Psychology Personal Statement

Psychology has been an important part of my life for many years, but only recently I decided to pursue it as a major. I was an Art & Design major before, and one of the most fulfilling aspects of my major was that I was creatively able to express myself in countless methods of art, from something very traditional such as painting to something more abstract such as combining video and sculpture work. However, I realized that almost all of my art works were informed by my exploration of human mind and theories of psychology. I was working on a sculpture piece last year, for instance, in which I was exploring the idea of forgetting. I first did a literature review on the topic of forgetting and the information I learned from this literature review …show more content…
I had this strong will and determination to learn about different approaches to psychological therapies, and how to become a practicing clinical psychologist. I learned about different types of disorders and different approaches to treat them in courses like Intro to Psychopathology, and learned about different brain structures and how damages to certain areas may account for personality changes in courses like Human Neuropsychology and Neuroscience. Being introduced to different courses helped me discover my own interests in the field and I started to evolve as a person as well. I became more understanding when I had conflicts with my friends by listening to them more and trying to understand why they were reacting in a certain …show more content…
However, this year I discovered that psychology was more than that. It had a huge research aspect that I had never thought about before. I started to work as a research assistant, and suddenly had this firm desire to find answers to research questions that are relevant to my interests and that I thought to be relevant to many people as well. I am an international and a multicultural student, coming from Istanbul, Turkey, who grew up in a Turkish culture. I went to a German High School in Istanbul and was exposed to both German and Turkish cultures at the same time. Since I moved to the United States for college, I am having different experiences every single day in an American culture. Being exposed to both Western and Eastern cultures has not only changed my perspective on life, but also made me more aware of the fact that cultural differences do exist in determining how people act and what they value in life. Being multicultural eventually made me become interested in mental health in a cultural context. To be more exact, I wanted to conduct research about cultural differences in affecting mental