Most of my clients are people for whom English is a second language. Almost all are multilingual and many have extensive experience from outside the United States and are now applying to programs of higher education in America, Canada, England and Australia. I am convinced that one’s ethnicity, language skills, and multicultural experiences need to be woven together in an eloquent fashion in your Personal Statement, Statement of Purpose, or Letter of Intent/motivation, as interconnected themes that radiate throughout your admission essay. Your ethnic/racial and cultural backgrounds and international aptitudes are your greatest assets as an applicant, and they need to be carefully related to both your short and long term goals. I do everything that I can to make your statement as effective as possible. If you are able to afford my Premium Service, after a careful review of your material, I often ask you specific questions born from my many years of experience writing  statements for admission to graduate school. I am a seasoned expert concerning what is important to include, and what is not. I have also had a great deal of practice at condensing a lot of material into a very limited space limitation. (I like to think of it as brain surgery).

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My own doctoral research was concerned primarily with the Cold War, especially in Latin America. As a historian of social change in the Developing World who is fluent in Spanish, I have long been fascinated with Latin America, which is why I have made my home in Bolivia (in South America). I wrote my own doctoral dissertation on the role of women in Central American history, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, where I lived for many years. I am now a permanent resident of Bolivia and I live in Cochabamba with my son; we are at the exact center of the South American land mass. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America but it has an especially dynamic, largely indigenous culture.  Nowhere on the planet do people dance in the streets as they do in Bolivia.

 

For over 30 years, I have stayed current on most of the news coming out of the Developing World, Africa and Asia as well as Latin America, especially human rights issues and political conflict. I have studied world religions and cultures extensively for decades. I am published in Spanish in the areas of history and gender studies. For the past 20 years, I have dedicated most of my energy laboring for the success of my clients and it is a privilege that I hope to continue for another quarter of a century or more.

 

While finishing an MA Degree in Religious Studies at Indiana University in `988, I had my most significant social work experience. The Director of MiddleWay House shelter for victims of domestic violence and their children, when I worked there, 1986-1987, was Eva McQueen. Several years later, we would loose her to cancer. I offer what follows as a tribute to my friend Eva. The year was 1986, it was springtime in Bloomington, Indiana's college town, USA. A Master's student in Religious Studies, I needed a work study job; so I went to the bulletin board where those jobs were posted and applied for the one that I thought sounded most interesting, staff person at Bloomington's Middle Way House shelter for victims of domestic violence and their children. I was later told by the director that her principal motivation for hiring me was to have a male role model for the children.

 

I was not the first man to work at Middle Way House Shelter in Bloomington, Indiana in the 1980s, only the first paid staff position for a man. I would usually go in shortly before 5 pm and leave around 9 (earning about $7.00 for my shift). When I left MiddleWay in March of 1987, 'Maria' was also leaving as we had found her an apartment. Maria was obese, something that greatly aggravated her other problems, which included foot disease, subsequently walking on crutches. In addition to having a borderline normal IQ, she was also diabetic, taking a long list of medications, and pregnant with twins. The reason she came to us, however, was that her mother and her [Maria's] live-in boyfriend were torturing her with cigarette burns. The mother and the boyfriend were eating acid (LSD) together on an almost daily basis at the time that she sought refuge with us.​

 

Before I left the shelter, I went to see Maria in her little studio apartment. I had gotten her a radio to listen to and she was glad to see me, but not well at all. She had purchased a six pack of beer and was about half way through, listening to country music, weeping softly. I hugged her and said goodbye. I tell you, the applicant to a Social Work Program, this story from 1987 because I think it will help you to understand why it is that I prefer to work on behalf of social workers rather than applicants in other fields. I enjoy the heart stuff in social work statements, the triumph over misery, the battle against all odds. For me social work is romantic, perhaps the most ultimately 'humane' course of study of all fields of inquiry.

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I was 27 years old when I worked at MiddleWay House, the half way point from my perspective now at 57 years old. I look back and reflect from the vantage point of someone rapidly becoming an old man, as well as a professional writer/editor of statements for admission to graduate programs in social work. The first of many men who would later work with MiddleWay House, I turned 28 counseling, sharing, hoping along with a dozen or so women who had sought refuge with us, along with their children, fleeing violent domestic situations. I dispensed medications, fixed things that were broken around the house, played with the children, and even answered the Rape Crises Hotline when there were no female staff around to do so. MiddleWay is now a huge organization with a lot of resources. In 1986/87 when I was there, it was a handful of people in an old run-down house on North Rogers St.  in Bloomington, Indiana. For me, it was a foundational experience of critical importance for my own professional and intellectual trajectory.  I left MiddleWay in March of 1987, taking off for Latin America and going on to write my doctoral dissertation for the University of Southern California on the history of structures of violence against women in Central America from pre-Colombian times through the present.

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Now in my 60s, I have been drafting professional, model statements on behalf of applicants to social work programs for more than 20 years. I have given special attention to Social Work because I most enjoy working in this area. It is the stories that I find most interesting, the life sagas of those who seek professional fulfillment as social workers on the front lines of many of the most important issues of our day, the human issues, the touchy-feely stuff that I most love. Drafting Statements for applicants to Social Work programs helps to greatly enrich my own spiritual life and to contribute to important social and moral contributions as a result of your success.

 

I leave you with pictures of me with the principal light of my life, my only child, David Dylan Edinger (now 12 years old).