As anyone who has applied for admission into a college or university can attest, the ordeal is protracted and harrowing.

After years of searching for the perfect place to obtain my doctorate degree, I have settled into “the place” or “the one:” My doctorate at Saint Leo University.

I did not complete my application to the University of Texas in San Antonio because I would have had to relinquish my full-time job as an embedded professor, relocate to San Antonio, try to find another full-time position with the same trappings, and failing that, I would have had to subsist on whatever fellowship or scholarship or loan I would find.

I shared one of the writing pieces I composed as required by graduate admissions programs. Each university uses a different name for the requirement: Statement of intent, letter of intention, plan of study, writing sample, philosophy of study, and so on. This is the second piece I have dug out and shared here. After I share the doctorate admissions pieces, I will move to the type of writing which potential employers require.

Happy reading!

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Statement of Intent: A Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Creative Writing

Frances Ohanenye

University of Texas, San Antonio (Fondly known as UTSA)

My exposure to the teaching of rhetoric as an adjunct instructor at Houston Community College in Houston has intensified my desire to hasten my desire to complete my doctorate degree in English. I have been searching for a world-renowned program and believe I have found it at the University of Texas, San Antonio. I intend to channel my boundless love of rhetoric into wholesome literary gratification. While I am enrolled in the doctorate program at UTSA, I will propel my natural curiosity beyond perceived and/or self-imposed boundaries so that my intellectual creations will surpass my present level of creativity and sophistication so that my intellectual creations will cause ripples in my own evolutionary scholarship and in current innovative paradigms, and so that my University of Texas doctorate degree will crystallize that natural curiosity in rhetoric into research projects and into literary outlets that will transform the world. 

All my life, passion and hunger have burned for the acquisition of the most profound knowledge. My boundless love and hunger caused me to read 130 novels in one year. My passion, curiosity, and hunger caused me to complete all the requirements for my undergraduate degree in two years and seven months with a greater than 3.0 grade point average, with dual majors in advertising and public relations, and with dual minors in marketing and psychology. The rigor and challenges of my Master of Arts degrees in journalism and in Creative Writing suffused me with the confidence to exceed the expectations in the programs at two different universities at different times.

Because writing has been a lifelong passion and a cathartic process, I create constantly and endeavor to make my voice heard. My creations have appeared in Red & Black (University of Georgia), Sidelines and Collage (Middle Tennessee State University), Atlanta Parent Magazine as a columnist, Kings Springs Newsletter, Georgia Poetry Society’s Reach of Songs anthology and Newsletter, Guardian Newspaper (Lagos, Nigeria) as a contributor, and on online freelance media outlets such as Textbroker, Yahoo! Voices, With Many Kind Regards, and blogs.

I have juggled teaching at the K-12 level with teaching at the college level while engaged in volunteer work in Georgia or Texas and while enrolled in a post-graduate course or program at one time or another. I teach English and literature to 12^th grade students at a high school who take Dual Credit English courses at the college. Embracing my responsibilities at the high school and college has caused me to conquer such abstract difficulties as time management. Regardless of my location, I seek to cause ripples in my job performance and to evolve in my own scholarship through staff development courses that rejuvenate me and my job performance. I also cause ripples in current educational innovative paradigms as I perform my teaching jobs. For that main reason and for my dedication, I was conferred with awards as an exceptional educator and for piloting progressive curricula at the K-12 level for two school districts. 

My overall plans for pursuing doctorate studies at UTSA are to surpass my current sustainable system of writing poetry and prose, to augment my critical reading and publishing­ skills, and to position my work to leap over the edge of contemporary moment and have my work outlive contemporary literary publishing outlets long after I am gone to the great beyond. By the end of my degree program at the University of Texas, I hope to elevate my level of independent thinking and my sophistication in creative writing. For that reason, I would like to add the Creative Writing certificate to my doctorate program at UTSA so that at the completion of my doctorate program, I would have strengthened my backbone and would have become a published novelist with off-the-beaten-path creations, a prolific poet whose words pulsate, a progressive professor of rhetoric, a proficient conference presenter, an avid advocate of English language, a distinguished researcher, and a writer whose articles appear cyclically in peer-reviewed/ scholarly publications. I hope to embody other uncountable possibilities. I hope to serve my community and the world much better.