Critique my PS! Pretty please???
Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 1:28 pm
Hey all! I'd really appreciate any feedback about my PS. I've done a couple drafts already am a little worried I now sound like a bleeding-heart idealist, which is something I wanted to avoid. What do you think of my second-to-last paragraph/volunteering example? Please comment! Thanks!!
I am obsessed with questions of power. Who wields it? Who doesn’t? How is it constructed? What mechanisms or institutions perpetuate its uneven distribution? For much of my undergraduate career I approached these questions theoretically, by analyzing and interpreting literature; my intellectual passion was also an exercise in understanding ethical problems. However, I eventually realized that, with no tangible praxis for my theoretical conclusions, I was effectively ignoring the very question I wanted to answer most: how and when can one intervene?
Context matters. In the field of literature, the gap between theory and praxis is a luxury, for through it one can create what does not exist in the world outside the text. For my specialty in postcolonial literature and theory, this luxury was necessary to scholarly intervention. Demanding both creativity and disciplined logic, crafting meaningful interpretations was one way of disrupting situations of violence, alienation, trauma, and disempowerment in the books I read. It was often possible to be hopeful about these fictional worlds, to find redeeming moments or subtle alternative readings where characters were agents in the lives they had been given, despite the constraints of historical experience. And yet, to answer a textual problem, all I could offer was more text. Any hope I wrote was bound by the rules of context, inapplicable beyond the represented world.
I come to the study of law still fascinated by power, but having rejected the luxury of an unbridgeable gap between understanding and action. Instead, I seek tangible modes of intervention. For while the law too is a text, laden with ambiguities and multiple possibilities, it is enacted for specific purposes and with tangible consequences—to resolve disputes, clarify responsibilities and limitations, or provide regulation. Its practice demands precision, insight, and the careful consideration of evidence; its conclusions must be drawn objectively, while attentive to both the specificity of circumstance and against a larger pattern of meaning. Attorneys, then, are mediators—not between text and text—but between text and the effects of text on reality. And regardless of how I practice, whether as an immigration lawyer, criminal litigator, or even a judge, law will have more to do with actual hope—alternative endings instead of alternative readings—than any interpretation I could ever write.
I have been fortunate enough to witness one such alternative ending at the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney where I currently volunteer. A domestic protective order, for example, is much more than a document. It declares a safe space where a victim can be no longer victimized, orders a perpetrator not to approach someone who fears them. One plaintiff I accompanied in court was nervous about her ex-husband, even in a room policed by bailiffs and filled with other people. I walked her to her car after the proceeding because she was terrified she might be attacked in the parking lot. I hope she will surmount this fear, that her abuse will become memory rather than the experiential mindset of her present. That protective order gives her a chance to do so. It is a text that is part of her life.
As an attorney, I look forward to participating in the rigorous work of interpreting and applying texts, to helping social entities, whether individuals, companies, or governments, function better and resolve real problems. ___University, with its collaborative environment, rich theoretical offerings, and extensive clinical training, is the perfect place to start.
I am obsessed with questions of power. Who wields it? Who doesn’t? How is it constructed? What mechanisms or institutions perpetuate its uneven distribution? For much of my undergraduate career I approached these questions theoretically, by analyzing and interpreting literature; my intellectual passion was also an exercise in understanding ethical problems. However, I eventually realized that, with no tangible praxis for my theoretical conclusions, I was effectively ignoring the very question I wanted to answer most: how and when can one intervene?
Context matters. In the field of literature, the gap between theory and praxis is a luxury, for through it one can create what does not exist in the world outside the text. For my specialty in postcolonial literature and theory, this luxury was necessary to scholarly intervention. Demanding both creativity and disciplined logic, crafting meaningful interpretations was one way of disrupting situations of violence, alienation, trauma, and disempowerment in the books I read. It was often possible to be hopeful about these fictional worlds, to find redeeming moments or subtle alternative readings where characters were agents in the lives they had been given, despite the constraints of historical experience. And yet, to answer a textual problem, all I could offer was more text. Any hope I wrote was bound by the rules of context, inapplicable beyond the represented world.
I come to the study of law still fascinated by power, but having rejected the luxury of an unbridgeable gap between understanding and action. Instead, I seek tangible modes of intervention. For while the law too is a text, laden with ambiguities and multiple possibilities, it is enacted for specific purposes and with tangible consequences—to resolve disputes, clarify responsibilities and limitations, or provide regulation. Its practice demands precision, insight, and the careful consideration of evidence; its conclusions must be drawn objectively, while attentive to both the specificity of circumstance and against a larger pattern of meaning. Attorneys, then, are mediators—not between text and text—but between text and the effects of text on reality. And regardless of how I practice, whether as an immigration lawyer, criminal litigator, or even a judge, law will have more to do with actual hope—alternative endings instead of alternative readings—than any interpretation I could ever write.
I have been fortunate enough to witness one such alternative ending at the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney where I currently volunteer. A domestic protective order, for example, is much more than a document. It declares a safe space where a victim can be no longer victimized, orders a perpetrator not to approach someone who fears them. One plaintiff I accompanied in court was nervous about her ex-husband, even in a room policed by bailiffs and filled with other people. I walked her to her car after the proceeding because she was terrified she might be attacked in the parking lot. I hope she will surmount this fear, that her abuse will become memory rather than the experiential mindset of her present. That protective order gives her a chance to do so. It is a text that is part of her life.
As an attorney, I look forward to participating in the rigorous work of interpreting and applying texts, to helping social entities, whether individuals, companies, or governments, function better and resolve real problems. ___University, with its collaborative environment, rich theoretical offerings, and extensive clinical training, is the perfect place to start.
