February 13, 2016

I want to tell you about a book that truly changed my life, the reason why I am sitting at my computer typing this personal statement, a letter of intent as to why I desire so much to attend your university. It is called Think and Grow Rich, a tell-all book that relays a secret of how to pursue one's passions in order to be rich with happiness. Money just so happens to be a bonus - a decorative passage that drives the novel.

Although never clearly stated, the secret situates itself into each chapter, for those who are ready will be able to uncover it. Napoleon Hill discusses Edwin Barnes was so driven by desire he "had to win or parish!" (21). Quite a dramatic statement, if you ask me, but in Barnes reality becoming Thomas Edison's associate was his one true desire. You see, writing is more than telling stories, exploring a new world, creating complex characters, hero journeys, having good grammar; writing is about teaching something valuable. I discover something new about myself every time I read, forever changing, forever growing.

It is what I desire the most: to touch lives through my writing, to help people feel something on their own through my words, to implant a seed much like reading does for me and have it sprout into a beautiful desire so they too may think and grow rich. I want others to feel something they've never felt before and ultimately learn something new about themselves.

"Strange and varied are the ways of life, and stranger still are the ways of infinite intelligence, through which people are sometimes forced to undergo all sorts of punishment before discovering their own brains, and their own capacity to create useful ideas through imagination." (28)

I turned to writing as a means to escape the world. I escape time by reading and freeze time by writing. The sour seed that was sprouting weeds and thorns, would blossom a rose here and there.