Statement of Purpose

The following is a statement of purpose I wrote after flirting with the idea of returning to grad school (again) to with the hopes of ultimately being a therapist. Since I haven't posted in a while, I figured I'd share this as the external prompt certainly helped me crank something out. Still waiting on the intrinsic motivation to alight for further traditional posts. 

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Most simply and broadly, the social work field as I understand it exists to provide services for those individuals and communities who seek to improve their quality of life across any number of societal spheres. As a profession it functions as a critical intervention against any number of complex ills that can maladaptively plague peoples of all backgrounds. Being a field that spans many disciplines, the syncretic nature of social work provides no shortage of entry points many of which stand in stark contrast to the profit over principle dogma and direction of many other domains that eschew essential human need in the pursuit of self-serving aims and objectives.

In general my purpose is to be of service as an agent of change; more specifically as a psychotherapist that will most ideally and impactfully benefit peoples of typically underserved and underrepresented communities whose direction may have been compromised amidst the chaotic and corrosive forces that virulently affect persons on any number of psychosocial levels. In short, there are many in need of basic services, yet due to a confluence of factors (e.g., limited access to and/or awareness of certain resources, or generationally entrenched and ingrained misperceptions of the field and its directives) these services may have gone overlooked or unaddressed altogether.

The social problem that most concerns me undoubtedly is the untreated abscess of mental illness that plagues society in general and minorities in particular. Unfortunately the festering sores of injustice affect access to treatment. When combined with deficiencies in awareness, they form a perilous coupling whose combustion is not spontaneous but on the contrary, is painfully predictable. The subterranean bubbling of suffering untold from both an individual and collective level, puts minorities especially, who already bear the brunt of many a spirit-breaking burden, at greater risk than their societal foils of pathologized behaviors that not only cripple chances for success as it is commonly understood, but exponentially amplify the latent potentiality for catastrophe. The prematurely and unnecessarily truncated potential of certain life outcomes would undoubtedly be serviced by someone whose unique set of experiences and inclinations would translate naturally in field of social work.

After indirectly experiencing such trauma matrilineally, it is my purpose to do what is within me to remedy this communal ill. My maternal grandmother not only committed suicide when my mother was in her youth, but the truth of the matter was swept under the proverbial rug for years, and this information was withheld from her until she was well into middle age. While the loss of a parent is indescribably traumatic, its cover not only masked the symptoms that would rule my mother’s own undiagnosed yet readily apparent depression in her adulthood, but also mirrored the aforementioned opacity that renders discussions of treatment silent amongst those who find themselves already on the outskirts of intervention. While religiosity has been an anchor to the black community for centuries, it also has doubled as an obstacle in the servicing of its mental health needs. While the pulpit and prayer books have been traditional home remedies so to speak, they are supplements to, not substitutes for clinical mental resources that are so often regarded as signs of weakness or in the black community especially. Moreover, if these essential dialogues are silenced as taboos in my family, one that reflective of so many black households, it stands to reason that similar silences echo in those like it.

As an advocate for minority affairs and mental health the MSW will allow me to act as a conduit, not only apprising said communities of these precious resources, but delivering them in a manner that is commensurate and consistent with their growing need. Moreover the distance that is maintained from the problem only serves to maintain an equidistance form the solution. As an aspiring clinician, I want to help close this gap. There are resources available to those who should have the intrapersonal wherewithal to take advantage of them and should be shared with those who may not.

Though I strive to service communities in need via traditional community mental health avenues, this aim is merely a reflective of the triage of tragedy. That is to say that is it far from an insular attempt to only serve those like me, but a rush to aid those who may need such services the most yet may be least likely to seek them out. Though I seek to increase access to the forgotten populations, I would be remiss and hypocritical to isolate and channel my efforts and energies towards those with whom I may share a mere phenotypic or narrative bond.

My main strength as it relates to the field is my naturally sensitive, empathetic, and intuitive nature. While in a hyper-masculinist culture these may be seen as weaknesses, my own positionality as a subject who has been no stranger to discrimination on a personal level and injustice on a systemic one would conversely function as assets in a clinical setting. It is my hope that these traits may attenuate the pain of individuals on a one-on-one level and that they may help effect change on an institutional one in the ultimate service of something greater than myself. My objective is to pull others as I push forward and to use my experiences and interpersonal insight and inclinations on a broader societal scale would be to leave a mark, no matter how faint, on the eventual uplift of those person(s) who may need help during their journey.

While I was raised in a middle-class black suburban household, my experiences to date in interacting with people have been a direct effort to counterbalance the miasmic and material shelter that was thrust upon me growing up. That is to say, my worldview is one informed by both college and untapped knowledge. Though I grew up in an affluent, mostly white neighborhood, I made it a point to venture beyond the city limits and immerse myself in the affairs and goings on of those who looked like me, but were from the other side of the tracks. This immersive affair with experiential awareness continued as an undergraduate and beyond to the point where my interpersonal conversance stands as a strength of which I am most proud. Though far from readily quantifiable or observable on paper, it could easily be argued that as nominally suggested by the field of social welfare that such social skills are just as important as any letter grade or score may be.

While I am acutely aware of my own identity, I am blind to difference and bound to commonality. That is to say, my range of experiences have helped foster a sense of oneness that elides centrifugal forces of otherness in favor or centripetal forces of sameness. In sum, people are the driving force in the field of social work (again as implied by its titular descriptives), and we have far more in common than not or that is typically realized.

It is my range of experience and relatability, grounded in an everpresent humility, honed by countless interactions amongst the rich and the wretched (to borrow from a phrase form famed psychiatrist Fantz Fanon), that gives me the unique potential to bridge gaps, to inter and intra personally introduce people to aspects of themselves and others to which they may have previously been ignorant. That is to say specifically for instance, my comfort level at a “high” class fundraising gala at the Waldorf=Astoria is the same as it is in the “low” (here I use the quotation marks to question the absurdly loaded arbitrariness of said constrastive distinctions) class ghetto of North Oakland, places I have been countless times (as a member of the Jackie Robinson Foundation and the Oremi mentoring program respectively). I have spent time in both circles which has endowed me with the capacity to relate to either who may be strangers to each other but are both common to me. (For the more visually inclined, one may picture a Venn Diagram whose interlocking overlap between two circles is the space I have occupied and mined for commonality.

Finally, though I have my times of extroverted ebullience, my natural tendency towards introversion has also endowed me with an ability to listen as opposed to simply waiting to talk, or worse yet, not hearing altogether and to learn rapidly. Numerous times, my friends have been nonplussed at my ability to recall the minute details of conversations years old that bear repeating in times of counsel and distress, and one even went to so far as to say that my ears are more like antennae registering and recording everything from the broad to the banal. This interpersonal fluidity, coupled with my desire to be of service as a beacon of hope for those lost in the darkness of tribulation would serve me well as future MSW candidate. Like most endeavors, my interest in social work is birth by an aim and buttressed by aptitude. In my particular case, the former is derived from a wholehearted interested in the welfare and wellbeing of others and the want to see them both secured, and the latter is derived from years of experience, both conventional and otherwise.

While graduate school in general and the pursuit of an MSW is undoubtedly a rigorous endeavor, it is an undertaking whose very rigor will most ideally yield to the vigor that I bring to the classroom. While some time may have passed since my foray into the ivory towers a near decade ago, critical thought knows no physical or temporal bounds, and it is a skillset that once learned is embedded in the psychic resources to be recalled at a moment’s notice and subjected to the will of those who been exposed to it. My indomitable will and work ethic will work hand in hand to not only maximize my chances for success at the graduate level, but far beyond, as I truly believe that the diligence and determination illustrated my by resumé, both academic and extracurricular will help me effect and influence social change. The MSW from USC’s top tier program will function as the breeding ground for the seeds of change to be planted to day in hopes of reaping the shared harvest of tomorrow.