ways - as a youth dealing with depression and deliberate self harm, with an uncle who had served in the armed forces and never received the psychological counseling he needed, with my friend who died from accidental auto-asphyxiation, with my grandmother whose death was complicated by years of alcohol abuse, with my grandfather who suffered spousal abuse at the end of his years, and with an uncle who died directly from alcohol abuse.

Despite the pain of other ailments, none of my family smoked because they all believed in the anti-smoking campaign from its earliest origins. If alcoholism didn't carry such a stigma, I believe it's possible that my grandmother might have lived a longer, healthier life and that the death of my eldest uncle could have been completely avoided. If depression had not been such a taboo subject, I might never have felt the need to hurt myself, and if sexuality had been freely discussed, my friend might never have been tempted to attain a high through asphyxiation.

My interest in a career in public health is new, but my investment, however unintentionally, in public health spans my entire lifetime. Since I've discovered public health I've become active in the Medical Reserve Corps and in the public health board of my city. As I look forward, I see many positive outcomes to a degree in public health.

I could potentially join the VA and help the men and women we send to war adjust to civilian life and study the psychological and physical ailments that are unique to soldiers. I could also take part in interventions that destigmatize female sexuality and help develop programs that decrease the prevalence of typical STIs. I could also take part in alcohol cessation programs and youth intervention programs. I could assess access to clean water and its relation to infectious diseases. I could help determine the impact of pharmacological runoff. I could discover a new determinant of cancer.

Public health is a wide-ranging, vastly intriguing field. Though it's something I'd never considered, it is something I have come to later in life, after a great deal of thought. XXX University is the right choice for me because, as a XXXan for approximately thirteen years, XXXSPH's heavy involvement in the surrounding communities is important to me. Also, the emphasis on every aspect of public health skills will prepare me for the interdisciplinary world I will enter as a Master of Public Health.

I have, thanks to the hurt, insecure girl I once was, decided that a career dedicated to the needs of the many is what I'm meant to do. Only now I won't be doing it in false eyelashes and flashy gowns. Now it's just me.