Part II

There is a tendency today to believe that questions have no right or wrong answers, that nothing is true or false.  Relativism, in most liberal circles, is accepted unquestioningly.  Even in this essay question, the prompt makes a relativistic claim: “These questions do not have yes or no answers, and they do not have right or wrong answers.” 

Why?  What about these questions makes them immune to right and wrong answers?  On what basis is this claim made?

Frankly, I doubt the claims of relativism and I doubt the claims that there is no truth, no certainty, no right and wrong.  The ideals of Truth and Certainty and Rightness are too historically persistent, too important to every living person, to be abandoned.  Is the loss of Truth desirable?  What takes the place of these ideals in a human being thirsting for meaning?  How do we frame arguments and resolve them when we let go of truth?  How do we navigate different perspectives if every one is equally valid and sound? 

Since graduating from college in 2000, I have been wondering about these topics in the way that you only ever realize in hindsight.  Over the course of the last 3 to 4 years, I made that realization, and the vague, inarticulate questions took shape.  A specific question emerged: What is the nature of truth?   As I became aware of the question, and realized how often it was replaying in the background of my mind, I knew that at some point I’d have to respond to it. 

I have a few standard lines of inquiry in approaching philosophical questions.  Because I underestimated the difficulty of this question at first, I executed my standard knee-jerk response as my first line of inquiry.  I tried to undercut the question semantically. What is the meaning of “truth” anyway?  What does “nature” really mean?   Does truth even have a nature?   By picking apart words, I can sometimes dismantle a question enough to sweep the remnants under the rug.  This line of inquiry raised some interesting questions, but it did not make the overall question go away. 

After about a year, I got the semantic argument out of my system.  I began to take the question more seriously—mostly because it would not go away.  I used my second standard line of inquiry.  I started to think about why I—or anyone else—would be concerned with this question in the first place.  This move—a psychological investigation of a philosophical question—is something that I learned at Penn.  Through reading Brentano, Kant, William James and others, I identified with the mental perspective on philosophical questions.  It’s always a person who’s asking it, and that person is living and has needs and desires and physical experiences, etc.  So I investigated myself—my life—more thoroughly to see why this question captured my attention.  Although interesting (because I was able to justify thinking about myself for long stretches of time) this line of inquiry left me more aware, perhaps, but still unsatisfied with my understanding of the question. 

It was around this point in time, I think, that I “discovered” Ludwig Wittgenstein.  In reading his work, it was not so much what he said, but the way he said it that caught my attention.   Through his writing, and reflection on works by Bertrand Russell, it began to occur to me that perhaps the “standard definition” of truth is, in fact, misleading.   Most philosophers have an unstated assumption that truth establishes an idea and something to correspond to it, a fact and a reality.   When people discuss truth with a capital “T” they generally mean an idea that cannot change.  Truths are ideas that can, under no circumstances, be wrong.  Thus, we can believe Truth (or truths) with certainty.  This desire for certainty, the desire for correct beliefs, the desire for meaning, is so deeply entrenched in human beings that, I believe, “truth” is inevitable.  For many people, truths are secret places in their lives, where questions are not allowed.  In reading Wittgenstein, I saw that the truth was the place from which his thoughts were articulated.  No one else I have ever read, issued ideas with such honesty and force.

The drive for certainty that I recognize(d) in myself, spotted in Wittgenstein, and nearly every other philosopher/mathematician, prompted me to consider ways of redefining truth so that it could retain its benefits and lose its costs.   Truth, of course, is just a word, but the feeling that underlies it is invaluable.  This prompted me to consider the idea that truth might be a feeling, nothing more.

I do not think that a worldview of absolute certainty is as appealing as it once was.  Relativism embodies that lesson.  We have all seen too many attempts at the same old thing.  Einstein’s attempt for the Unified Theory.  Plato’s ideal.  Hegel’s Spirit.  Pirsig’s Quality...Spinoza, Leibniz, etc.  A parade of truths that later turn out to be flimsy, incomplete, limiting and, well, untrue.  Looking, from my point of view, at ideas as prompted by very human humans, it seems that metaphysical paradigms of truth are more motivated by an individual’s attempt at closure, resolution and certainty, than by the merits of their case.  When you look with any depth at grand, metaphysical theories, you see that there is a lot to them, beauty and elegance, creativity and passion, vision and comfort, but they don’t do much.  You can’t base decisions on them, or if you do, they do not really provide much guidance.  You can’t build based on them.  You can’t even quite understand them.  To me most truths seem like the intellectualization of a craving for certainty, satisfying for the thinker and the thinkee alike, if both believe that such certainty is desirable and possible.    

As of today, I believe that truth is a feeling, nothing more.  I remember reading an argument by a philosopher (I think it was Dan Dennett) a while back who recommended that we think in terms of relative truth values.  Rather than absolute values of 100% true and 100% false, with no inbetween, we see 50% truth in one case and 60% falsity in another.  I think this idea misses the point as well.  Whether you think of truth as absolute or relative, you are still thinking of it as something external, something about the world, rather than an experience that an individual possesses.  The application of relative values continues to mobilize the standard definition of truth.  It is just this definition that gets us into trouble.

When we consider our everyday perceptions we do not think of applying the idea of truth to them.  Is it true that I feel relaxed right now?  Is it true that I am experiencing the view of computer screen?   By limiting the subject matter for which truth can apply to feelings – and nothing more – we put things, I think, in their proper place.  I believe this is the idea that Wittgenstein was struggling to articulate.  Truth is an expression of feeling to which ideas of right and wrong do not apply.

Sample Essay #2
Carol L. Morris-Scata

Part I:  GLSP Coursework Has Changed The Way That I Think

            One evening in May we drove to Leventis, a local restaurant in Columbia that, while not promising a cosmopolitan atmosphere or menu, at least offered a decent salad bar and satisfactory glass of wine.  As my husband and I pulled into the driveway of the plaza, I noticed the wetlands areas, carved into pieces by the intersecting highways, Routes 66 and 6, and wondered how anyone could have ignored the impact that car travel—ours included—had probably had on the ecosystem.  “Must have gotten this through zoning before there was wetlands protection,” I thought wryly to myself.  However, as we eased the car into the parking lot, an amazing site caught my attention.  There, in the midst of a small pond, surrounded by marshy grasses, rose a 3 ½ to 4 foot high mound . . . a muskrat lodge.  I knew it was the work of muskrats, not beavers; its shape, its construction of small sticks and plastered mud, and its location, smack in the middle of the pond with no dam in sight, meant that beavers weren’t the builders here.  I excitedly explained all of this to my husband, who wondered how I could be so sure.  Almost as if on cue, the muskrat popped up from its home; it looked around, swam over to the tall grasses and lightly wooded area to the west of the pond, and then disappeared into the shadows. 

            I recall this vignette because it’s a sign that I am changing.  I’ve become more observant of the natural world that surrounds me, and I wonder about that world.  It’s not that these things weren’t there before; I just hadn’t paid that much attention to them, or if I had noticed them at all, didn’t really know what I was looking at.  How did I know that this was a muskrat lodge?  I had just finished studying the biology of mammals (SCIE 619) with Geoffrey Hammerson, PhD., and the difference between muskrats and beavers was just one of the topics that Geoff had talked about with us.  Hiking through the Nehantic State Forest on a warm Sunday afternoon with a small group of fellow grad students, I had a chance to see different beaver lodges first-hand and to walk upon the woven, vegetative material that was used in one of the abandoned lodges that we discovered that day.  On another evening field trip to an old cranberry bog in Portland, I watched in fascination as a pair of beavers swam towards me with freshly cut saplings trailing from their mouths.  They were repairing their dam; it had been purposely opened up by DEP workers attempting to reduce the water level to protect a species of wildflower located in the bog. We also heard the feeding buzz of bats as they closed in on their dinner of moths. (Geoff had brought a device that translated the bats’ frequencies into sound patterns that humans could detect.)  I have tried to recapture that night for my own two classes of fifth graders, but truthfully I often fall short; the emotional connections I have made from my coursework at GLSP are intense, vivid.  In many respects, they outweigh the academic progress that I have made.

            Yet, the academic progress has been substantial.  I currently hold a 4.0 GPA with GLSP, but that number does not reflect at all the amount of intellectual development I have experienced, or the amount of work that I have had to do to attain those grades.  I have never worked so hard in any other graduate program.  When I started the program last spring, I had a vague notion of cells, genes, and DNA. (A more accurate description might be “very vague”).  I had no idea how everything fit together . . . the C, T, G, and A's of DNA, the 3 letter codes that translated into genes, how proteins were determined and their importance to living things.  I had never heard of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR for the uninitiated) and never thought recombinant DNA was anything I would ever see, let alone create.  So at the end of my very first day of Genetics Laboratory (SCIE 680) with Professor Michael McAlear, I was overwhelmed, and in fact, borderline hysterical.  I did not think I could ever learn this material, and to have to handle lab equipment with any kind of efficiency seemed beyond my capabilities.  If it had not been for the patience, encouragement, teaching, and reteaching by this instructor, I probably would have quit GLSP. But I finished the course, able to wield a pipette fairly well, and wrote a lab report that even now I reread with a great deal of personal pride.  And I am still here, having just completed Biotechnology (SCIE 681).  While I cannot say that I fully understand the mechanisms of cells, DNA and genes, certainly I understand them more, and as far as genetics is concerned, I am hooked!

            If it’s possible to imagine a quiet explosion, then the proliferation of genetics research, and its application to just about every aspect of human life, is just that.  Each week, what I learned in Biotech often became the subject of lunchtime conversations with colleagues at school.  I have some strong feelings about stem cell research, I’ve discovered.  I worry about GMO crops and cloned animals; from a conservationist’s viewpoint they present the specter of shrinking gene pools and loss of diversity.  And how will genetic engineering affect society?  Will the future child with a disability be even more shunned if his/her parents did not have a problem corrected before birth?  Will there be even more social and governmental pressures to conform?  Is curing cancer a realistic goal?  What effects will it have on the world’s burgeoning population?  Can mapping the genome for rice and other crops eliminate world hunger?  It is almost impossible for me to pick one idea and say, “This is what I want to study”.  I want to know about all of it, and basically I worry that I will run out of time. 

Part II:  My Intellectual Interests:  Inspirations and Explorations

            In the early part of the summer, I began a little experimenting of my own with hummingbirds.  I had had a feeder before, but noticed this year that the “hummers” were reacting peculiarly.  They would fly up to the feeder, but never feed.  It was a new feeder, so I wondered if the difference in feeding station had confused them.  I also was using a different kind of prepared nectar, but how did they know they didn’t like the food when they never put their beaks into the feeder to taste?  Our genetics lab professor, Mike, had told us that a big percentage of the human genome was devoted to the olfactory system.  Was this also true of hummingbirds . . . could they sense differences without tasting?  I went back to the original style nectar, varied its amounts in the feeder, changed the feeder location slightly to give the birds better access.  I never did figure out exactly what caused the birds to react differently, and they never fed from the feeder as habitually as they had in previous years.  But the point is this: new learning from my courses at Wesleyan meshed and inspired me to form an enjoyable, yet intellectual pursuit.   

            At the end of the summer and into early fall, the wild turkeys began to visit my field.  Out came the field glasses and a study of turkey behavior ensued.  I discovered that the females behaved in almost ritualistic fashion, often sending out a lone female that I dubbed “the guard female” to test the safety of the field before the rest came to feed with their numerous offspring, little heads barely clearing the tall grasses and wildflowers.  When the male arrived, they all settled down to rest in a kind of circle; he pranced about, sometimes fanning his tail.  A scene such as this was not prevalent when I first moved to Lebanon twenty-five years ago.  Now one could hear the gobbles of the turkeys every morning.  The reasons for such change became the subject of one of my papers for Conservation Biology (SCIE 638).  Essentially turkeys had been extirpated from Connecticut by the 1700’s due to agricultural land uses and had been returned to the Connecticut landscape only through vociferous recolonization efforts by the Connecticut Fish and Wildlife Service in the mid 1970's.  I also learned that the mating and reproductive habits of turkeys produced subtle but distinctive genetic patterns; turkeys from my area of Lebanon would be genetically different from those on the other side of town.  Maybe this information does not enthrall the average Lebanonite, but for me, it was a way to combine interests: conservation and genetics.  I realized from Geoff Hammerson’s course that a solid understanding of genetic principles would have more of an impact in years to come as conservation biologists grappled with the problems of habitat and species preservation. I also wondered if conservation efforts could sometimes produce too much of a good thing:  will too many turkeys have an effect on the local ecology, and how should biologists and local communities respond to this situation?

            My other research for Conservation Biology focused on the use of macroinvertebrates as predictors of stream and river health.  I had originally hoped to complete an actual field study, and had great fun trying to collect stream samples from two riffle areas near my home.  I discovered rather quickly that collecting and identifying are two different things, and my enthusiasm for this work did not make up for my lack of experience with macroinvertebrates.  Hence I wrote a more traditional paper about the effectiveness of this type of assessment, discussing the use of various macroinvertebrates and their tolerance levels for pollution, and their superiority as a predictive tool in comparison to fish or bacteria.  Nevertheless my fledgling attempts to create a field study have encouraged me to try this again.  One river organism that I can identify correctly is the crayfish, which has a moderate pollution tolerance.  However, would the presence of this organism be misleading, perhaps giving a false sense of security?  Are there genetic changes occurring in these creatures?  Would knowing these changes give a better sense of the presence of particular chemicals in our waterways and their possible effects?  I have not quite figured out how I will go about doing this type of study, or whether such a project is actually feasible, given my limited background, and what scientists may or may not already know about freshwater crayfish.  But completing a Master’s project that has the possibility of publication is my ultimate goal.

Jump to:

Essay #1

Essay #2

Essay #3

Essay #4

Essay #5

Sample Essay #3
Matthew Proto

              Today, I find myself working in the Choate Rosemary Hall Admission and College Counseling Office, while coaching football and teaching a history class centered on John Keegan’s book A History of Warfare.  After spending two years in the Yale Admission Office as an Associate Director of Admission, I realized that I wanted to have more daily interaction with the students we chose to accept.  I felt that I was getting a great sense of who the student was as a person, but I never had the chance to see them progress once they enrolled as a freshman.  I desired more interaction in multiple settings and working at a boarding school allowed me the opportunity to do so.  However, as I continue to grow professionally, I realize that my fondness for academia and individual educational analysis has exceeded that of my daily routine.  I desire more intellectual stimulation regarding topics that I have a deep foundation in as well as new topics that I’ve just begun to research and study.

            This summer I had the opportunity to take two GLSP courses: Emotions and Motivation with Bill Arsenio and The French Revolution to the Great War with Nathaniel Greene.  These courses provided the academic stimulation that I am looking for in a graduate program through the seminar style structure.  I began the course, Emotions and Motivation, with a rudimentary understanding of psychology based on an introductory level course taught by Peter Salovey at the undergraduate level eight years ago.  Throughout the one week immersion class, Professor Arsenio struck an excellent balance between teaching styles; which included group projects, lectures, class discussions, and the viewing of educational films.  At first, I was hoping to merely build upon the foundation I achieved through the undergraduate introductory class; however, as the week progressed, I found myself increasingly interested in Paul Eckman’s work with facial expressions and Daniel Goleman and Peter Salovey’s work regarding emotional intelligence.  As an admission officer, I found strong correlations to Goleman and Salovey’s research and my ability to assess applicants based on multiple criteria, including interviews and other measures of personality differentiations.  My final paper focused on the current measurements of emotional intelligence with possible implementation practices, especially in assessment driven businesses.  I am extremely interested in continuing research regarding the assessment of emotional intelligence in individuals and possible implementation strategies.

            As a history major at Yale University and a member of the Choate Rosemary Hall history department, I was extremely excited to take Nathaniel Greene’s course this past summer.  The majority of my coursework at the undergraduate level focused on the wars and engagements that involved the major European powers and the United States during the past three centuries.  Thus, I was eager to discuss material that seemed very familiar to me in this seminar style course.  Much to my surprise, instead of focusing on the militarization of European society, Professor Greene placed a greater emphasis on the political progress within each of the major European powers.  At our first meeting, we highlighted a model of revolution that could withstand the test of multiple scenarios and continued to research the political acumen of statesmen such as Otto Von Bismarck and Thomas Macauley.  Through this class, I became even more interested in the roles and leadership strategies employed by Bismarck and others during the period of unification throughout Europe.  I also was very interested in the constant drive toward progress, rather than immediate change, seen in Great Britain throughout the 19^th Century as compared to the French view of political change by revolution.  I am very excited to bring my new knowledge regarding Europe in the 19^th Century to my classroom as well as to continue to research the political agendas of the leaders and the governments of the European powers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  This course afforded me the opportunity to continue learning about a subject I have always been passionate about from new perspectives.

            Needless to say, my thirst has only been minimally quenched by the two summer courses.  I have come to the realization that I desire to be a collegiate dean or a headmaster at a boarding school.  In order to accomplish this goal, I desire to expand upon my liberal arts education at the graduate level while developing a focus in the social sciences.  I am especially excited to continue researching the theories of multiple intelligences, focusing more on Sternberg’s work regarding successful intelligence, as I truly believe that it can be implemented in the boarding school admission process.  Along with the study of multiple intelligences, I am anxious to begin researching social marketing and packaging.  I am always curious to learn various strategies employed by an individual or a corporation in an effort to market and package its product in the global marketplace in an effort to define its own uniqueness.  With the constant push toward globalization and diversification in the educational marketplace, I am interested in gaining a better understanding of how to package a school amongst its competitors and how to most effectively teach applicants about its benefits and disadvantages relative to its major competitors.  I am certain that the Wesleyan MALS Program will best serve my graduate educational needs because it provides a broad spectrum of unique classes that will contribute to my educational growth in the true spirit of learning.       

Sample Essay #4
Lori Miller Kase

            I have been writing all my life: my first poem, “I Saw a Whale,” was published when I was in third grade, in Salem Soundings, my elementary school newsletter, and I have been writing articles for newspapers and magazines for the past 20 years. Some of my friends, therefore, found it odd when I enrolled in my first graduate writing class at Wesleyan—but I had a very specific purpose in mind.

             I had always known I would write a book some day.  But when I turned 40, I started wondering when that “some day” was going to arrive.  With the exception of a children’s picture book (which I am in the process of finishing), and a few personal essays which I had written for parenting magazines and online publications, I had spent my whole career researching and writing journalistic pieces. Despite my longstanding aspirations to become a novelist, and the fact that I had taken several fiction-writing workshops while an undergraduate at Brown University, I had gotten to the point where I could not even imagine beginning a piece of fiction. I decided that a graduate creative writing course would be just the thing to help me make the transition from journalism back to fiction-writing, my first love.  I knew that Wesleyan had an excellent writing program and an outstanding reputation as a liberal arts institution, and quickly determined that this was where I wanted to take my class.

            As I suspected, I loved every minute of my first course—Family Stories, taught by Anne Greene—and was amazed at how quickly I was inspired to write fiction again, how ideas for stories started popping into my head. But it wasn’t just the writing piece that I enjoyed. I’d leave my class every Monday night on such a high—and I realized that I had missed learning.  I had missed engaging in intellectual discussion in a classroom full of others who wanted to learn the same things that I did, and I had missed the feedback from a professor and also from fellow students and writers. I couldn’t get enough of it. I took another course (The Architecture of Fiction, with Jamie Callan), and then another (Stories and Structure, with Anne Greene)—and then another (The Experience of Time, again with Anne Greene). And I would get something new out of every course.

            Though I had taken creative-writing seminars at Brown, I veered away from fiction-writing as I embarked on my journalism career, first as a newspaper reporter (at The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer), briefly as a magazine editor (at Vogue), and eventually as a freelancer for a wide variety of magazines. My career and family left little time for fiction-writing. Still, I have always remained a prolific reader. In recent years, I recognized that I missed talking about books with others, and started a couple of book groups. Though I have enjoyed these groups immensely, the truth is that we’d usually spend about ten or fifteen minutes talking about the book we had read, and then the rest of the time picking the next book and socializing. I wanted to delve deeper. Wesleyan has fulfilled this need for me as well.

            Despite the fact that I was a comparative literature major at Brown, and spent four years of college reading and analyzing great works of French and American fiction, the courses I have taken with Anne Greene, which all have a significant literary component, have taught me to read books in a new way: from a writer’s perspective. Rather than focusing on thematic elements, as I often did in college, I started analyzing the techniques used by the writer to convey these themes, to show the passing of time, to establish a sense of place, to conjure convincing characters, and to communicate his or her ideas about the world. And I have learned how to adapt these techniques into my own writing.

            I have also been inspired to expand my literary horizons, to read different genres. I have always been partial to novels, and would rarely pick up a short story or a book of non-fiction. In Anne Greene’s classes, I have found that some of the most beautifully-written and provocative books have been works of non-fiction: We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, by Philip Gourevitch, for example,  and Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, by Mark Doty, or Fierce Connections by Vivian Gornick. I would never have had such a deep understanding of what transpired in Rwanda had it not been for Gourevitch’s book, and Gornick’s work introduced me to writing techniques like braiding, and showed me the importance of establishing place and how it can define one’s characters. Doty’s poetic book, which was the first one I read, during my first course at Wesleyan, inspired me immediately to write, because his descriptions of a still life painting were just so gorgeous. Both Anne Greene and Jamie Callan turned me on to short stories—I have a new appreciation for a well-crafted story, and now am almost as likely to pick up a collection of short stories as I am to pick up a novel. I discovered that reading a group of linked short stories (like Homestead, by Rosina Lippi, which I read in Family Stories) can be as engaging and transporting as delving into a novel. I am even considering this format for my future book (and thesis). Finally, Jamie Callan introduced me to the world of literary journals, where I am  exposed to the newest literature; where I can see what other writers are writing now.

            Part of my motivation for enrolling in the masters program is that I would like to take a number of courses to develop my fiction-writing, and then write a book—either a novel or a collection of linked short stories—as my thesis. I feel that the program will provide me with the guidance and discipline that I need (as one who has always required deadlines) to accomplish this goal. Jamie Callan urged us to send our work out into the world; it is because of her encouragement—and because she taught us the basics of how-to-get-your-work-published—that I am now sending my short stories out to literary journals. I hope to take Personalizing History with Indira Karamicheti next semester: Though it focuses on memoir reading and writing, I do not think one can write good fiction without being able to place one’s story into a social and political context. I hope to see how other writers have done that; I’d love to immerse myself in the kind of research that can help me to do it in my own writing.

            But having already taken four courses, I realize that going through the masters program will give me more than the skills, the opportunity and the discipline to write a book. It will also allow me to continue my life-long love of learning. I’m considering taking a course in art history, something that I have always regretted not exploring further at Brown. In fact, there are several courses in the arts that appeal to me: I might pursue a growing interest in film, or try my hand at art and perhaps discover another conduit for my creativity.  Taking part in the masters program at Wesleyan will not only help me to grow as a writer, it will help me to develop a deeper understanding of the world around me, and it will allow me to continue to evolve as a reader and a thinker.

Sample Essay #5
Suzanne DesJarlais

            Perspective is a gift. It is through the encounters with a diversity of people, opinions, and experiences that the possibilities for a richer and more rewarding life are presented. This is the belief that motivates me as a learner, educator, and as an applicant for matriculation into the GLSP Masters Degree program at Wesleyan. I have successfully completed five GLSP courses and am currently enrolled in a sixth course. The events that have lead me to the GSLP and the coursework I have engaged in since have been characterized by the desire to enhance my understanding of the world, develop my ability to think critically, and to apply what I have learned to become a better teacher. My experiences thus far have taught me that there is nothing that is not worth learning. Each course that I have taken has both broadened and challenged my perspective while bringing me closer to my academic, professional, and personal goals.

            My desire to earn a Masters Degree in Liberal Studies from Wesleyan is closely connected to my career in education. After graduating from the University of Connecticut with a degree in Latin American Studies, I was unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. Living in Connecticut, I set out applying for jobs in the insurance industry. The process of resume writing and interviewing allowed me to redefine my goals and interests. It was not long after that I realized that I wanted a career about which I could feel passionate. That career would be in teaching. I declined a job offer at an insurance agency, gave up the search for employment, and enrolled in Central Connecticut State University where I earned a second degree in history along with my teaching certification. I found a teaching position right away and have since taken advantage of every opportunity to pursue my passion for learning.

            I am currently in my seventh year of teaching social studies at E.O. Smith High School in Storrs, CT. Social Studies is a content area that covers a wide variety of disciplines and subjects and requires a careful consideration of a multitude of viewpoints to better understand the world. My primary teaching duties are in Politics and Geography and I also teach elective courses in African Studies and Latin American Studies. I love what I teach, however, I have realized that there are many gaps in my content knowledge that need to be filled. When the time came to pursue a Masters degree, I wanted a program that would allow me to develop a wide range of interests, strengthen my content knowledge, and challenge my own critical thinking abilities. I firmly believe that I have found these qualities in the GLSP program at Wesleyan.

            The motivation to enroll in my first GLSP course came after a trip to Africa. In the summer of 20001 I traveled to Ghana as part of a Fulbright-Hayes group project. Although I was no stranger to travel, the experiences and interactions with the people of Ghana re-energized my passion for learning. It was in Ghana that I experienced first-hand the forces of globalization and the interdependent nature of the world. I returned with many questions and ideas regarding the disparities that exist between developed and developing nations. I wanted to understand how the global market worked. To remedy this, the following spring, I enrolled in Politics of the Modern Global Economy.

            In Politics of the Modern Global Economy I learned the factors that influence the decisions of economically powerful nations and the consequences of those decisions in the rest of the world. As part of my course work I researched Ghana’s production and export of cultural commodities that are sold at Pier One Imports and T.J. Maxx. I also researched the function and effects of micro-credit lending institutions such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. As a result of my academic pursuits in this course I have become much more socially aware as a consumer and committed to the ideals of fair trade.

            In the summer of 2002 I enrolled in African Drumming and Dance. My trip to Ghana found me in the position of teaching the new African Studies course offered in my school and I dedicated myself to learning as much as I could about Africa. In African Dance and Drumming, I was outside of my comfort zone. My apprehensions lay in the fact that I had never had any training in either music or dance. I am proud of my accomplishments in this course as it provided an authentic experience in which to learn and understand the African value of community through its artistic expression. My classmates and I had to depend on each other to make the musical and dance pieces we were learning to come together. My participation in this course has helped me gain a deeper understanding of cultural values, improve my listening skills, and to not be fearful of taking creative risks in the classroom.

            Professional obligations prevented me from enrolling in another GLSP course the following year. Within that year I focused my energies on developing and writing a curriculum for the new Latin American Studies course in addition to running an exchange program with Costa Rica. After this very busy and exciting year, I returned to Wesleyan in the Spring semester in 2004 when I enrolled in Toca Brasil.

            Musical expression is an important aspect of culture as it reflects the experiences and hopes and fears of a people. Toca Brasil provided an exceptional opportunity to explore Brazilian society through music. Prior to this course, my knowledge of Brazilian culture was limited to the stereotypes presented by the media. Through hands-on music instruction, meaningful reading assignments, and class discussion, the spiritual, historical and socio-economic dynamics of Afro-Brazilian music and culture was brought to life. As a result of Toca Brasil, I rewrote the Brazil Unit of my Latin American Studies curriculum to include an in depth and meaningful study of the origins and role Samba music in Brazilian history and culture. I will be teaching Latin American Studies for the first time next year and look forward to applying and further developing what I have learned in Toca Brasil.

            In the summer of 2004, I enrolled in Everyday Forms of Resistance. This class offered valuable lessons regarding political empowerment from the bottom up. Resistance, whether it is covert or overt provides the powerless the chance to validate their own worth and dignity. After reading Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement I was inspired by the sacrifices made by Ella Baker as a result of her commitment to the Civil Rights Movement. Her skill at political maneuvering and her ability to never lose sight of what she was working for proves that an individual can make a difference. At the end of this course, I was asked to answer the question: What is your political daily bread? Nearly a year later, I continue to ponder this question as I evaluate my own power relationships and place in this world. I am not quite done with this class yet. 

            Politics is my bread and butter. It is the subject to which I devote the better part of my day. Needless to say, I enrolled in The Conservative Revolution in American Politics in the fall of 2004. Teaching politics at a historically liberal high school, I have noticed a shift to the right among the student body and faculty members as well. This course provided the perfect opportunity to understand those shifts within the context of a divisive presidential election. Through the course readings, particularly The Right Nation, I gained a solid historical foundation of conservatism in America. However the aspect of the course that I must truly value was the class discussions. The enthusiastic and spirited discussions were invigorating, as I welcomed the adult point of view. These discussions spilled over into my workplace as many of my colleagues, aware of my involvement in this course, would often approach me at lunch with “So, what did you learn last night?” Overall, this course was a great way to challenge and expand upon my own political  understanding and knowledge.

            This is an exciting time of my life. The courses that I have taken at Wesleyan have had a profound impact of my personal growth, my ability to think, and on my confidence as a teacher. I am fully committed to a life of learning and treasure the many gifts of perspective that have been offered in the Graduate Liberal Studies Program. I wish to continue to take advantage of the opportunities to broaden my perspective at Wesleyan. For this reason I request that you accept this petition of matriculation.