Michael's Personal Statement

I apologize for the tardiness, it's been hectic.

MA in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh PA

In high school, college was always assumed. No, that’s silly. Assumed isn’t strong enough. If anything, college was always known. It’s like how birds know instinctively when it’s time to migrate, when it’s time to pack up and move somewhere else, to change their surroundings. Then I was in college. I had received a scholarship to the University of Texas at Dallas for Destination Imagination (creative problem solving) and I was majoring in Art and Technology. I lived on campus with three other freshmen males in an apartment. I spent three years at UTD. They were simultaneously the best and worst years of my life. I found love, friendship, acceptance, and intellectual stimulation. I also discovered the pains of failure, of being lost, of seeing a father suffer from a debilitating disease, recover, and then lose him when he divorced my mother.

I moved back home, leaving UTD and transferring to Texas Wesleyan University to not only take care of myself but to help take care of my Mother and Brother, the latter who was just starting college and the former who was beginning a new career. At TWU I had the fortune of receiving an incredible amount of luck in meeting Dr. Linda Carroll and the English Department. I became an English/Writing major.

These past two years have gone by so quickly. And in them I’ve discovered something that inspires me, and drives me. The first time I truly felt like I was studying something, that singular moment where every cell in my central nervous system flared and fired, titillating my consciousness happened last spring in History of Rhetoric. I was introduced to the thought behind communication, literally the thought behind the thought. I was enraptured by Booth, mesmerized by Foucault. Men and Women of a calling that I had always danced around: the art of communication. How every syllable and gesture is as monument us in conferring information as the greatest of orations. I want more. I want to study rhetoric, and eventually wield it. Perhaps in law, or even as a writer. This is why I am applying to Carnegie Mellon.

I’m at a crossroads in my life, a point for which my entire life up until now has been spent in preparation. I’m looking at graduating in May, and honestly, I’m terrified. But at the same time I’m excited. I’ve found a passion in life. I’ve really begun to discover who I am and I feel that I can continue to do that while I study Rhetoric and Discourse at Carnegie Mellon.

If Discourse is the method by which we shape our reality, then I want to use Rhetoric, and the study thereof to shape my future. After graduate school I don’t have any firm plans; I was thinking about becoming a rhetoric professor or maybe even pursuing a JD and going into Law, using my passion to help others. But ultimately I feel that a Master’s in Rhetoric is the next step in my growth.