-- By JenniferMorton - 16 Apr 2021

I do think a title and some sectioning would improve the draft.

I think that I will take the approach that many of my peers took with our first paper for this round and talk about myself a little. As I approach the end of my 1L year, it feels pretty strange thinking about the version of myself who wrote out my applications to law school, while still finishing up my senior year of undergrad at NC State University. I applied very late in the cycle; the first application I sent out was in January and I didn’t finish all of them until the last day of February (to meet Penn’s March 1 deadline). Little did I know that a week after I submitted my final application, I would be told I told I would not be returning to my college campus before graduating. I would also soon find out that there would not be any subsidized trips to see the law schools I was accepted to, so I would have to make my decision completely sight-unseen. I had never been to cities of any of the schools I applied to besides Duke (as someone raised in the Triangle).

I decided to come to law school because I feel a moral obligation to make life better for other people—particularly in the form of seeking justice for marginalized groups and individuals. Now having been in New York City and at Columbia Law School for eight months, I have felt the temptation to look at the big law jobs—I mean, that is the vast majority of the networking events and what the school is known for. Coming into this environment felt a little like jumping in the deep end of an outdoor pool in winter. That being said, I have recently accepted and reminded myself of what I am here for.

I am a low-income, bisexual, half-Latina woman who was the first person in my family to graduate from college. Before she moved to the United States, my mother lived on a literal dirt floor in Honduras and she herself only had a 6th grade education prior to getting her GED here (that’s as far as public education goes there). I threw in a line in my personal statement about how one of my homes, Tegucigalpa, Honduras was ranked number one for highest murder per capita rate when I lived there from 2008-2010; whereas, the second of my homes, Holly Springs, NC, was the safest town in the state. I also talked about how my marginalized identities feel much more present in the United States. While my dad is a white American whose family were farmers in Holly Springs for at least five generations, there has been a population boom in Holly Springs of primarily upper-middle-class residents. In Tegucigalpa, I understood the privilege of the relative wealth we had to live in a neighborhood with armed guards—particularly during the 2009 coup.

These experiences, in conjunction with the many conversations I had online politics started my shift towards leftism. Interestingly enough, my dad is a hardcore Trump supporter (you should have seen the yard during election season) and he was the parent I grew up with after my parents’ divorce when I was two years old. This included while we were in Honduras, and I was isolated from my friends at home and could not go play outside with other children because of the danger and because of the fact that I was never taught Spanish.

In college, I had leadership positions in Students for Immigrant Rights & Equality and in Young Democratic Socialists of America—well, that is after I stopped attending College Democrats. I was a psychology and political science student, with a philosophy minor. I don’t know if I can yet point out a couple of theorists to sum up where I get most of my biggest concern was always wanting to fight for justice. Most of the work I did was direct action and involved being in community with the people around me. I knew then and know now that I never want to be stuck in a stuffy office all day separated from the reality of the world around me. The pandemic has been a big reminder of that. I was not able to attend most protest events last summer, because I lived at home with my family (including my 88 year old grandma) for most of my undergraduate career and there was not enough data yet to show that COVID did not spread much amongst people who are outside and all wearing masks. That, on top of the long hours stuck entirely alone while I get through my black letter law courses, remind me of how important community with other people is.

I mentioned in a journal how I am somewhat interested in pursuing a PhD? /JD, and while then I was leaning political science, I am now thinking moreso something like community psychology or something in sociology. I could see myself eventually becoming a teacher, but really, I wanted to have more tools to serve others. The main field that I am interested in right now is immigration law, but I am still exploring other public interest areas of law. There are just two weeks until I am officially one-third of the way done with law school now, which seems unreal, but I am starting to finally see how much I have already learned—while knowing that there is much more to learn in both the next two years and in my life after. I hope I can use my skills and experience from my diverse background to do good and I am excited to see where my practice will lead.

This draft does the work you needed it to do: it presents you as you feel you are, now, after a year that hasn't exactly been full of reassurance about stability of identity.

You can improve it as it is by simplifying the language. Everything that sounds like an application essay sentence when you read it over can either be dropped or replaced with one that doesn't sound that way. Your intended tone is personal, not promotional.

The larger stake in improvement is in the transcendence of the past. Every version of this essay is equally accessible: this one shows at length where you have been. Another draft could leave that pared down to its essentials, along with the truth—experienced by pretty much everyone this year—that social conventions and expectations have been battered this year.

In the end, that won't matter. We can look forward from here as well as back. What else besides immigration law seems interesting to you? How should that affect your academic program next two years? What have you learned about how you like to work, and how might that affect how you choose to practice? These are questions about which you have also things to say. Writing is a mode of cognition: what you have written about you in a deeper sense know.

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Second Draft

Chapter One Memoir

Here I am

Just one year ago I was a senior at North Carolina State University finishing up degrees in political science and psychology. I had applied to twelve law schools (quite late in the cycle, might I add) and did not yet know how the entire globe would shift upside down. I did not know that I would soon be told not to return to campus after Spring Break. I did not know I would have to pick a law school sight-unseen as every anticipated subsidized trip to visit the schools I was accepted to was canceled. I did not know that in a few months I would pack up my things and move to New York City after never going further north than D.C. prior. I did not know that ninety percent of my first year of law school would happen in a freshman-dorm sized room through my webcam. And yet, here I am.

Where I am from

My background and life experiences brought me here. I am a low-income, bisexual, half-Latina woman who was the first person in my family to graduate from college. Before my mother moved to the United States, she lived on a literal dirt floor in Honduras. She only had a 6th grade education prior to getting her GED here (that’s as far as public education goes there). I threw in a line in my personal statement about how one of my homes, Tegucigalpa, Honduras was ranked number one for highest murder per capita rate when I lived there from 2008-2010; whereas, the second of my homes, Holly Springs, NC, was the safest town in the state. I also talked about how my marginalized identities feel much more present in the United States. While my dad is a white American whose family were poor farmers in Holly Springs for at least five generations, there has been a population boom in Holly Springs of primarily upper-middle-class residents. In Tegucigalpa, I understood the privilege of the relative wealth we had to live in a neighborhood with armed guards—particularly during the 2009 coup d’état.

These experiences, in conjunction with the many conversations I had online, started my political shift towards leftism. Interestingly enough, my dad is a hardcore Trump supporter (you should have seen the yard during election season) and he was the parent I grew up with after my parents’ divorce when I was a toddler. But that did not stop me from serving my community in leadership positions in Students for Immigrant Rights & Equality (SIRE) and in Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) throughout my undergraduate career. That activism felt much more meaningful to me than anything I learned in class and is what really pushed me towards a career where I could help make material change for marginalized groups.

Where I am going

My main interest is in working for immigrants, but I can also see myself in civil, human, or workers’ rights work. One of the main things SIRE did was support a family whose father was forced to live away from them in their church as sanctuary from ICE after living here peacefully for 20 years. I always wanted to be able to do more than just fund-raise and bring groceries and law seemed like a career field where I could actually make things happen for people.

I am not a perfect advocate. I have felt the pressure that Columbia puts on its students to go the big law route, with almost every event and so many resources tailoring to that. However, I know now that my practice will stay with my roots. I am still interested in studying something like community psychology or sociology at the graduate level in order to diversify my skills and knowledge to serve communities in the ways that they need and avoid stereotypical upholding the current system that many lawyers do. Being stuck indoors, apart from a community, learning black-letter law courses has reinforced my desire to get out into the world and into the work.

In the next two years of law school, I wanted to focus on experiential work and finding connections with lawyers in the fields I am interested in. I did not know a single lawyer or law student before coming to law school, nor did I have any fancy internships in undergrad (just working at a restaurant), so I have quite a bit of catching up to do. That being said, I am hopeful. This year has made obvious to many more people a lot of the deeply rooted problems in the United States and worldwide, which makes change seem more attainable. I also have more confidence in myself and my abilities after surviving an academic environment five times more difficult than anything I have encountered prior. On a personal note, attending therapy this school year has helped me contextual my experiences and know that I do not need to feel bad about where I felt I lacked in comparison to my classmates and that I should be proud of myself. And while I may not have much of my life planned out yet, I’m learning that I can make it what I want it to be—not just for myself, but the people around me too.