Personal Statement Draft #1 Forum

[GGforLSAT]

Prior to college, I was against the idea that a degree was almost necessary to start a successful career. Instead, I fell in love with the stories of people who found success without a college education – believing that I would, in time, be that successful person. Being very motivated and disciplined when it comes to learning new skills, I assumed that I would not have much trouble making something out of it. However, after trying my hand in different areas, I came to realize that this was naïve. I would pursue an interest by researching, practicing, and trying to find and people who had similar interests. But after that, I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t a businessman, nor did I have many of the resources other self-starters might have had; I was a just a high school graduate. So, I reconsidered college, with the hopes that I could find direction.

When I entered college, I was interested in writing music and planned to eventually make a living out of it. My goal, then, was to get a music degree as quickly as I could while finding out how to make money writing music. It didn’t take long before I found out that the music business was not as lucrative as I had anticipated. To make matters worse, the music business was a horribly competitive area, and a bachelor’s in music would not give me much of an advantage.

Lost, I continued on with an undeclared major and searched other fields that I might want to pursue. I predicted that finding another field of interest might be a problem – after all, I went to college for music, not for mathematics, chemistry, or history. However, I quickly developed an interest for most courses I came across, and the problem became choosing between several options. Admittedly, my interest for the subjects did not stem completely from myself; a large part of it was from the professors themselves. The way they portrayed the subject they relayed was always full of some amount of wonder and beauty – which I had rarely seen before, save for in music. They took pride in what they knew and tried to get the students to exhibit the same level of interest. In the times I took advantage of their office hours, they would invariably delve into deeper discussion or present puzzles and strange and unintuitive discoveries in their fields. Not only was I captivated by these bits of deeper discussion, but these private lectures captivated me on another level. The professors made a career out of a passion for learning and discovering, not out of creating a product to sell. This, I decided, is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to investigate and learn about these incredible phenomena that captivate people to the point where they devote their lives to it.

Given my degree plan, I had time to take and audit classes outside of my majors. So, I took advantage of it. I took on courses in economics, architecture, general humanities, and participated as a psychology research assistant for two semesters. On top of these credited hours, I attempted to audit graduate level seminars in ethics and economics and began studying the Korean language in my downtime. I ended up graduating with two degrees – one more than I ever planned on getting – for the reasons I can only attribute to a growing passion to learn and discover. I have developed a knack for saying to myself, “Why is this so?” or, “how does this work?” when I encounter something new or mysterious. I feel a drive to understand.

While I knew I had this passion, I struggled to decide on a career path that best complemented it. A large portion of my family is in some form of medicine, and they showed little mercy when pressuring me do the same. So, I took a few pre-med courses to appease them. The courses, as with many other courses during my college career, were life changing: I learned much on the intricacies of matter and how they interact, make up, and are made from the universe around us; as well as the makeup and function of the human body. At this point, this field seemed very promising. I also started working at a clinic where I watched doctors and nurses interact with patients. Diagnosis – which I found out was the only area in medicine that I found interesting – occurred very infrequently, while most of the work involved prescribing and monitoring – which I did not find as fulfilling. There is certainly the feeling of helping others, but I resolved to find a career where I could help others while still feeding my passion to discover. This just did not occur frequently enough in medicine.

This is not to say all interest in medicine was lost; contrarily, I grew sympathetic to the struggle of both patient and medical employee. The clinic I worked at treated drug and alcohol dependencies, and there was no shortage of conflict – medical or legal. Most patients will find it hard to make it through treatment without being treated as something less than human by a patient or medical employee. Such negative treatment can, in a second, ruin the effectiveness of their rehabilitation. This experience pulls me to pursue a career in the medical or public health arena.

While I have considered pursuing education or research – since my desires for learning and discovering would be well fed in these areas – I resolved that law is the better choice. With law, the impact on people is more tangible – which I think is big for continued interest – and the option of pursuing a professorship would still be open.

[NoodleyOne]

Eh... I think this is giving the wrong impression. I tried everything, but some of it was too hard, so I'm going to do law. You even admit it isn't exactly your first choice. I think this PS could put you from the admit pile into the reject pile, honestly. Scrap it and rewrite.

[Davidbentley]

Prior to college, I was against the idea that a degree was almost necessary to start a successful career. Instead, I fell in love with the stories of people who found success without a college education – believing that I would, in time, be that successful person. Being very motivated and disciplined when it comes to learning new skills, I assumed that I would not have much trouble making something out of it. However, after trying my hand in different areas, I came to realize that this was naïve. I would pursue an interest by researching, practicing, and trying to find and people who had similar interests. But after that, I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn’t a businessman, nor did I have many of the resources other self-starters might have had; I was a just a high school graduate. So, I reconsidered college, with the hopes that I could find direction.

When I entered college, I was interested in writing music and planned to eventually make a living out of it. My goal, then, was to get a music degree as quickly as I could while finding out how to make money writing music. It didn’t take long before I found out that the music business was not as lucrative as I had anticipated. To make matters worse, the music business was a horribly competitive area, and a bachelor’s in music would not give me much of an advantage.

Lost, I continued on with an undeclared major and searched other fields that I might want to pursue. I predicted that finding another field of interest might be a problem – after all, I went to college for music, not for mathematics, chemistry, or history. However, I quickly developed an interest for most courses I came across, and the problem became choosing between several options. Admittedly, my interest for the subjects did not stem completely from myself; a large part of it was from the professors themselves. The way they portrayed the subject they relayed was always full of some amount of wonder and beauty – which I had rarely seen before, save for in music. They took pride in what they knew and tried to get the students to exhibit the same level of interest. In the times I took advantage of their office hours, they would invariably delve into deeper discussion or present puzzles and strange and unintuitive discoveries in their fields. Not only was I captivated by these bits of deeper discussion, but these private lectures captivated me on another level. The professors made a career out of a passion for learning and discovering, not out of creating a product to sell. This, I decided, is what I wanted to do. I wanted to be able to investigate and learn about these incredible phenomena that captivate people to the point where they devote their lives to it.

Given my degree plan, I had time to take and audit classes outside of my majors. So, I took advantage of it. I took on courses in economics, architecture, general humanities, and participated as a psychology research assistant for two semesters. On top of these credited hours, I attempted to audit graduate level seminars in ethics and economics and began studying the Korean language in my downtime. I ended up graduating with two degrees – one more than I ever planned on getting – for the reasons I can only attribute to a growing passion to learn and discover. I have developed a knack for saying to myself, “Why is this so?” or, “how does this work?” when I encounter something new or mysterious. I feel a drive to understand.

While I knew I had this passion, I struggled to decide on a career path that best complemented it. A large portion of my family is in some form of medicine, and they showed little mercy when pressuring me do the same. So, I took a few pre-med courses to appease them. The courses, as with many other courses during my college career, were life changing: I learned much on the intricacies of matter and how they interact, make up, and are made from the universe around us; as well as the makeup and function of the human body. At this point, this field seemed very promising. I also started working at a clinic where I watched doctors and nurses interact with patients. Diagnosis – which I found out was the only area in medicine that I found interesting – occurred very infrequently, while most of the work involved prescribing and monitoring – which I did not find as fulfilling. There is certainly the feeling of helping others, but I resolved to find a career where I could help others while still feeding my passion to discover. This just did not occur frequently enough in medicine.

This is not to say all interest in medicine was lost; contrarily, I grew sympathetic to the struggle of both patient and medical employee. The clinic I worked at treated drug and alcohol dependencies, and there was no shortage of conflict – medical or legal. Most patients will find it hard to make it through treatment without being treated as something less than human by a patient or medical employee. Such negative treatment can, in a second, ruin the effectiveness of their rehabilitation. This experience pulls me to pursue a career in the medical or public health arena.

While I have considered pursuing education or research – since my desires for learning and discovering would be well fed in these areas – I resolved that law is the better choice. With law, the impact on people is more tangible – which I think is big for continued interest – and the option of pursuing a professorship would still be open.

Every paragraph starts with an introductory clause. This annoys me. Far too much parenthetical information. It breaks the flow of your writing. Otherwise, the general theme of this PS seems to be, "I've tried some stuff, now I'd like to do law."

Something good>>> something interesting>>> typical why law BS.

This PS accomplishes none of the above.

[GGforLSAT]

I see. I was afraid of that, but I do see what you guys mean. Thanks, and I've already started on a new one ^_^