Outset and Introduction...

For my application to study abroad they asked me for a personal statement. Among the questions they ask of the applicant are the following:
-What are your academic goals?
-Why do you want to study abroad?
-Why have you chosen this particular program?
-What does this program mean to you personally and professionally?

Without further ado, this is the personal statement attached to my application:

                I am strongly magnetized in the direction of studying Korea. I believe there is much to be learned from this country which has stood in the shadow of China and Japan for many others. Korea has many distinct features which are applicable to economics and political science. Studying here will help me to decide which field I want to focus on which will lead to my declaration of one of those two majors. My senior thesis will most likely be based on the issues in that society. Some examples of issues I could explore would be the question of re-unification of the two Koreas or the impact on Korea’s economy which technology has made.

                The Korean War still lingers fresh in the mind of every Korean citizen. After the Korean War, the South had a GDP which was on par with Ghana. Now it is one of the world’s top economies while the North still suffers under the yoke of one of the last pure Communist countries in the world. This is just an example of the many different paths I could expand upon for a senior thesis. This is a goldmine of economic and political research and whichever one interests me more from my experience abroad will be my declared major. I will also be maintaining an entertaining and educational blog based upon said experience. I am treating this experience like an independent field project.

                For these reasons, Korea is undoubtedly a sound choice in my professional development. Yet these reasons dis-regard the vast opportunities for personal discovery. I grew up in a village with a serious lack of diversity. This, I feel, has left a huge hole in my childhood. Every day after school I would collapse exhausted on to my couch and dream of other places. I would reach for the T.V. remote and without fail I would always end up tuned in to the Travel Channel. As long as the program covered somewhere other than my town I would be interested.

                When I arrived at college I immediately set out to fix this problem. I became friends with people from vastly different backgrounds and asked questions and listened intently to what they had to say. I met a girl from Korea and she and I became good friends. I became interested in how, for instance, she could speak so fluidly in a language so alien to anything I had known whenever her mother called, hang up the phone and then speak perfect English. What I had only heard of from foreign places through the T.V. or from small talk in passing conversation within the bounds of my village was now accessible to me. I began asking her more questions, watching Korean movies, and when finally Christmas came I picked up a present for myself; a Korean language book.

                I learned the Korean alphabet easily; it was meant to be this way when King Sejong developed it in the Fifteenth Century. Soon I was able to read what (to the uninitiated) appears to be another hopelessly complicated Asian script. I was encouraged by this and became even more entrenched in my interest.

                It has been almost a year since this discovery of reading. My motivation to learn more has only grown and I am ready to go abroad. This year is the only year I can comfortably travel before buckling down to declare and complete a major. The questions I have will find answer here. Most consuming of all is the curiosity I have with regards to what the world holds for me.