My Story - Personal Statement from PhD App
A brief history of me and my relationship to life.
Five years ago, I enrolled full-time at a small community college in Redding, CA. I had spent the previous two decades building a prosperous career in business development, solving problems for finance and marketing teams at Fortune 50s. In many ways, this career was extremely rewarding, and it catalyzed my development on several levels over the years. Eventually, I reached a point where I simply outgrew what that path could offer. I needed space, a step back to gain perspective and fully understand how I had changed. As I had responded to previous crossroads encountered in my life, I needed to re-explore who I was and what my purpose should be. Getting out of the hustle-bustle of the NY/NJ area and into the tranquil beauty of NorCal nature seemed like the perfect way to respect this important life transition. The wildfires that tore through my town followed with an encore of a global pandemic were not exactly what I had envisioned. Nevertheless, those circumstances facilitated a decision—based on pure intuition devoid of any logic whatsoever, by the way—to to return to college to re-learn my sciences. My brilliant plan was this: make a huge circle in my life path and return to where I was at the age of 18.
To sum up my experience from the age of 0-18: relatively high levels of emotional and psychological discomfort. When I left my family behind to pursue science at the age of 18, I lacked the psychological foundation to support things like goals and meaningful relationships. The reality of my foundationless state hit me square in the face while living with other students at college, but I didn’t know what to do about it. Amid the consequent increasing inner turmoil, and beneath the compensatory, “over-achiever” facade, a mysterious compulsion to simply understand never left my awareness. In fact, in my earliest childhood recollections, it was a part of me, like a lifeline of sorts, an optimism that’s just part of my personality. But the pressure buildup of avoidance eventually reached a crescendo during my 4th year, and all of the foundationless goals I had been pursuing fell to the ground like dead leaves in autumn.
I built myself in the years that followed. I didn’t read self-help books or listen to Tony Robbins or anything like that. I learned by messing up and reflecting on why. I simply wanted to understand, so I leaned into my dilemmas and traumas. I tried to avoid them, but they were inevitable. And although the points in my life when everything seemed to fall apart felt unbearable at the time, they were the greatest gifts imaginable. They were the catalysts for my construction process; and I suppose the optimism, which is often called “the conscience,” was the raw material. Every 6 or 7 years, I would look back and marvel at my transformation and how my circumstances—career performance, functional stability, the people surrounding me, and the growing sense of connection, trust, and love—had changed. However, I carried a lingering sense of shame and regret for “throwing away” my academic opportunities; and I often wondered whether I had failed to honor my potential in life.
Only near the end of my junior year at UCSC did I begin to fully understand why I chose to return to college. I found myself in near-identical circumstances, with the only variable being 30 years of life experience. The contrast in my responses and relationship to all aspects of my college experience brought the meaningfulness of my circular path into clear focus. The fallen leaves of my goals were now radiant, with captivating features and colors. The stresses and insecurities arose just as before, but I didn’t feel compelled to act on them or conclude anything about myself from them. Learning science was, at times (when stress wasn’t in the picture) like listening to a transcendent musical composition or fully experiencing, with all the cells of the body transfixed, an ineffably moving painting or poem. Exploring scientific ideas with my classmates was not a source insecurity, but incredibly enriching, stimulating, and fun. Truly, every moment of my life was custom-tailored to give me exactly what I most deeply desired—to become more myself. A second pass at college gifted me a perspective that dissolved all regrets within a vast expanse of gratitude.
As a graduate student, I discovered the complement of passionate interest: the ongoing, durable fulfillment borne from pursuing my authentic purpose. I want to devote the remainder of my life to neuroscience research. The existential need to understand myself, the central thread of my life story, has coalesced with thrill of possibly uncovering some of the mysteries of who we are as a species. They beckon from the neural assemblies in the brain, and nothing fascinates me more.
It’s impossible to fully communicate the extraordinary story of my life; or fully understand the extraordinary story of another person’s life. I am intrigued, however. In many ways, I’m no less foolish than I ever was; but in my clearest moments, I can see the human story that we all are writing together at this very moment. I stand in awe of the unique dream of every person that has ever lived, a gift waiting to burst into existence. To understand the brain is to understand what makes us human. My vision for science in the future is an approach to problem solving that is based on the implicit truth of our interdependence. I’m fully convinced that collaboration is the key to advancement on all levels, and our continued evolution and prosperity depends on it.