Personal Statement Evaluate One Important

Personal Statement

Evaluate one important aspect of your educational experience to date. Among your options is a book, a course, an individual, or a significant experience that influenced you in a meaningful way. Then, in light of your discussion, briefly indicate how the university might shape your future education.

The University of Washington's stress upon interdisciplinary education seems to offer me the ideal environment to shape my character, as well as my professional aspirations. The university stresses student-directed learning, and encourages boundless curiosity. Of all of the classes I have taken over course of my high school career, the most foundational have stretched the boundaries of all of the disciplines. For example, when I was learning about "Hamlet" in English class, my teacher did not simply approach the play as a difficult vocabulary exercise. Instead, before even opening up the cover of the book, the class learned about daily life in Shakespeare's England, and how plays would have been performed historically. Students were prepared for the unfamiliar language, and storyline. But the class was also allowed to discuss, personal feelings about the play, and how we identified with Hamlet as ordinary adolescents who were facing philosophical conflicts with our friends, parents, and society.

At one point Hamlet says: "I do not know/Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;' / Sith I have cause and will and strength and means/to do't." (4.4). Hamlet believes that knowing what to do in life will provide him with some relief from the unhappiness he feels after his father's death. When he believes he is duty-bound to revenge his father, he feels energized for a moment, but he always doubts if this is the moral course of action. He creates tests to see if what his father's ghost says is true, and still hesitates to kill Claudius until the very end of the play. "Hamlet" showed how we all seek a clear purpose in life, and sometimes it is tempting to find an easy solution to a lack of direction. I admit that like Hamlet, I have many doubts about what is the right way to live. I know that I must gain a full knowledge of science, philosophy, and every possible academic area to come to grips with the great changes taking place in the world today. I look to college to provide me with the ability to find, if not answers, than the ability to ask the right questions that will enable me to lead a more ethical and fulfilling life.