Graduate Application Essays


1. Why have you decided to pursue a graduate degree? What are your ultimate career goals?
My career as a working musician has been in a holding pattern for several years, and I am now eager to embark on a new journey. After trying a variety of non-committal and ultimately unrewarding day jobs over the past decade while awaiting my fortune, I now realize it is time to set my sights higher. After years of dues-paying, I am happy to say music now pays my bills, but I have achieved as much as I can ever reasonably expect to in that line of work. There is a thick glass ceiling in the music business, and after many years of compulsively banging my head against it and wearing deep grooves in the local circuit, I now find myself on the verge of a much-needed personal breakthrough. In order to move forward to a level of success that would facilitate supporting a family and eventually investing in a business of my own, I need to pursue a professional career. Because music has gradually evolved from a single-minded obsession into a low-maintenance weekend job for me, I now have a surplus of time and energy to devote to furthering my education.

In graduate school, I hope to learn skills and concepts that will serve me in the pursuit of a livelihood as an independent human services consultant. I look forward to being employed by companies and agencies seeking to do better business through better understanding. I ultimately hope to achieve a level of financial independence that would facilitate starting my own company that incorporates my experience in both the music business and human services.

I know a struggling songwriter who went back for his masters in counseling and ended up starting a very successful local program specializing in musicians' mental health services. I hope to start an equally valuable and benevolent company someday, and graduate school is the first step toward that goal.

2. Please give a brief, candid evaluation of yourself. Include some discussion of the abilities and other attributes you believe are your strengths and some discussion of the areas you would like to change or develop more fully.

Thanks to my educational background in English, I consider myself a confident and effective communicator, especially in the written medium. I have also learned a great deal about human nature through years of social interaction with people from all walks of life in my job as an entertainer. I have gotten to a point where almost nothing surprises me when it comes to people, but I never cease to be amazed by the human spirit.

I am generally a diligent problem solver, but I have a tendency toward impatience, especially when it comes to trying to change people's behavior. I would like to learn to give people more time to discover truth for themselves without coercion. I could benefit from more exposure to the values of different cultures, especially in the areas of spirituality and relationships. I need to develop better discipline with regard to achieving personal growth. I tend to try to reinvent myself overnight as opposed to developing ideas over time. The best things I have done with my life so far have been the things that took a substantial amount of time to grow. I want to become a patient nurturer of all that is good and lose the need for immediate gratification. I am easily distracted by a cheap thrill, and quickly disenchanted.

I am naturally curious and imaginative, and I have been able to teach myself some very useful skills such as webpage design and sound engineering while performing other roles. I am a compulsive multi-tasker, but I have a tendency to neglect the more mundane duties I find myself responsible for because I get bored. I come up with new ideas daily but follow through on just a few. My attention span has gotten better with age but could still use some muscle-tone.

I deal well with people, and I am known for my diplomatic skills. I am intrigued by the conflict resolution specialization because I believe that peace must be made before progress. I am in the process of finding that elusive peace within myself, and I would like to extend that into the world.

3. Describe your three most substantial accomplishments and explain why you view them as such.

My three most substantial accomplishments in life so far are graduating with honors from St. Edward's in 1990, producing 5 commercially-released independent albums, and most recently achieving financial independence as an artist, which has led to the inspiration to continue my education.

Earning a degree in writing and graduating Summa Cum Laude was an accomplishment that exceeded even my own expectations. It proved to me that I could not only attain a long term goal, but excel in the process of achieving it if I got focused. My grade point average in the last few semesters of undergrad went up dramatically because after going in and out of school a couple of times between tours with bands, I finally became motivated to finish the job I had started, and meet the expectations of my family and my benefactors who had made such a generous investment in my future. It proved to be the best thing I ever did, because the resources I developed in college helped me survive for many years while I struggled to make a name for myself as an artist.

Thanks to those skills, I have also been able to independently finance and supervise the production, manufacturing, and distribution of several musical products in many different media formats, starting with a 45 by my first band in high school and most recently manifested in the digital medium over the internet. No accomplishment has given me more consistent joy than purveying the products of my creative dreams in the commercial market. Each album is a long-term project, often requiring over a year of intensive focus. From the conception of the material, through the recording process, to the delivery to the stores, an album involves many different techniques of organization, communication, and trouble-shooting, as well as a wealth of technical, management and marketing skills. Although none of my products has enjoyed major widespread demand, they have all been critically praised and generally well-received, which has been a source of great pride to me.

Recently, in an effort to accomplish something quite uncommon in my field, I set a goal of achieving a level of success in music that would free me from the necessity of a day job. In the past five years I have had the fortune of joining a band that is in demand at some of the highest paying jobs available, corporate parties and society functions. In addition, I have built a weekly original music showcase into a well-known institution, with a widespread reputation for consistent presentation of the best quality new live music. Thanks to these two longtime investments, as well as growing returns from internet commerce and other freelance music-related jobs, like doing promotion for the South by Southwest Music Festival, the income from my creative pursuits has given me the opportunity to remove myself from the oppressive confines of the typical day job. I took myself off of the schedule at my last retail employer when it became apparent I could make ends meet as a musician, and I hoped to settle into an autonomous existence as an artist. What I found, however, was that now that I have the time on my hands, I once again crave the stimulus of the academic world. I have a space inside now for more wisdom, and time in my schedule for study, and that is what brings me back to this sacred institution.

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