Grad's guide to graduate admissions essays - Colleen Reding 2015
Georgetown university - School of continuing studies (journalism)
General graduate studies
“Every Georgetown student wants to change the world.” That’s the response I got when, as a 17-year-old prospective Georgetown undergraduate, I asked my admissions ambassador to characterize the typical Hoya. At that moment, I knew I was in the right place.
From a very young age, I felt called to speak out against injustice. I was one of two girls on my fourth grade coed soccer team, called “The Molar Men” in homage to the local dental practice that sponsored our uniforms. Not one to silently bear the burden of exclusionary language, I took a tube of White-Out to my jersey, modifying the last word of our team’s name with a strategically placed “Wo-.” The parents on the sidelines—including my own—were shocked, and all 60-or-so pounds of me beamed with the pride of having stood up for equality, albeit in the smallest of ways.
That fourth grader grew into a zealous undergraduate who moved to DC with wide eyes and a determined spirit, ready to storm the Capitol and figure out how to make our country work for those who’d been left in the dust of our breakneck rise to global influence. While my 5 years in this city have slightly dulled the shine of my idealism, I haven’t lost my commitment to social justice or my belief in the transformative power of small, purposeful actions. I know I want to live my life as a “Wo-man for others.” The question, in a world as complex and confusing as ours, is: How?
One of my Georgetown professors, a close mentor and friend, once shared with me a powerful quote from philosopher and civil rights activist Howard Thurman:
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs,” said Thurman. “Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
For me, writing isn’t just a passion. It’s an imperative. Writing breeds in me both a sense of personal freedom and a warm feeling of connection to my community. When I buckle down to shape disjointed facts into a meaningful narrative, I use both sides of my brain in a way that energizes me to the core. I come alive.
My love of writing and my insatiable curiosity led me to the field of journalism. The essence of journalism is storytelling, a mode of communication as ancient as speech itself. A well-told story not only engages the reader or listener; it enrages, excites, and challenges her. It answers some questions, but inspires far more. I found my niche in storytelling while filming a documentary on a DC needle exchange organization for my American Studies thesis project. During my 5 months of research, interviews, filming, and editing, I met dozens of women and men whose stories exhibited incredible strength, perseverance, selflessness, and faith—and often revealed the incompetence of our current HIV prevention systems. Yet, without my amateur filmmaking attempt, these stories would have never reached the eyes or ears of anyone outside of this insular community of HIV-positive individuals dealing with homelessness, drug use, and imprisonment, much less the policymakers and healthcare workers who needed to hear their stories most.
Though my thesis work certainly didn’t strengthen our city’s commitment to needle exchange funding, it gave me renewed confidence in my desire and ability to tell untold stories and seek out voices that have been historically suppressed. Visual media and the written word are powerful tools in the dissemination of truth, and I want to use journalism to bring hidden truths to light. This master’s program will allow me to develop the skills in research, interviewing, and writing that I’ll need to be an effective and ethical reporter in the pursuit of our society’s most uncomfortable truths. It will also benefit my work as Alumni Communications Manager at Georgetown’s Office of Advancement. Telling stories about our students, alumni, and campus community is at the core of my job. The training I’ll get in news and feature writing will have an immediate impact on the work I produce on behalf of the university.
Experimenting with new media platforms in my work at Advancement has taught me that standard print practices don’t always work in the digital realm—a lesson learned through painstaking analytics research and a review of alumni usage patterns. Over the past year, I’ve spearheaded efforts to revamp our alumni website with multimedia and interactive content that uses social media to engage a broad spectrum of alumni. As an aspiring journalist, I’m eager to learn about the intersection of print and digital media in today’s news consumption climate. I want to improve my judgment in identifying newsworthy stories and finding the most effective ways to share them, be it through traditional channels or new media.
With a background in nonfiction filmmaking, newspaper journalism, and communications, I have a skill set that will be broadened and deepened by the challenges that this master’s program provides. Balancing a full-time job with coursework will take discipline and focus, two traits I honed in college when I took on an independent film project during the final semester of my senior year. My inquisitive mind, sharp eye for a compelling story, and commitment to the pursuit of truth in service of justice will support my developing skills as a journalist. A healthy dose of audacity, as evidenced by my fourth-grade soccer jersey alteration, keeps me unafraid to broach the difficult topics that a journalist needs to explore in today’s uncertain, ever-shrinking world.
I’m convinced that my admissions ambassador was right, that every Georgetown student wants to change the world. Each of us does it in our own unique way, and storytelling is mine. With a master’s in journalism, I’ll have the foundation of expertise I’ll need to effect positive change by amplifying the unheard voices of our society.