Top Law Schools

The morning after the 9/11 terrorist attacks I begged my parents to let me stay home from school. I was the only Muslim student in the entire seventh grade at an all white public school. I could remember all the way back to kindergarten taunts of “Saddam.” My parents’ response was the same as always, and Pakistani parents are always serious when it comes to school – “you must work hard on your studies so that you can get into a good university so that you can become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer.”

I arrived at school only to discover that my locker had been trashed and my belongings missing. I went to the principal’s office, but he was too busy being patriotic, planning one of many moments of silence. I met with the vice principal later on in the day after a jogger had found my ruined belongings in the woods next to the school. According to her, I was malingering for attention: I was so scared and angered by the events of 9-11, that I broke into school and destroyed my belongings in an effort to take attention away from the real American heroes. But the last thing I wanted was attention. What I really wanted was to blend in so that I could work hard on my studies so that I could get into a good university so that I could become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer.

Around the time of 9/11 I also began realizing that I was gay – and so did my peers. Cafeteria taunts went back and forth between “Saddam” and “[homophobic language redacted],” but always one or the other, never both. Nuanced in this harassment was the incommensurability between my sexuality and my race. At times I wanted to be neither, and I would have settled to be both, but I was always forced to be only one or the other. My Muslim community was not accepting of my homosexuality – but neither was my white American community.

In the years that followed I was unable to reconcile my conflicted identity and I eventually turned to drugs and anorexia in an attempt to escape the pain of always having to choose one part of my identity over the other. Up until then I had always been financially privileged and healthy, but my struggle with and recovery from addiction exposed me to an impoverished and dangerous lifestyle far beyond my imaginings. Addiction and anorexia resolved my identity conflict to the extent that they became my defining factors. I was no longer a Muslim struggling to be gay, or a gay boy struggling to be Muslim – for almost three years all that mattered was that I was an addict and anorexic.

After a year of extensive substance abuse and eating disorder treatment I was strong enough in my recovery to return to Kalamazoo College. I returned with acceptance for the fact that oftentimes multiple marginalized identities cannot be reconciled. I took it upon myself to re-structure my undergraduate education towards better understanding this incommensurability by completing the remainder of my undergraduate coursework in political theory and women’s studies. Concentrating in women’s studies has equipped me with a radical feminist lens through which I better understand identity formation and privilege. Concentrating in political theory has helped me better understand the political deployment of power and privilege amongst these identities. Together, these areas have forced me to think critically and creatively about solutions to the practical problems that ensue.

My education thus far has been liberating and has affirmed my diverse experiences. Not only will I bring my own diverse identity to ___________________________ Law School, but I will also bring with me an appreciation for the importance and utility of connecting academic theory with practical experience.