applying to law school: an introspection

I've now completed all but two of my applications to law school. Essentially all of my application materials are finalized. Like many things in life, though, while you're busy completing something, you are blind to its mistakes. It's only after you've finished it that you begin to see the glaring flaws it has had all along.

Compared to other graduate programs, like medical school and PhD programs, applying to law school is pretty easy. There's no eight-hour MCAT, no required sample of your academic writing, no required work experience. You just have to graduate from college, take the three-hour standardized test (the LSAT), get a few recommendations from your professors, type up a resume, fill out some general information about yourself on applications, and write a personal statement on what you want the law schools to know about you. This last part, though, is driving me nuts.

I mean "nuts" in a good way and a bad way. A bad way because I am obsessing over it. I've written about ten drafts of my personal statement, and have had five very good writers edit it. Nonetheless, and even though I've already submitted it, I still know my statement can be improved, and how. After four months of writing it, though, (my statement is two pages, double-spaced, by the way), I've accepted that I just need to say "that's it" and submit it--flaws and all. Writing samples can always be improved--it's just a matter of saying "when."

I mean "nuts" in a good way because this little, two-page snapshot of my life is causing all kinds of criticisms, speculations, and general introspection into my experiences, goals, and motivations. It's because of this that I've decided sharing with all of you may just be the therapy I need. So someone start the timer. My therapy session begins...now.

If someone asked you to tell them the most important thing there is to know about you in two pages (double-spaced) what would you write?

I thought deciding what to write in my personal statement would be the easy part. I wrote outline after outline on working in microfinance in college and in Chile, traveling with nomads and living with Buddhist monks in Mongolia, teaching here in Uruguay, and even overcoming struggles within my family. I settled on a specific experience in Mongolia that initiated my interest in human rights work and poverty alleviation, and I began writing. I thought things were going really well--I had picked a topic that revealed my love of travel, my consciousness of international interdependency and cultural diversity, my questioning of my religious convictions, and even the reason I want to go to law school in the first place: human rights. Several people edited it, I edited it, then I sent it to law schools. Then I read it again.

I realized, for the first time, that what I had typed onto the pages was void of the essence of the experience--void of the passion that has initiated and guided my commitment to social work the last three years. The experience I had described--the experience that is so important and personal to me--had become a story that anyone could tell. It had become a cheap short story. Taking it from my memory and putting it into words had ruined it.

While preparing to write my statement, I had read personal statements of other people applying to law school, just to be aware of what styles and topics other people were using. I soon discovered that it is very, VERY hard to find a quality personal statement; most of them are absolutely horrible. Most applicants tried to link their life-changing experiences to a universal lesson using clumsy statements that were so vague they ultimately became meaningless: "I will fight for a better tomorrow;" "I will share my blessings with those who have nothing;" "I believe everyone deserves a chance." It was only after I looked back at my statement that I began to wonder whether these statements were so terrible because their authors were trying to put the unexplainable into words.

But are these experiences really so deeply held and personally significant as to be unexplainable? I wonder how "Casablanca," portraying a simple relationship between a man and a woman, has succeeded in captivating generations of audiences who never personally knew--and can probably hardly relate to--Humphrey and Ingrid. Anyone can tell a story about a man and a woman loving each other. What made "Casablanca" and its storytelling so special? What was the essence "Casablanca" captured, and how did it do so?

And there's also Vladimir Nabokov. Anyone interested in reading an author who can turn the mundane into the magical should read a few of Nabokov's short stories. A piano recital becomes the focus of the universe when a man in attendance sees a beautiful woman. The protagonist of another story captures the essence of living a full life while waiting at a bus stop for a woman who dumped him. So what does Nabokov do in his short stories that I can't in my personal statement?

Every once in a while, I do find a well-written and captivating personal statement. The characteristic that usually makes these statements stand out is that they portray the overcoming of an authentic and significant personal struggle. These people are not describing how in Mongolia they were moved by a starving person begging for food. They aren't talking about how their socioeconomically disadvantaged students are physically abused. They are writing about how THEY went hungry after their father abandoned his family. They are describing how THEY learned to find meaning in their lives after having been abused.

And again the introspection comes. I wonder if I have been nothing more than an observer all this time--observing children who live in the street in Mongolia; observing families in wooden shacks in Chile; observing students who are abused by their parents in Uruguay. Sure, I've tried to make a difference in the lives of these people. But one of the haunting questions that essentially all social workers must face is "what difference am I really making?" Or, in other words, "when do I move past being an observer, and become an influence?"

I would never have guessed a two-page paper could cause me so much turmoil. If that's the goal of law schools in assigning a personal statement, well, they have succeeded. It's just unfortunate that my personal statement probably didn't contain half the raw emotion I've included here. Don't get me wrong--I'm proud of my personal statement, and I consider it to be a great piece of writing. The problem is that I know it doesn't reveal the most important aspect of me...at all. That aspect will have to remain inside me, kept snugly in my memory, free from all the questioning and criticisms in the world...except my own.