[an excerpt from John Girdwood's application to Princeton University]
ACADEMIC STATEMENT OF PURPOSE:
The main focus of my study at Princeton University will be health, aging, and the life course with an emphasis on cognition. The Western Michigan University Comparative Religion Program had a department chair enamored with cognition during my undergraduate tenure there. I was influenced greatly by Dr. E. Thomas Lawson’s worldview and immeasurably impressed that he provided his time to sit with me during my first semester to discuss my academic future. He personally guided me to a bachelor’s of arts in comparative religion, with a double major in philosophy, including a concentration on professional ethics.
It was a multidimensional tract that possessed the subject of religion, and through critical thinking, I was able to synthesize and apply my learning to courses on subjects like desire and belief. Social and biomedical ethics were practical courses where I could apply my knowledge to specific situations. I carried over the theme of applicatory education to my graduate work in public administration. I will always recall sitting in Dr. Rudolf Siebert’s “Religion In Revolution” class on September 11, 2001. It was then that I realized I was not simply studying world religions, but also the governments, history, sociology, and social structures that combine to form nations. This coursework and academic process has prepared me exceptionally well for study at Princeton University.
This department is significant because it offers areas of emphasis including sociology of culture and religion and social inequality. These include my experience, prior knowledge, and interest areas. I have a basis on, but not a complete perception of how religious practices influence attitudes and values. I have a philosophical analysis background of the prior, but no sociological study of those areas. Princeton will drive my interests to comprehension of these subjects.
This program is a good match with me because I am interested in studying what it is like to be working and yet poor. I have experienced this situation, but have not yet studied it academically. I want to examine how culture shapes medical knowledge because I see medical knowledge in the workplace without yet having the background of its foundation. Within hospice practice, I need a better footing to perceive the American will to live, in other words, the American will not to die.
My non-profit OMIA Foundation will benefit from better knowing where family and child-rearing patterns are headed. I hold great interest in early childhood development and agree with the Princeton University Sociology Department that these are issues of timely importance.
I will work closely with the faculty and students at Princeton in small seminar settings and through personalized instruction from and collaboration with professors. I thrive nurturing by means of close student-faculty interaction. I have undergone lively discussions of research, workshops, and through analytical discourse.
I would like to work with Angel L. Harris because she and I are seeking to determine why academic inequality persists across racial and ethnic groups. I agree that education is becoming increasingly important for upward social mobility in the U.S. and abroad. Education has been linked to societal inequalities in health, income, and other life-chance measures, so I intend to study whether or not this link is apparent to women and minority groups. Then, I will be able to determine if social mobility is desired by these groups, and if so, if those groups utilize education as a tool for upward social mobility and improved health, income, and other measures of social and economic well-being.
Since the minority population within the U.S. is steadily increasing, understanding racial differences in achievement is important for scholars, educators, and policy makers. At Princeton, I will study how perceptions about the opportunity structure and the system of social mobility influence the extent to which people invest (economically and emotionally) in schooling.
I have researched the social psychological determinants of the racial achievement gap and focused on identifying factors that contribute to African Americans’ lower academic achievement. This research primarily examined charter schools in Michigan and how they approached reaching benchmarks. I would like the chance to collaborate with researchers like Scott M. Lynch to examine the health consequences of racial and socioeconomic inequality. My time spent in the mid-nineties within the HIV/AIDS Prevention and Intervention Services (HAPIS) office in Michigan showed me the dramatic statistical impact of inequality – both by race and socio-economic status – on one health issue.
I saw first hand at HAPIS how the interrelationship between race, socioeconomic status, and health unfolded across age and geographic cohorts. At Princeton, I want to delve further into the effects of these determinants on the elder population.
Like Marta Tienda, I want to know what factors must be present for opportunity to be equal. I have previously researched welfare, health, and education. At Princeton, I want to examine more factors, or more closely at those I have already studied.
I plan to focus on social arrangements and life course trajectories that both perpetuate and reshape socioeconomic inequality. Charter schools influenced my research on one means of access to education but I want to understand the limits of social policy in equalizing opportunity by examining the changing foundations of merit in college admissions criteria. An interdisciplinary examination, through the Sociology graduate program at Princeton would increase my knowledge of vital sociological theories exponentially.
I witness conflict in end of life decisions on a daily basis. I can either continue to do so with my current skill set, or continue to grow at Princeton and better approach situations within my employment at hospice.
My vocational and educational focus has been the life course and I understand the connection between early childhood education and subsequent life results. I would like to examine aging, the life course, and elder sociology more in depth at Princeton. I believe it would benefit my performance at hospice, my knowledge of important subject matter, and my peers and instructors in the Department of Sociology at Princeton.
