Preparing for graduate studies and a career in Political Science isn’t a check list; it’s a way of life. Instead of staying in the United States and studying foreign relations with perhaps a semester abroad, I've lived, studied, and worked abroad in order to balance theory with lived experience. I have  lived in Europe and parts of the Middle East and Asia for ten years and been in the U.S. Army Reserves for thirteen years.  During  the Army's Civil Affairs training, I learnt methods of social analysis that are based entirely on real world context and dynamic relationships.  It is my sincere intention to offer what I’ve learned and my work ethic to University of Oklahoma’s Ph.D. program and faculty. If accepted into OU, I also intend to join the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, so that my military career’s advancement will coincide with my academic career’s. 
After my studies, I will either be working in the private sector at a Non-Governmental Organization or public sector in a governmental or International Governmental Organization.  For my Army Reserves military career, I intend to become an intelligence officer where I will engage foreign cultures with critical research and analysis skills that have been developed jointly through my Ph.D. program and army training.  At some distant point I would like to teach, but I’m currently eager to apply myself in field work rather than academia. The university’s program, I know, will prepare me for excellence in both.        
All of my academic studies, internship experiences, and Army Civil Affairs work have shown me how minor ethnicities and political groups relate to and define themselves against larger cultural influences and political organizations.  Time and again, I have learned how language has  held nationalities together and how meaningful a minor nation’s literature can be in giving them legitimacy. It is my belief that Their languages and epics deserve to be heard.  I regret that I could never become fluent in the regional languages to appreciate the poetry they heard with ease. On the steppes of Russia and Northern Vietnam, I wrote in my notebook that it is a worthy pursuit to dedicate my life to the study and sharing of these minor cultures with the wider English speaking world. I wrote, “Minority Voices through Literary Tradition: This is a project I intend to work on.” My interest in other cultures is not limited to the arts.  I also get insight by comparing aspects of different political regimes separated by time and space.  For example, in the past month I’ve been studying the Inquisition in Medieval Europe and interrogation techniques of early Soviet Russia.  Orthodoxy can’t exist without heresy, and political and cultural identities can’t be formed without an ‘enemy’, opposition, or big Other.        
