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Undergraduate Studies ePortfolio

Christopher RuperBachelor of Psychology, 2011

Personal Statement

Statement of Purpose 12/06/11

My academic goal is to obtain an Industrial and Organizational Psychology degree from California State University Long Beach. With this degree, I plan to work for a company as a human resource manager, wherein I might apply my education and life experiences to improve efficiency, minimize and resolve workplace conflicts, increase communication and teamwork, and advising management on the hiring and firing of employees.

The focus on psychology in my life stems from my experiences with my family and earlier years in high school. I am 25 years old, and as the youngest of six siblings, I have grown into a sensitive listener and an observer of people. My family-life has experienced great dysfunction due to fractured relationships over the years, but throughout this I have managed to remain objective and assume as much of a critical distance as I could. Taking this position has helped me to navigate the dissonance and make favorable choices toward more balanced and healthy relationships. My schooling even gave me an opportunity to help my family's discord by promoting healthy communication and giving me the confidence to ask the questions that they never thought to ask themselves. Psychology has had a wildly successful impact on my life and my immediate family.

But it is hard to accurately analyze someone else without first knowing one’s own strengths and weaknesses. Through my experiences I have learned a lot about interpersonal relationships as well as intrapersonal effectiveness, and I believe this will be instrumental to my success in working with corporations and their employees. One of my strengths lies in my ability to get to know people and communicate well with them. I also am a natural problem solver, always seeking to distill larger crises into smaller, more manageable parts.

One area in which I have stumbled, though, lies in my 2004 college career. During this time, I was working fulltime while attending school, and while I am a very committed and studious learner, I quickly found that I could not handle both at once! Despite my optimistic and possibly stubborn resolve to somehow juggle work and school simultaneously, I quickly found my grades slipping. However, I re-prioritized and re-structured my life, transferred to Argosy University in 2009, and was very successful from that point forward, making the Dean's list twice and the President's list twice and graduating with a 3.83 GPA.

Resume

Statement of Purpose Cont.

Working at Saint Mary and Joseph’s Surgery and Laser Center has given me hands-on experience towards being an Industrial and Organizational Psychologist. Throughout my years there, I have been given many opportunities and increasing responsibilities, including patient care, medical claims billing, surgery scheduling, inventory management, equipment sterilization, employee management, and human resources. Since I have knowledge of several jobs throughout the company, I have found myself to be a great communicator between the different departments. This has improved the flow of communication and efficiency, and I have used my diverse background within the surgery center to help alter the process of scheduling employee shifts and overhaul the entire day-to-day protocol within the surgery center itself. With teamwork and effective communication, I was able to assemble a series of checklists and manuals to ensure the staff's time was being spent as efficiently as possible, and since then, my supervisors have even made me an instrumental voice on the hiring committees for all positions within the facility.

Outside of work, I also volunteer in the mentoring program MHA Project Together. It is similar to the Big Brother program, but the children involved have a much wider range of disorders and sometimes very tragic backgrounds. This experience has been rewarding for me because I have had the opportunity to make positive, visible changes in other people's lives. I have also written and published a psychology book series, “Know Thyself”, which is a series of journals and lessons targeted at specific disorders. They focus on teaching people how to establish sustainable, short-term and long-term goals and to track their progress.

I have selected to pursue an Industrial and Organizational Psychology degree at California State University Long Beach because of the school's reputation and because of the opportunities that the school provides for students. I feel that I would thrive in the CSULB environment, and your institution will be a large step towards achieving my academic and professional goals. As a hard worker and someone who truly values education, I know that I would fully capitalize on everything your school has to offer.

Reflection

Reflection of academic tenure at Argosy.

I have learned a lot of valuable information at Argosy University. Psychology has been my field of choice for many years. It was beneficial to me and my career goals to learn about psychology from professionals. I learned about all aspect of the field of psychology. The information about how to apply psychology to one’s life is invaluable information to anyone wanting to be involved in the field of psychology for a profession. My first impression of the school was that of hope. My weakness was in my GPA from community colleges. I needed to organize my life and receive time for education. Argosy allowed my to do that. Now that I am almost finished I have hope in being a well trained professional ready for my Master’s degree. The strengths that I have gained are interpersonal effectiveness, research skills, a high GPA, knowledge about the field of psychology, and motivation to seek out higher education .

Table of Contents

Cognitive abilities: For this submission I did my PowerPoint project titled, “Society’s view of performance enhancing supplements: anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.” It uses problem solving of research and changes that need to occur and analysis of social issues. It also uses appropriate usage of information resources.

Research skills: This assignment is titled “Final Project,” because it was the final

paper I submitted for my research class. I researched coo-petition and game theory. This paper shows the value coo-petition has to humanity through daily interactions, business, and world diplomacy.

Communication skills: This paper is titled, “California’s Coastal Pollution.” It is

about a local issue I had discovered. The paper demonstrates my ability to communicate about important topics that need to be addressed by society. We were suppose to imagine that this paper would be submitted to a government agency.

 Ethics & Diversity awareness: This paper is titled, “Sexual Orientation.” It was

of an interview I did of my friend who had a different sexual orientation from mine. The project was meant to grasp a view of people who are different and to discover some understanding of who they are; this is a huge topic in psychology today because many therapists do not fully understand how to handle people of different sexual orientations.

 

Table of Contents

 

Knowledge of foundations of the field: This paper is titled, “Counseling.” It demonstrates my understanding of the foundation of counseling and its main focus is on intergraded therapy strategies. It uses cognitive and social uses of therapy and their results on clients.

Knowledge of applied psychology: This paper is entitled, “Decision

making in groups and effective communication.” This paper was from my Industrial and Organizational Psychology course. It is about applying Industrial and Organizational Psychology to a hypothetical organizational problem.

 Interpersonal Effectiveness: This paper is titled, “Gender Roles.” It is

about recalling personal experiences and recording how they affected me. It also includes the social impact that gender roles can have on society. I think the importance of interpersonal effectiveness is to understand yourself and how you may get affected by a situation. Then applying this knowledge to other members of society so understanding can take place.

My Future in Learning

Learning is a lifelong process. Learning is a huge part of living. Everyone learns all the time.

Education is very important to me and I want to learn all I can while I have the time to do it. I plan to seek out higher education from a Master’s degree and then a Doctor of Psychology degree. There is much learning involved in my academic goals.

I also plan to learn from life experiences so I can become the best professional I can. Work experience is a huge part of education. One cannot learn everything from text books. Applying the knowledge learned in educational institutions to a professional workplace must also be learned. It is in this learning that I can maximize my successes in life as a professional.

Contact Me

Thank you for viewing my ePortfolio.

For further information, please contact me at the e-

mail address below. Chuper66@gmail.com