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Personal Statement

Towards the beginning of my school career, I could never really decide what I wanted to

be later in life. I always seemed to be flitting back and forth between what I enjoyed doing. It

wasn’t until I entered middle school that I discovered my love for languages. One of the classes I

signed up for during my first year of middle school was Latin. Once I experienced my first day

in that class, I knew what I wanted to do with my future. Since then, I’ve been taking as many

language classes as I could. So far, I have taken 3 years of Latin and 5 years of German.

The reason why I finally decided to pursue a career dealing with languages is that they

just seemed to come naturally to me. I still do have to put in a good amount of work when

learning these different languages, but I actually find myself enjoying the process. Since I

recognized the difference in my own effort when dealing with normal classes compared to

language classes, I recognized immediately that this was something I could excel at. Once I had

this idea firmly in my mind, I began to really put a lot of time and effort into all sorts of different

languages. It was around this time that I started teaching myself Japanese and Scots-Gaelic.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t taking official courses in these two languages, I still seemed to be

picking them up relatively well, which worked to reinforce my morale.

I am currently about to begin my sixth year of German and I do hope that I will be able to

carry on with these subjects further in the future. My ultimate goal is to earn a Ph.D. in

Linguistics, although there are certainly a few steps I’ll need to take in between. I plan to start by

earning a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing. From there, I’ll have my sights set on a fairly

well-ranked college where I can earn a Masters in Linguistics. Once I’ve established myself a

little in the field of linguistics, I’ll make my move towards earning a Ph.D. Every time I think

about my plans for the future, I feel as if I’ve got a concrete plan for what I want to do with my
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life. I often have to remind myself that even though I might have a solid plan, I still need to

execute it properly in order for everything to work out. Telling myself this ensures that I don’t

lose sight of what I want to become.