Why did you choose your proposed course and institution?
I propose to study master in Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Development. When I start my career as an Emergency Medical Services and as a disaster health care volunteer, I realized that the level of uncertainties in Indonesia region has been increasing recently driven by technology disaster, environmental disaster, or national disaster which positioned emergency and disaster management as a must, not anymore as a choice. It was my experience to provide health care service for tsunami victims that take place at Banten city and Palu city, Indonesia that blew my mind in 2018. Somehow, disaster mitigation in these cities was not yet optimal due to the harsh condition on the location. However, I did not have yet a deep understanding of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) from social, economic, and environmental aspects.
In order to address gaps in disaster risk reduction knowledge and disaster management, I did some research looking for a master program with a focus on disaster management. I choose the University of Newcastle because of the high level of academic standard that they have, especially for this program since it was the only program that contains United Nation (UN) co-certification in the use of tools and frameworks central to disaster preparedness, reconstruction, and disaster resilience. In addition, this program contains a core course related to disaster resilience and sustainable development that are underpinned by a practical grounding and application of the United Nations-Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030. It will not only help me to enrich my skills and capabilities in terms of emergency and disaster management but also it will help me to learn how to implement the UN sustainable development goals and how to develop strategies to avoid disaster. Eventually, it would help me at different levels, at the country level where I can serve and help to prepare, plan, and respond for a crisis when it has already happened.
Firstly, watch out for small technical mistakes. While these may be small, overlooking them can greatly harm your essay's structure because it'll appear unprofessional. These small mistakes I have noticed were primarily due to: punctuation, tenses, sentence structures, and general usage of particular terms.
Let's take a look at your first paragraph. It should all be in past tense, considering that you were referring to an experience that had already happened. You should always therefore use this same tense all throughout the paragraph (the essay in general).
For instance:
I proposed to study [...]
When I started my career [...]
And so on.
The misuse of punctuation and sentence structures are both hand-in-hand. I have noticed that you have a tendency to extend your sentences without much thought put into it. What I mean by this is that when you could have created simpler sentence structures, you still tried to merge and compress all your thoughts into a single one. This is a common mistake among ESL learners, considering that there is a lack of guidance on how to translate and integrate thoughts. What you can do, of course, is to try to evade doing this through being more self-aware as you are writing.
Let's take your second paragraph as an example. I can revise this instead as:
I have chosen the University of Newcastle because of the high academic standard. This program, in particular, is the only one that contains the United Nation (UN) co-certification in its usage of tools and frameworks that cater to disaster preparedness, reconstruction, and resilience building.
Notice how I tried to separate your sentence into two different ones. I had also ensured that I tried to minimize (or rather, eliminate words) portions that are irrelevant or unnecessary to the central thought of the essay. Doing this can help you optimize the space that you have for your essay.
Best of luck.
