Personal Statement (Part 2)

I’m sharing these to be helpful to my Asian/Asian American readers out there to present your background in a way that enhances the reader’s understanding of who you are and what’s important to you! Hopefully it is helpful to non-Asians as well!

Essay 2 from Fletcher

Share something about yourself to help the Admissions Committee develop a more complete picture of who you are.

(542/500)

My family and I are significantly impacted by international migration and immigration laws. As a young woman, my mother felt stifled by the lack of choices and opportunity in patriarchal Japanese society and moved to the United States. My mother’s rejection of acceptable traditional roles for women gave me the strength to pursue my own career path. My father was the eldest of eight children in his homeland of Bangladesh. He obtained scholarships which afforded him the opportunity to study in Thailand and work in Singapore. In the 1970s he, as a guerrilla fighter, fought for sovereignty and representation of his nation in the independence war against Pakistan. His strength has taught me the importance of self-determination.

My parents met in Thailand while they were graduate students and married in the United Kingdom where my mother worked. During my mother’s pregnancy, she made a fundamental decision about where I belonged that forever shaped my life. Japanese laws during the 1980s prohibited me from claiming Japanese citizenship simply because my mother was a woman. Although my parents resided in the United Kingdom, I could not be a citizen of that country by birthright. As such, my mother decided to come back to the United States to give birth to make certain I would be a U.S. citizen and be guaranteed the opportunities that no other nation could offer.

I was raised outside of Tokyo until I was seven. We then moved to the United States because my parents believed I would have the best opportunities for success here. Though I faced severe culture shock and struggled to learn English during my childhood, I now greatly appreciate the opportunities afforded to me as an American citizen. While living in Japan taught me politeness and respect for elders, its homogenous society and underlying racism toward foreigners emphasized my status as an outsider. The American education system and culture taught me the importance of my own voice and the importance of equal opportunity for all citizens, a notion that I live by at my current job in higher education every day.

In 2008, I traveled to my father’s homeland to visit my grandmother. I took a mini-bus on a winding unpaved road and navigated a small motor boat through meandering rivers to grandmother’s village two hours outside of the capital city of Dhaka. As I stood on the river bank and thought about my grandmother’s life in a small riverside village in Bangladesh, it dawned on me how many opportunities I was afforded by living and growing up in the U.S. It was then I knew that I had to give back to the international community. In just three generations, the women in our family had such different circumstances and futures. Both my parents sacrificed so much to allow me to have more educational and professional possibilities than they had. I realize that my successes are not simply the product of my own efforts, but due to all of those who supported me in my life. Immigration and citizenship laws have real impacts on families and individuals and what they are able to achieve in their lifetime. I believe in the dignity of each individual and her ability to succeed given the opportunity to do so.