Statement of Purpose

Since Dr. Rowe said that one of the strongest components of my application should be my statement of purpose (or personal essay or whatever you chose to call it), I find myself a bit intimidated to start it. I know that it has to be really good and really comprehensive.

I have thought about it though. I've tried to think of what the questions are that I would like to answer while I'm in graduate school, and they all seem to focus on how and why people interact with nature, and how that can influence their values and beliefs. I read an article of Dr. Rowe's (actually one of his grad students) that used Whale Watching Spoken Here, a volunteer whale watching program on the coast, and conducted surveys on visitors to see how interacting with whales and wildlife affected their beliefs and values about conservation. This sounds so exciting to me!

One of the great things about working with Dr. Rowe would be that I could really work on picking my own research topic. He said that he has a lot of partner agencies and internship sites and he works really hard to pull sites and student interests together. So I could potentially work with a whale watching site. Which is what I have always wanted to do. Hence the intimidation.

I plan on working on it more on Sunday. I'm also working on putting together a bio packet about myself to send to a professor, Dr. Alejandro Acevedo-Gutierrez, at Western Washington University who works with marine mammals in the biology department. He's my next target. :)