MSC OT Personal Statement Canadian Applying to Scotland

I hope very much to be selected for admission to the particularly distinguished MSC Program in Occupational Therapy at XXXX University because I would simply love to live in Scotland and I see XXXX as the finest OT Masters Program in the British Isles. A young Canadian woman, I want to remain in the UK but cross the ocean to study. I could not be more passionately engaged with the field of Occupational Therapy or more enthused about the prospect of earning my Masters in OT at XXXX University.

First, I earned my diploma as a Rehabilitation Therapy Assistant (April 2015) and will graduate with my Bachelor’s Degree in Community Rehabilitation and Disability Studies this coming April of 2017 at the University of XXXX. Throughout my undergraduate studies I have discovered a passion for working in inclusive education. I hope to make my major contribution as an OT professional in this area, the promotion of inclusive education. I currently work in an early intervention school for children with disabilities as an occupational therapy/physiotherapy assistant. I have also worked in facilities following a more medical model of disability, such as hospitals and physio-therapy clinics.

For me, inclusion is the central moral and social principle that guides my intellectual focus and professional aspirations. I look forward to many decades to come as an OT professional and an advocate for inclusion, working to empower people with special challenges to excel and to take their rightful place in society alongside the rest of us. I am a firm believer that physical and developmental challenges must be met through education. I seek the opportunity to spend a professional lifetime giving my all to bridging the gap between simple integration, on the one hand, and meaningful inclusion on the other.

I have never had the opportunity to travel much outside of Canada, always living at home near my family. While I appreciate my roots, I am now 21 years old and I feel strongly that it is time for me to spread my wings and take flight as a human being. The other side of the Atlantic was my first idea. My special dream is to study at an ultra-modern university such as Queen Margaret, in the historical setting of Edinburgh the cultural epicenter of Scotland and its link to the world. I have a coworker who earned her degree at XXXX and her stories of those years have greatly sparked my curiosity and yearning for precisely that kind of experience.

I find everything about Queen Margaret compelling, as well as Edinburgh more generally speaking. I have always been rather shy and I am convinced that studying in Edinburgh is precisely what I need, to break out of my comfort zone and learn to learn to think and feel with the fullest levels of independence and creativity.

My studies have changed the way that I look at disability. I no longer see my students as “impaired” or “disabled”, but, rather, as having a variety of abilities that require them to complete everyday tasks in certain ways. There is no standard, no bar; the only thing that is relevant is capacity to improve. I am driven to demonstrate how, in the presence of great passion and drive, anything is possible.

I thank you for your consideration of my application to OT at XXXX.