Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal statement of 500 words
'As pertaining to the custody of the children,' the judge continued, 'the court
has decided that it would be in the children's best interests if full custody
were henceforth awarded to the mother.'
My mother then uttered a long sigh of relief. Although I was only eight
years old, I knew that I had just witnessed a life-changing decision. My
parents
had officially obtained a divorce. I had undergone a month of attorneys'
interviews, courtroom drama, and private dissertations in the judge's chambers,
so I then knew why my mother had sighed. My father's lawyer (or, as I referred
to him, the angry, loud man) had by far overshadowed my mother's more mellow
attorney, and this fact was reflected in the divorce decree. Aside from a
minimal child support payment and a division of the mutual assets, my mother
received next to nothing for ten loyal years of marriage. As our broken family
relocated to a small, two-bedroom apartment, I searched for someone to blame.
Although I was too young to understand the complicated legal proceedings, I
observed how 'the big, important guy' (the judge) seemed to listen more
attentively to 'the angry loud man.' When I asked my mother the reason for this
inequality, she said something about not having the same resources that my
father
had. So I was convinced that 'the loud, angry man' who wanted a lot of
resources
was the cause of my unhappy situation. For the next year, I repeatedly asked
questions about lawyers. While my peers were still insisting that they were
going to be ninja fighters or ballerinas, I proclaimed my future as a very loud
lawyer that did not require a lot of resources to do a good job.
As I grew and matured, I realized that my childish declaration would
require dedication. To adjust to my new school and family situation, I eased
the
transition with extracurricular activities. I especially became interested in
public-speaking, which was reflected in my growing confidence at school and my
outspoken personality at home. The jump from middle school to high school
shifted my attentions from 4-H debates and school elections to more in-depth
experiences. Sophomore year I discovered a rare opportunity in the Boy Scouts
Law Exploring Post. This group provided first-hand insights into modern law
careers and enabled me to directly experience numerous aspects of legal
medicine.
Enticing lectures from the district attorney, personal interviews with private
lawyers, and observational trips to local courthouses not only furthered my
interest in more popular, romanticized courtroom action, but also expanded my
interests to include the more practical applications of the law.
I have found within myself a passion for understanding and upholding the
institutions by which man attempts to govern himself. One day I hope to be a
productive part of the American justice system without losing touch of how
deeply
my efforts can affect a person's life. So now that I have established a clear
path to my goal, I must gather my resources.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal Statement (no particular prompt)
I met Joe on my weekly visit to the AIDS ward of Cook County Hospital in inner city Chicago. His smeared technicolor makeup, shoulder-length hair caked with sweat, and painful facial contortions lent his visage a bizarre, almost frightening quality. I sat in his cramped room trying to initiate communication, while he emitted only wheezing guttural sounds. When he opened his mouth, I anxiously leaned forward to hear any impending word. Instead of speech, vomit spewed forth, running down his clothes and into his bed, splattering on my face and hands. Repulsed, I called for help and reached to find a towel. As I washed myself clean in the adjacent bathroom, glad to allow the nurse to assist him, the words struck me: Love your neighbor as yourself. A backward glance revealed Joe still laying helpless, gurgling in his own vomit; the nurse was occupied with other more urgent tasks. And who is my neighbor? Surely not him, surely not Joe, a transvestite infected with HIV, stained and dirty. Joe's eyes, full of tears, met mine. I spent the next half-hour at his side with a washcloth and wastebasket. How sobering that having heard over 2000 sermons and Sunday school lessons in my day, I needed a confrontation with someone in great distress who differed radically from myself in order to truly understand the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The experience forced me to realize that loving my neighbor requires transcending social and racial boundaries, crossing borders of class and lifestyle, to serve those my culture tells me to reject. As with the Samaritan who helped his sworn cultural enemy, the call to service impels me out of my immediate community to assist the Other in need. This counter-cultural re-orientation of values is awkward, difficult, and sometimes dangerous, but essential to the preservation of justice. I am alive today because of people who acted upon the truth of the Good Samaritan. My great-grandfather, Isaiah, narrowly escaped the Armenian Genocide of 1914. His family murdered and village destroyed by Turk militia, Isaiah embarked on a perilous journey out of Turkey, across the Middle-East, into Egypt, and ultimately to the United States where he found safety. Isaiah, whose story has profoundly affected my ethnic identity and passion for justice, would be merely an obscure, faceless victim of genocide, discarded and forgotten, were it not for the many strangers who made his survival possible. I think of the 'Good Turks,' as they're called in Armenian parlance, who rejected the treacherous orders of their government and helped Armenians escape from Turkey. I think also of Arab Muslims who were willing to shelter a penniless Christian from Armenia as he fled his homeland. In both cases, the generosity of the Other, whose assistance overcame cultural animosity and religious differences, enabled my present existence. The passion for international justice that drives my desire to study law may be traced back to both an intellectual understanding of the call to love my neighbor and an inner motivation to give to others what others gave to me-that is, life, safety, and freedom. Poet John Donne notes that 'no man is an island; any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind.' If I am to love my neighbor as myself, I should, like Donne, resonate with each tolling of the bell as if it were my own. The cries of those straining under the yoke of oppression compel me to spend my career pursuing justice for my many neighbors. Fervency is necessary, but not sufficient, for liberating the oppressed. Studying law represents the natural culmination of my past experiences and provides the training essential to my future ventures. I expect a rigorous law school education to deepen my love for the rule of law and to hone the skills necessary for expert legal advocacy, thereby giving hands and feet to the force that drives me.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
General open-ended personal statement.
When an important football game is coming up, a team cant afford to proceed in ignorance of the competition. They have to know which plays will be used against them, as well as what strategies will most effectively lead them to victory. For this reason, teams and coaches spend hours studying footage of their opponents in action. I want to study the law for a similar reason. For me, though, it's not just a game - the stakes are nothing less than my right to marry, to adopt children, to become a foster parent, to serve my country in the armed forces, to teach in public schools, to enjoy freedom from discrimination in housing and employment, and to be physically intimate without being branded a felon. I am a gay American, and the contest I'm talking about is taking place not on the gridiron but in the courtroom. The opponents of gays and lesbians are adept at using the law against us: numerous anti-gay statutes are presently on the books, and scores of new anti-gay bills, referenda, and court verdicts make headlines each year. When I was still years from coming out, for example, I watched in scared silence as the residents of my own hometown, Cincinnati, voted to constitutionally enshrine their 'right' to discriminate against gays. They were spurred on largely by the efforts of legally savvy representatives of the far right, who inflamed their prejudices and raised alarms over the purported 'gay agenda.' This, I would tell them, is my gay agenda: to find a satisfying job in a discrimination-free workplace; to find a loving, committed partner, and get married; to start a family and be a nurturing parent; to be a moral person and a good citizen; to lead a meaningful and happy life - no more, no less. Strangely enough, this is precisely what most heterosexuals want. Yet, somehow, for trying to obtain exactly this, gays and lesbians are accused of 'flaunting' their sexuality, 'recruiting' children, and seeking 'special rights.' Rhetoric and illogic like this help bring about laws such as Cincinnati's aforementioned Issue 3, laws which threaten to prevent me from ever attaining my own American dream. But while my opponents are using the law to attack and persecute, my teammates - gays, lesbians, and supporters - are fighting fire with fire. In 1996, the Supreme Court's blow against discrimination in Romer v. Evans brought hope to at least one closeted Midwestern high school boy. In 1997, although I didn't know it then, pro-gay bills proposed in state legislatures outnumbered anti-gay bills for the first time. And I cheered in 2000 when civil unions became legal in Vermont. As I approach graduation and the 'real world' looms large ahead of me, I am both angered at the remaining legal roadblocks on the way to gay civil equality and thrilled to be coming of age as a gay man at this historic moment, when I might somehow make a difference. This is why I want to study the law. My opponents, whom I will have to face as soon as I enter the adult world, have used the law for decades to keep gays and lesbians from enjoying the opportunity and dignity that every American deserves; no doubt they will continue to run these same plays against us in years to come. But somewhere in that same playbook are the keys to our victory. I just want to be prepared on game day.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal statement
When my father began his private pediatrics practice, computers hadn't made their way into the small business world and most patients were not covered by health insurance. Billing was so simple that the same person could office manage, bill, and answer phones - by hand. Ten years later that would be impossible. My father bought a computer network and some medical billing software, and my mother went to join him. When I was old enough, I began to work summers there. This work, which only manages to sneak its way onto one line of my resume, became an important educational experience for me. While I started out just doing some filing, I quickly learned all the positions in the office, especially in billing. I posted charges and generated insurance claims. I processed insurance payments and collected patient balances. I realized I had even begun to memorize procedure and diagnosis billing codes! The most important task in the billing department was tracking unpaid claims. Armed with a heavy report of pending claims I called insurance companies and spoke to representatives. I learned that systems are not necessarily systematic. They are not necessarily accurate, and they are not necessarily efficient. They need to be scrutinized. They require one's initiative to keep them working properly. One summer one insurance company began to pay out a required childhood vaccine under cost to the physicians and I had to draft a letter to the insurance commissioner to get a representative's attention at the insurance company to change the pay rate. Another bought a scanner system to facilitate their claims processing. Unfortunately the software misinterpreted dates of service. Whenever a date was a single digit, for example, in the month, the software would run the first digit of the date into the second digit of the month, and so on, adding a zero at the end to fill the required number of digits. Our claims were denied payments on the grounds that we were claiming fraudulent dates-the year 2010 had not occurred yet! Our solution to the problem hinged on cooperation: we hand-wrote the claims and they manually processed them until the software problem was fixed. The system, left unchecked, could result in deteriorating patient care. One company stipulated in a contractwhich my father refused to sign-that medical assistants must enter the rooms before the doctor and interview the patients. Once they have done so the physician may enter and must direct his inquiries only to the assistants, avoiding patient contact in the name of efficiency. Cases along this vein are more common. For a while, several insurance plans covered well care only for even ages after the first year, so that a vaccine would be covered for a four-year old but not a three-year old. This formula clashed severely with immunization protocols. The Hepatitis B vaccine, for example, must be administered in three doses over the course of a year and a half. Despite their well care coverage, patients were actually left only partially covered. No amount of negotiating could budget the insurance companies. Fortunately the state decided to require most of the vaccinations in question by law, so those companies were forced to change the plans. I know it is strange that working in a pediatricians office would fuel my passion for law, but it did. The lesson that became engrained on my heart, that systems could and must be constantly challenged, reconciled the tension I had perceived between wanting to take initiative and wanting to work in a system of rules. I learned, first-hand, some of the pitfalls of an impersonal system. I gained an appreciation for how important it is for more people to have health insurance, given the rising costs of health care. I put into practice many skills I will need to be a successful lawyer: concise argumentation, clear communication, and knowledge of the topic at hand. These experiences are not the only ones which have guided me towards law, but they are the ones which have tied the others together into an understanding of my own attitude towards law and the challenges I am ready to undertake.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal Statement
Personal Statement Cleaning my room is a gentle excavation. During summers at home, I rumble the dust and sift through the layers of my accumulating life. Recently, I read through what classmates had written in my high school yearbook. It was a strange and unsettling experience as these words spoke directly to a self that I had nearly forgotten. I felt as if I were one of those Russian nesting dolls that hold several smaller dolls inside; the thought of multiple past identities coexisting inside me was new and wonderful. The words 'Do what you do best' caught my eye. If there were a way to know what one did best and could then train this possibility to the fullest extent, how could life not be both fruitful and enjoyable? Instead of asking the daunting question of what I did best, I thought about what I liked to do and what I did often. Perhaps in time, the source of these questions will lead me towards what I do best. I have always been drawn toward writing: creative, analytical, expository and critical. I realized that whatever I was pursuing, the beginning and end result for me were often made possible through writing. Thinking back to meaningful academic experiences in college, I realize all of them began with a presentation of my self and my interests through the medium of writing. I believe the only thing we can write about well is what we know, for this is the only truthful and never-ending source we are given. Often I was in the situation of writing a proposal to an audience of strangers, whether it be a scholarship committee, participants at the symposium, or fellow researchers at a presentation, and the only thing I could tell them was who I was and what I knew. Many times, these experiences culminated in reflective writing as well, not only a testament to what I had done but more an examination of where I had been, what space I had occupied and what space I now occupied. Writing became a way to capture the changing of my spaces, both around me and inside me, for I had to take into account the spaces within myself which had been excavated, explored, or widened because of particular experiences. My interest in law school received a personal and directive boost this summer while working as an assistant for a professor at my home town laws school. In the spring, I found his website and was intrigued by his work in international criminal trials and Asian human rights. I wrote a letter to the professor expressing my interest in working with him over the summer and thus began my first dip into the legal education. I began by learning about the fundamental conceptions of international law and the beginnings of the United Nations by way of an introductory textbook, and supplemented by meetings with my professor. Every time I stepped into the law library for research, I looked up into the winding staircases and ceaseless rows of books and I was captured by an overwhelming sense that in here existed something bigger than me; it had a long history and yet it pressed its urgency onto the future, and onto me as a burgeoning student in the legal education. Soon I began my project on the difficulty of international human rights standardization in Asia from a cultural perspective. I complemented research with current developments in human rights violations by reading and editing articles related to this topic, written mostly by scholars working from Asia. I brought into formal research my own cultural values and these two bodies of knowledge supported and challenged each other. These few months were an inspirational stepping stone for my future; it reconfirmed my dream to one day become a law professor and I also found a way in which my personal interests and academic strengths engaged each other. Since I have lived in Asia for only the first year of my life, I cannot explain exactly what draws me there and what strings pull at me to learn more, but friends and my own family are always perplexed at my fascination. In the past few years, my interest in Asia has extended into an academic context. In the spring of 2002, I was awarded a travel scholarship from my undergraduate university to travel and explore the relationship between culture and religion's sacred space. In the fall of 2002, I began a writing project on Asian-American attitudes toward their native language and I had the opportunity to present my work at a geo-linguistics conference. This past summer, however, was the turning point; in my study of Asian human rights, I realized the significant legal implication of cultural studies and as a Asian-American, the impact was deeply personal. I struggled with questions such as: What are the cultural origins for domestic legal policies on human rights in Asia? How can international policies regarding human rights be both effective and culturally sensitive? The overlap of culture and law offers a rich body of knowledge and I am eager to begin my scholarly pursuits in this area. The prospect of being a law student and with time, becoming knowledgeable in the area, is exciting to me because it combines what I enjoy and what I consider to be my strongest points: initiative, writing, and reflection. I would like to go into a discipline in which applications of what I have read, been taught, accumulated and experienced through the years are given concrete structure. For me, law represents the process in which philosophy is given solid construction; thoughts are grounded in reason; and writing becomes a powerful record of principles that guide and protect a society. I see law and writing as ways in which space is defined and thereby protected; both define boundaries and fill in necessary and often unrealized gaps. In the occupation I will later pursue, I would like to have the mind of a lawyer and the techniques of a writer. With these tools I believe I can become closer to the person who can fully realize self-potential; I believe I will be able to live out the words of advice 'Do what you do best' and thereby contribute positively to the society in which I live.
Essay Category:
Essay Question:
Personal statement
At thirteen - with baggy jeans and a voice that refused to change - I had my first trumpet lesson. My playing was strong, but my interest was lacking. Towards the end of that first lesson, my teacher changed the way I thought about music. I had played through De Gouy's 'Bolero' for him, proud to have hit every note. 'Nice,' he said, 'But I've heard it before. Next week, I want you to play it your way.' With that, he added my name to the score: 'Edited by S.' And I began to make music. From then until I was nineteen, music became my primary focus. Nowhere else did I feel as though I were creating meaning rather than merely receiving it. I excelled on my instrument, eventually playing at both Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. Soon after I arrived at college, and I began to create meaning without an instrument in hand. My first opportunity was a class on ethical theory. Instead of merely reading texts, we explored their limits. I even wrote a paper on the failure of Homeric maxims under Kant's categorical imperative. 'Homeric maxims' are, naturally, rules for living according to Homer J. Simpson - my interest in Ancient Greek came later. While my work at that time might have been less than groundbreaking, I was enraptured by the chance to develop my own perspective. My interests in philosophy and music collided when I reflected, as a sophomore, on the question of peer-to-peer file-sharing. I had been using file-sharing applications for years, but with mounting litigation against such services and increased attention on the criminality of copyright infringement, I decided to put my philosophical tools to work on the ethics of file-sharing. But the initial search was aporetic: I needed to explore the underlying copyright theory. The research that followed culminated in an article entitled '[Title omitted]' which was published in the [Title omitted] Law Review. For the first time, my philosophical voice enjoyed a public performance. Though I did not thank my trumpet teacher, my article feels a bit like Lockean property theory, 'Edited by S.' I still love music, but what is even more exciting about making music in the scholarly realm is that my voice could change the way people live their lives. I do not expect that out of my article, of course. At this point, I would be thrilled if just a few people were to read the article. But being heard has inspired me to work harder: I hope to make more noise soon. My goal is to help shape the way society understands, regulates, and recognizes intellectual property in a digital world. I have developed a strong background already by working with Professor [Name] at Temple Law School, attending iLaw at the Berkman Center, and publishing an article on copyright. I can find no better place to continue my studies than at Harvard Law School for three reasons. First, I greatly admire Professor Fisher's work, particularly the alternative compensation system he advances in Promises to Keep. Second, my experience at iLaw was an amazing one, and I would love to contribute in any way possible to the Berkman Center's cutting edge research. Finally, Professor Zittrain's current research on the potentially grim future of the internet has been the primary inspiration for my current project, 'Running Headlong to Our Chains: The End of the Cyberstate of Nature.' At twenty-one, my jeans are not as baggy as they once were, and my voice has settled down. But my interest in creating meaning has not subsided. I make music every day, by rethinking property rights in intellectual products, by reinterpreting Kant, and, of course, by playing even that old 'Bolero' my own way. As a student of philosophy interested in music and law, shaping media policy is the perfect way to fuse my passions into a symphony of creativity. The laws of yesterday are not fit for the technologies of tomorrow. My goal is not to change the world, but to help resolve this discord. Perhaps one day, a small part of the way the world understands and regulates intellectual property in cyberspace will be 'Edited by S.'
