Ulices Cardenas

�e Moi

All the hardships one confronts in school never go unrewarded; I being an optimistic person, have always lived my life by this simple philosophy. Yet these hardships can take a huge toll on a person physically as well as psychologically; thus making obstacles seem almost impossible to overcome. Despite all the troubles my first year in college has brought me; the tragic passing of my best friend, the extreme poverty, the family quarrels and my swift downward spiral into depression, I have made it out motivated and intact. Driven towards my goal to become a psycholinguist, I plan on transferring to a four-year university after I have acquired a sufficient amount of transferable units. During the past few years I have been enthralled by the beauty and complexity of foreign languages and how the cognitive structures of the brain process language, text, and the meaning of spoken word. This fascination with language and language acquisition has given me a broader outlook on society and cultures of the world. I take pleasure in learning about the diverse traditions, beliefs, and customs held by different societies the world over. For the past year I have spent most of my spare time teaching myself the Japanese language, grammar, customs, and writing system known as kana; while improving and utilizing my French. My personal goal is to become fluent in seven of the worlds major languages in hopes of better understanding how humans acquire language, and what better way of understanding how language is acquired than to learn them yourself? I am currently majoring in psychology and I plan on someday making a major contribution to the field of psycholinguistics in hopes that science will someday fully understand how language and the mental processes behind it work. I am goal orientated and I will achieve my goal some time in the not so distant future.