In this blog post, we’ll show you how to include experiences in your personal statement with examples from real students who are preparing to enter the philosophy program.
Write about your academic experiences and impressions
Get to the root of your weaknesses
I had a crisis point in my studies: my grades just weren’t going up. No matter how hard I studied, my grades remained the same, so I thought about tutoring, but I didn’t want to burden my parents, so I decided to try to solve the problem on my own. First, I used my winter vacation to review all the problems I got wrong. I bought a sketchbook and organized my old practice tests by subject and wrote down the questions I got wrong, and then I went through the sketchbook to see what my problems were. What I realized was that I often got things wrong because I didn’t know the basics.
In language, I didn’t know the basic vocabulary, so I often didn’t understand the meaning. In math, I hadn’t learned the functions and shapes in middle school, so I wasn’t applying them. In English, I was also unable to utilize basic grammar because I had forgotten where I had learned it. This inspired me to find the roots of my weaknesses in these subjects and learn the basics.
So what I did was to find out the weaknesses in the answer key and then study them with a middle school book if it was a middle school course, or a high school book if it was a high school course. I was impatient and worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish it all, but I calmly filled in the gaps, and I memorized the sections I didn’t understand so that I could quickly fill in the theories I didn’t understand. As I filled in the gaps, my grades started to improve. Studying the gaps definitely worked, especially in math and language arts. There’s a big difference between knowing the theory and not knowing the theory, and I’ve learned the importance of the basics, and I’m still sticking to the basics to this day.
Write about your main school activities and impressions
Diversity of thought in book discussion clubs
I love to read books. Since elementary school, I’ve always tried to find answers to my questions in books, and as a result, I’ve read a lot of books and discovered the fun of reading. I felt that thinking through a book made my thoughts a little clearer than thinking on my own, like it was drawing a picture or a map. So I guess you could say that I enjoy the depth of a book rather than just the act of reading it. That’s why I joined a book discussion club in high school.
But the club was exactly what I didn’t expect, because I thought it would be just about reading. First of all, discussion requires a lot of preparation. I was confident in my ability to read and think about books, so I didn’t bring anything to the first meeting, and I was surprised by the indiscriminate discussion, which showed me how little I had read and thought about books. I wanted to be better at communicating my thoughts to people, and I wanted to make my ideas more appealing. I also wanted to be able to listen to other people more deeply if I could articulate my thoughts well, so I started reading more passionately.
As the club got longer and longer, I found myself sharing what I was reading with people and spending more time talking about their opinions. Asking each other questions like, “How did you feel after reading Damien? Why did Sinclair wait until the very end to look at Damien’s face?” I came to understand and empathize with the deeper parts of the book. I was especially surprised to hear people’s thoughts. Hearing first-hand that people have different thoughts from my own made me realize that everyone has different values, different ways of thinking, and different outcomes of their thoughts, so I learned how to understand and listen to people’s thoughts.
The diversity of ideas also helped me to broaden my own thinking. Through the book discussion circle, I felt like I could see and feel the interesting world in a wider way, and I also gained the power to generate new thoughts and ideas.
Examples of caring, sharing, and cooperation and what I learned
Being a quiet helper behind the scenes
My favorite moral teacher once told me that there are three books you must read in order to study philosophy: the Bible, the Koran, and the Bible. I had a lot of respect for him, so I followed his advice and started reading the Bible, and the part of the Bible that stuck with me the most was “Don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.” That was a big eye-opener for me, and from then on, I took on the role of quietly helping out behind my friends.
I wasn’t class president, vice class president, or even cleaning duty, but I always came early in the morning to sweep the classroom. I always watered the flowers on the teacher’s desk and kept them looking beautiful because I wanted my friends to study in a cleaner environment. I also made sure to take care of my friends who were falling behind in class, and I studied with friends who weren’t doing well and tried to improve their grades.
The value of doing these things out of the goodness of my heart and not because I was looking for a token of gratitude was immense. I used to think that being helpful was only meaningful if others recognized it, and that doing what others were doing was meaningful, but I realized that if you know your values and do things in line with them, there is nothing more meaningful, especially if you do it from a pure heart to help someone, to make someone happy. So on weekends, I would go to volunteer activities and try to expand my scope of service, which gave me a lot of new experiences, and I got more joy from interacting and sharing my thoughts with friends who felt the same way. Therefore, I think I was able to study with a more positive attitude and maintain my status as an examinee.
Motivation to Apply – Efforts and Preparation Related to Career Planning
I want to study thinking
When I came to high school, I was able to learn and feel many things through volunteer work and book discussion club activities. First of all, I realized that my thoughts are not everything. In my favorite book, Damien, it is said that everyone has their own path to the city. Through that passage, I tried to think more deeply about the meaning of the three years of high school, not just that everyone is different. Especially through the book discussion club, I realized that it is a mysterious thing that people can communicate with each other, and that we all have different worldviews and values, and it is amazing to learn about other people’s thoughts and worlds, and it is something I want to continue to do in the future.
That’s why I decided to study ‘philosophy’ – to study thought in earnest. I want to think about and explore what other people think, and what great people, especially writers and philosophers, have thought, and what I ultimately want to understand by doing so is my own thinking. I used to think I had a clear and definite idea of what I thought, but the more I studied, the more I realized that I didn’t have such a precise and clear picture of what I thought. So I want to explore my own thoughts through proper study, and I think in order to do that, I will have to explore the thoughts of many people.
And after exploring thoughts, my final goal is to become a ‘psychologist’. The reason why I chose philosophy instead of psychology is not to learn about people’s psychology directly, but to become a psychologist who can cultivate the power of thinking through philosophy, realize how to think, and empathize with other people’s thoughts. I dream of becoming a scholar who thinks and learns to think first, and then does my own research, and I hope to do that in your philosophy department.
