Personal Statement/Diversity Statement? Help? Forum

[Anonymous User]

Feel free to critique openly.

My life has been a whirlwind of chaos. I was born into a very poor and uneducated family in North Carolina. My father was a fisherman and never passed the 8th grade. My mother was the daughter of a fisherman and dropped out her senior year of high school to get married. I grew up with my grandparents acting as parents. My father was an alcoholic, did not think I was his child, and took a great deal of his anger and frustration out on my mother when I was in the house. It was better for me to be gone. My grandfather was the best thing that ever happened in my life. Although he died when I was six, I still remember the love and the lessons the taught me. I was devastated when he passed away. My mother also blamed me for his death. She told me that I pestered him to death, when he really died of cancer. That was a huge blow to me as a child.
I became detached from people because I did not want them to die. I did not make friends as easily as others and usually watched from a perspective of being on the outside. My family’s financial and criminal backgrounds (mostly alcoholic rampages and drunk driving) narrowed the choices of people that would admit to even knowing me. I was told repeatedly that I was dumb, ugly, and should marry the first person that would have me by my relatives. Instead of letting it get me down, I decided that I was switched at birth and someday I would find my real parents and I was going to make them proud.
My mother had us all baptized Mormon to try to save the family when I was eleven years old. I went to church, graduated from seminary, but somehow still never fit in. I saw this as an opportunity to get away from North Carolina and jumped on it. I became a model churchgoer. I knew my scriptures, I went to social functions, even though I mostly watched others, I applied at Ricks College, now BYU-Idaho. I was just as shocked as everyone else was when I got in, but I went. I was shocked even more when I got there. I had lived my whole life in a small community. We had nearly 14 towns that went to my high school. I was suddenly in what I thought was a big city of 25,000 people. I loved being there but hated the restrictive lifestyle and expectations of who I knew I was not. I stayed there despite my poor academic performance. Anything was better than moving home. From Rexburg, I moved to Boise, and then to Portland. My towns grew into cities and I grew into myself. I figured out that I was gay, another strike against me according to my good southern family, even though I am the most conservative lesbian I have ever met.
Since I was the official black sheep of the family, I got no support for college or living. I took entry-level retail jobs and when I got bored, I would look for another field to work in. I continued this for years and then was tired of entry-level work and decided to go back to college. It was easier than I remembered but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I fell in love with the likes of Shakespeare and Einstein but was neither the writer nor physics type. I sought the advice of trusted friends and advisers. I was given lots of advice on what everyone thought I should do. Thinking others might know more than I did, I pursued those fields. I again found myself not fitting in. I finally decided enough was enough and just to get a degree. I found that I was smarter than my relatives were and in the process found my strength and courage in being who I am. I love me. My family is adjusting to who I am. I refuse to give an inch. I am blunt, to the point, and use all sorts of logic they do not understand. It makes me happy to know that I have a great future as an attorney, what I feel I was destined to be.

[dingbat]

Ir's written as a personal statement but can be converted I to a diversity statement, if tou want. Then you would need a distinctive personal statement. I'd keep it as is ans only send in one statement

[Anonymous User]

Really 30 people read this and only one can give semi constructive feedback. What kind of lawyers are you going to be?

[bluepenguin]

I think it's a disaster as a personal statement. The essay itself is fine. There are some issues. Some of your phrasing is a little awkward, and the odd sentence sounds a little immature, but it's all very fixable.

The glaring problem I see with this is that you don't seem to address why you want to go into law at all. Normally that's not a big deal, but here you've spent a whole paragraph talking about how you've moved from place to place and job to job, getting bored with these endeavors and moving on. You don't explain why law school is going to be right for you. If I were reading this I'd be seriously concerned not only that you might not succeed in law school or as a lawyer, but that you might not even complete the degree.

As a diversity statement I think it could be very powerful, so long as you address that issue in the PS.