Statement of Purpose in the CCT Program - Matthew Carter Wilson

Matthew Wilson
mw352@georgetown.edu
Statement of Purpose in the Communication, Culture, and Technology Program
Matthew Wilson
mw352@georgetown.edu
December, 2009
http://www.matthewcarterwilson.com
In today’s workforce, job demands have become as broad and complex as our interconnected world.
Likewise in today’s university, solutions require perspectives able to transcend specializations. Just as a
psychology professor may use anthropology research, a financial analyst in today’s workforce might
draw necessary job skills from a liberal arts degree. Today, a Renaissance requirement asks a new
workforce to problem solve across disciplines to discover creative solutions. I first understood the value
of interdisciplinary thinking when, during undergraduate thesis work, I studied “hookup culture” at the
intersection of narrative theory, psychosocial phenomena, and gender studies. In the light these
overlapping perspectives cast together, new arguments emerged. The interests and development goals
I now bring to the CCT program will likewise benefit from an interdisciplinary approach.
I bring three personal development goals to the CCT program that fit well its intellectual, social, and
career objectives. The first of these is to add confidence to my academic voice, both through writing
and in class discussion. Developing my academic confidence requires developing my strategic reading
skills, including reading through frameworks that will help me pull the most important information from
texts. Honing in on significant concepts, as strategic reading allows, would help me enliven class
discussion and add depth to written work. By encouraging discussion and academic risk-taking, the CCT
program is conducive to such development. CCT students interact across clusters, each coming from a
uniquely self-directed course plan. With my own unique course of study, interacting with other CCT
students will challenge me to articulate what I learn and build my academic voice.
The second goal I bring to CCT is to develop my comfort as a group leader. CCT fosters group leadership
opportunities by sustaining a culture of non-competitiveness and collaboration. And collaborative group
work is a large part of CCT experience and growth. But rather than by accepting leadership roles, I hope
to emerge as a group leader naturally as I develop confidence in my academic voice to offer valuable
insight. I then hope that through practice, my contributions to group work will include synthesizing
group member input and facilitating new ideas and compromise.
My third goal in the CCT program is to develop a focused career path by assessing my academic
strengths and weaknesses. Developing my career path builds on aspects of the CCT program conducive
to this: its self-structuring curriculum develops student autonomy, and through fostering collaboration,
CCT trains students to be valuable team contributors in the workplace. Monitoring my development in a
learning career at CCT, I will use the strengths and research passions I develop to inform my career
goals. With career interests in media campaign work and communication research, I will assess my
potential in both fields on a CCT proving ground. Through development as a knowledge producer, I
hope to train up my weaknesses in job-applicable skills while honing strengths that will inform my career
path.
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Matthew Wilson
mw352@georgetown.edu
In each of my goals for academic and social development in the CCT program, I hope to deconstruct
popular media texts. I am especially interested in examining the ways our cultural discourse—and
perhaps the ways we view ourselves—might be shaped by an increasingly pervasive discourse of health
and medicine. In the United States, mainstream pharmaceutical advertisements are one example of
pervasive texts that might hold implications for trends in medicalization. My hope is that such research
interests will guide my course of study and help me develop the unique contributions I will bring to
classmates and coursework. And while I strengthen my academic voice at CCT, I will assess and train
what academic skills are lagging that might affect my readiness to meet workplace challenges. As CCT
prepares me for the Renaissance requirement of a workforce tasked to find interdisciplinary solutions, I
hope my own goals and interests will benefit CCT and its culture.
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