I hate writing personal statements. How can I explain what needs to be done in a blank-faced essay? There is no way to communicate some needs—they have always been voiceless and cramped in a chest longing to expand with clean air.
I can write about my desire to change things for the better without describing what I think ‘better’ is. It’s another ambiguous term that everyone puts a different face to. To me ‘better’ is described by the feeling I get as I look out on the green land. There are no roads to scar it—only rivers like life-veins to curl through it. There are deer in the meadow and the pug marks of a cougar in the mud. Humans have to be a part of this—the wilderness—before they can understand its sublimity. Once they understand it they will never want to give up on the wilderness. They won’t be able to forget the touch of an awareness like none they can get with their cell-phones and Big Macs. But humans will never be a part of the wilderness if they go about their lives, complacent in its destruction.
Why do I want to go to law school? It is a place where I can join a new fight, one for my own happiness and the growth of a belief that we can change. The cynic in me says that it’s a battle we will lose—but to complain about the plight of the environment without taking action is hypocritical. There’s nothing I hate more that a hypocrite. But “changing the world for the better” isn’t the only reason I consider law school. There are selfish reasons too; reasons that start with “I want…” and go on from there. What’s important is that I find fulfillment living this human life of mine. To do that I need an intellectual life surrounded by intellectual people. I would also like money. With money I can start a horse rescue and make a difference in the lives of individuals that have given so much to their humans. In particular I want to help the older animals: the ones who gave their young selves to work, only to be cast aside when their bodies couldn’t keep up any more. This kind of work gives me pleasure.
Law is appealing because it will make it possible for me to make a home for myself. Not just a physical home—though that is important too—but someplace inside as well. I’m dissatisfied with who I am; there is more to me than a B.A. graduate who works ceaselessly towards an end she hates. The monotonous work of an animal technician is not rewarding. Smiling at customers just because you want to eat and don’t actually care about the people standing in front of you is degrading. I want a job where I wake up with the fight in me alive and hungering for more because that’s the real me.
Law is a straight line to my family—boring, old, predictable—and they can’t see why it appeals. What a lawyer does is create the law, interpret the law, discover the law. They also do something more: they relate the law to what is real at the moment. Their perception of things has to be open to change while aware of the past. They can have a voice if they choose to, or they can work the change in a dusty basement room. People respect them for their knowledge, and listen to them beyond mere politeness. A lawyer deals with the paper version of human perspective. The paper-perspective is a comfortable one for me; words on a page are easy to interpret and advise. And because of this, I’d have the power to change my community through a medium that feels like an old friend.
Law isn’t all about straight lines. Law is about perspective and community, about relating the constructed grids to the tangled reality and weaving the two into a cohesive whole. It’s about knowing the world you live in. With knowledge comes the power to change the paper perspective, and from that the human perspective. If I could get people to stop thinking only in straight lines and see the gulp of a mosquito fish or the tracks a skunk left in the mud, I would be fulfilled—for a day. There are always battles to be fought. As a lawyer I wouldn’t have to filter my opinions through self-doubt. I would have the tools to be unashamed of the person I am.
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