A Russian woman who earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology in her native Russia a decade ago, I now live in Canada and your prestigious program at XXXX University is my first choice for graduate study because I see your program as the ideal preparation for my central goal of building a private practice, helping patients who suffer from depression, stress, and anxiety. I follow the simple wisdom of Lao Tzu who suggested that people who suffer from depression need to distance themselves from their past, and those who suffer from anxiety need to spend less time thinking about the future, learning to enjoy and find fulfillment in the present. I hope to dedicate my professional life to research as well as practice and to focus on the areas of personality and personality change throughout our life stages; most specifically, the way in which a scientific exploration of these areas might be useful for the treatment of depression, stress, and anxiety.

I am also very much impressed with the research undertaken by your distinguished faculty at XXXX, particular that of Dr. XXXX and his creative investigations of perfectionism and cognition as well as personality and alcohol use. I also have read some of the work of Dr. XXXX and appreciate his contributions in the areas of psychological health, anxiety, and depression. I am very much day dreaming about meeting the entire faculty and having the privilege of studying under many of them. I also look forward to participating in the celebration of diversity in your program, as a Russian woman, and learning from my colleagues from all over the world as well as my mentors. 

I believe that I have a moral duty to give something back to those who have not attained the level of success that I enjoy in the management of my mental health and spiritual growth. From my perspective, success is not attained by acquiring wealth, status, or even honor; rather, I measure success in terms of the achievement of a holistic life balance that results in our service to community, to humanity, and to ourselves, the enrichment of our own lives as well as those of others. Thus, the flipside of my own upward mobility, at least in my own mind and heart, is the need to stretch down a helping hand to help pick up and empower those who are in most need of my support and solidarity, the toolkit that I can provide them with for their own survival and search for satisfaction and meaning. 

I am particularly fond of the study of personality and social psychology—the intersection or overlap between these two areas of our field. I would like to study the connections in-depth between personality traits and general health, the ways in which personality traits might serve as predictors of illness. While I am very much excited about the broad gambit of areas of psychology covered by the core material of your rigorous program, in terms of a special area, I hope to focus most specifically on the relationship between personality characteristics, on the one hand, and stress, cancer, and cardiovascular disease on the other.

I look forward to studying why people act the way they do even if they know that the way they act directly leads to cardiovascular diseases or other chronic health problems. I have some doubts or reservations concerning some of the conclusion drawn based on the researcher of investigators such as Costa, McCrae and other scientists that suggest that personalities change only very little after age 30.  From my point of view, personality is changes constantly throughout the life cycle depending on the unique nature of our interplay between cognition on the one hand, and life events on the other, the extent to which we are able to find a health balance of central importance to both our mental and  physical health. I feel that we need more studies in this area so as to come to better understand some of the numerous and often more subtle connections between particular personality traits and particular health issues. All of this research will be invaluable for the development of preventive psychological initiatives that work to identify individuals at risk for certain disorders or mental health challenges, thereby building a more healthy society. To achieve these goals I look forward to learning much more about current developments in psychology in your Masters Program at XXXX: history, theory, methods and methodology, techniques, practice, and research in all of the most prominent areas of our field.

I have also long cultivated a minor interest in linguistics and have always been very passionate about the study of how we acquire, use, and understand language--unanswered questions in psycholinguistics.  To cite just one example of the kinds of questions that I enjoy pondering: Is the human ability to use syntax based on innate mental structures or is syntactic speech the function of intelligence and social interaction? I like getting lost in theories of how language works in the human mind, how we associate meaning with the sounds of language and how we use syntax. It would be especially interesting to study psycholinguistics related issues with respect to second language speakers.

I look forward to having a private practice and devoting a lifetime to the noble cause of helping clients to overcome stress and anxiety and to deal successfully with problems of adjustment to new or unexpected, difficult life situations. I want to wrestle with all of the most complex issues that surround our need to control the disturbed, choppy mind that is the source of much of our suffering, and how to ‘see’ and, therefore, better understand, what happens to us in life through conscious perception.

I began my own journey to psychology from philosophy. Already in secondary school I was most fond of Plato and Aristotle. It was thrilling to understand Plato when he talked about our physical world and our perception, and I struggled authentically alongside Aristotle for some time in the search for truth. Eventually, I found my own truth in psychology, at least I found the questions that I want to ask; in search of the answers that I anticipate will be of the greatest interest as well as utility, at least from my perspective.

My own spiritual journey has been a search for self-awareness and understanding. I now look forward to going further and immerse myself most fully in the professional study of psychology. I have been inspired by my extensive experience as a social worker, working with abandoned children in orphanages. I enjoyed self-publishing a book about this experience, “XXXX” that now is selling successfully on Amazon.  My second book was about philosophical approaches to life and my own inner journey in spiritual psychology: “XXXX.” Both books are available in a limited number of book stores. I hope to spend my life writing and to get better all the time, eventually, I hope people will notice.

I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking me into consideration for admission to your very special program at XXXX.