I am a young woman who was born and raised in Thailand. I want very much to dedicate my life to becoming a social organizer and this is why I seek to specialize in this area as a student in your unique program. Most dedicated to the joy of lifelong learning I have always been a hard worker and have been blessed by my efforts. I have been able to enhance my education to the point where I now feel qualified and confident in asking for admission to study in such a distinguished program in a world-renowned university.
I began school in the Thai countryside where my mother was an elementary school teacher. The single greatest influence on my life so far, I cherish her example and pray that I might be able to someday inspire my own children in such a distinguished manner. I always excelled in school and attained my undergraduate degree in Thailand in English. I have had a love affair with the English language almost ever since I can remember, closer than that of a sibling, I now dream in English and it has become a full fledged expression of my soul. Also in Thailand, I went on to earn my M.Ed. Degree in Educational Psychology. I did this in keeping with my dream of devoting my life to education, giving everything that I could to teaching.
My dedication to my career in education became derailed, however, by my new life in America, which began with my arrival 8 years ago. I must confess that I was somewhat infected by the quite American bug of materialism, I wanted to get rich, just like so many that I saw around me in this land of plenty. As a result, I dedicated myself to the task of attaining an MBA with an emphasis on marketing. Yet, as time went on, I began to realize my error, the shallowness and emptiness that accompanies the rat race to keep up with the pack and I decided to return to school to prepare myself as a public servant.
I was an ABD for a Doctoral Degree in Public Administration until last August of 2009. It was the early part of last year when my general good fortune in life let me down. The dramatic events which caused me to be unable to complete my MPA degree are highly personal—I asked for a leave of absence and it was denied—and I do not wish to try to explain these events here, because they are now in the past. I have had some time to reflect profoundly about my life and family circumstances, and I have recalibrated my outlook on my own future and wish to make a shift, at the same time that I begin again, in the right direction.
I want to return to another graduate program in human organization and begin again, now that I have my personal problems fully resolved. I find myself enormously attracted to the novelty of your MBA program in Human Organization and would love to join. I am most excited about the prospect of constantly challenging assumptions through critical reflection, and fostering group and self-directed learning processes in creative ways.
I very much look forward to becoming an active member of the academic community to provide collective support, learning from peers as well as professors from a variety of cultural backgrounds. I appreciate the diversity of your faculty and wish to train to be a leader, a social investigator and strategist who is adept at assisting organizations to adapt to continuous change. My short term goal upon completing your program would be to start a non-profit educational organization devoted to networking and public education in Thailand at the same time that I would join a college or university as an adjunct professor. I want the central focus of my studies to be about educational organization and this is the primary reason why I have my heart set on attending XXU, because I see your university as especially distinguished in this area. And I am particularly attracted to your manifest concern for the education of children in developing countries.
I want very much to become a leader in the field of education and to make important improvements to the underdevelopment of my country of origin, Thailand. I am especially interested in the education of women and girls who often appear to be singled out for being left behind by the system. As a woman, I hope to benefit women in my country to develop strength, dedication, and self esteem that is courageous and tenacious in the face of the resistance of traditional boundaries and mores.
I strongly believe that this kind of bold courage and assertive leadership initiatives are entirely necessary to achieve widespread and sustainable progress in making necessary and long overdue changes in well-established (and male dominated) bureaucratic organizations that by their very nature resist change as a result of narrowly defined personal interests for the short term—greed, pride, corruption. I ask for admission to your program so that I can become a militant for progressive education reform in Thailand that would help to benefit coming generations of girls and young women who all too frequently find no greater professional solace in life other than entering prostitution.
I look forward to doing research on the subject of educational policy in Thailand and how it is biased towards the educational success of boys and men at the expense of women and girls. Only by fully exposing this injustice and describing its entrenched character in both society and the educational bureaucracy can we hope to find the tools to make progressive education towards the liberation of woman a reality.