Phd Cinema and Media studies SOP - need FEEDBACK!!!! please!!!

[Rocio]

Hi everyone! I really need you point out my linguistic and grammar errors because I'm from italy! But also your opinione and critiques are really welcomed!! Still need to write the closing paragraph and why I chose that university (more than one). But I'm in late so I need your opinion before ending the rest. Thank you so much!!!

 

 

Every day while I’m going from place to place, I let music from my red Ipod be my company. I raise the volume because just with my earphones on I am able to perceive every rhythmic song’s hint. I shape images from what I see around me, while I’m walking or I’m simply on the bus. It’s music that leads me to be a choreographer or an orchestra director between images. When they dance following the song and its timbral nuances, they have achieved the harmony. This is the way I reach inspiration whether I have to edit a short movie, a spot or a music video. This is the way I tell stories. The way I cross boundaries between me and the rest of the world. But, when was my starting line?

My entire life has been based on the unforeseen. Eleven months later my birth, the first hitch occurred in my life. An Italian family came in Perù to adopt me and change my life’s story. This event has made me inevitably different from the usual, it has shaped my strengths and my beliefs. Thus, I am Italian and the only spanish word I know is my own name that means dew. As I mentioned, I dwell in the unforeseen - positive or negative - so always ready to the consequent adjustment and willing to ask more from life. Since my birth.

I was around 15 when I got my first computer. My parents were scared I would have played videogames so they bought it in late. My game was Microsoft Power Point 97. Once learnt the software’s abilities, weaving music, words and images together in order to portrait a message became my favourite pastime. Since the beginning I had the inclination toward a video style, but Power Point had too limits - I thought. I met Adobe family during my senior year in Pittsburgh as an exchange student from Italy. I took the photography class and the digital media art class and there I had the big encounter with myself.

The second hitch occurred after diploma graduation. The year abroad costed too much and, despite in high school I took foreign languages as major, I couldn’t ask my family to support me economically for more five years in the best school of Interpreting and Translation studies in Trieste. So, I needed to change plan. I would say that unforeseen was the one pointed out my path: I wanted to work in cinema and media field and be video editor. However, because of my foreign languages background, I was weak in math and I failed the entry test for my Cinema and Media engineering choice. So I took another engineering, sat the goal - I should entered the following year plus graduating in plenty time - and worked toward it. Determination has always helped me.

During the past five years I have had firsthand experience as video editor and graphic designer among internships in Los Angeles and different companies in Italy. The working experience has strengthened my eagerness of learning, the pursuing of success and fulfillment as result. It has stimulated me to realize what means being part of a team, being collaborative, working under pressure and playing a positive role between colleagues. Most importantly, I got more familiar with my professional personality who sometimes is uncomfortable in this working society - in Italy, I mean. Creative jobs are not valued as much as usual jobs and they often prefer saving money at the expense of talent. Never been able to deny or accept this fact.

These last years have been the most important in terms of my professional growth, but of my life too. I learnt I won’t be able to have a job I don’t love. I won’t be able to be someone who I am not. Unfortunately, there is a little space for these values in my society, now more than ever since the recent financial crisis that has hit Italy too. There is no time to look for own aspiration, but a whatever job and feel safe to have one. Justifiable. And I also had to agree to compromises sometimes because my parents can’t sustain me forever. Because I care so much about my economically independence. For years I have been underpaid or not paid at all or, as in the last occasion, have accepted a job where I was supposed to be graphic designer and I actually edited fonts and colors in datasheets, but well-paid. However, beside the crisis, I opine that my society has the bad habit to teach and persuade people - in particular young people - to build very soon our own family as main purpose of our life and not be a person first.    

I saw many brilliant women but also men, in my opinion, acting with insane behavior: not having a safe job but a mortgage in order to live together because everybody does and not doing is like a disgrace. “Well, my parents sustain us with the mortgage.” is the answer. I’m sorry, do not take me as a cold person, I’m fond too but I will never be able to ask my parents to sustain me more because of this. And I’m not saying build a family isn’t a good thing. I will too, but I want more and I’d like more people in my country would trust in their great qualities and believe they can be mom/dad and a talented person too.

Moreover, two summers ago I had the experience that daily makes me question If this was the last day of your life, what would you do to make things right? I traded my vacation time with volunteering time in Romania. Building houses and feeding children in the streets. A very third world even though it is Europe. I realized how my passion and also job as video maker could turn in something that might help people. Once back home and thanks to the volunteering association who sent me there, I wrote an article attaching pictures I took and edited the video I shot, so that others would have made aware about what happens just around the corner. I can’t every day to give a straight help, but in my own way I can bring a message and make it helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TonyB79]

You'll certainly be the cutest one in your program!

I'm at work at the moment, but I will get back to you w/ feedback when I have a chance.

[Rocio]

Yes thank you I really need a feedback!

[hj2012]

Hey Rocio!

 

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Ph.D. statement of purposes should focus on your past academic/research experiences, and what you want to study in the future. This reads more like a personal history statement (which would discuss your journey toward academic study). Take a look at this SoP example. Though it's from a history ph.d. applicant, it should give you an idea of what admissions committees are looking for. http://ls.berkeley.edu/files/statement_of_purpose.pdf