Top Law Schools

Abc3956427253 wrote:Hello everyone-

Any help you can give reviewing this PS is very much appreciated. I am hoping to apply Duke ED on Friday but feel like I am coming up short. Please know it lacks a conclusion.

My 'story' is that I graduated from undergrad in 2010. Have worked as a fundraiser and campaign manager for various political causes since then. Now I'm VP at a small political consulting firm but am tired of having to move to a new community every year to keep moving up in my career.

Please be honest in your comments.
------

“You know you really shouldn’t be doing this,” said the man in suspenders and a fedora who had approached me.

As a professional political activist, I had faced rabid anti-abortion protestors, fire and brimstone preachers opposed to gay rights, CEOs wanting special treatment, and, once, even a small, fully robed Ku Klux Klan delegation at a college football game. Defusing awkward conversations was a required career skill. Passing out campaign literature on the front porch of a juke joint in the Mississippi Delta, I stood ready to use those skills again “Oh? You think so?” I responded dully. “Well, are you registered to vote in the area?”

I was there to sell campaign buttons and bumper stickers for #####, a local attorney from an old Delta family running to be Governor of #####. I was not there to get career guidance from a rotund Swede whose native culture obviously had different mores on what was appropriate advice to give to someone you just met. A 24-year-old campaign Finance Director for one of the most competitive Democratic candidates for Governor in a decade, I had banked two million dollars for the campaign and saw a path to the three or four million more we needed. I was, in my opinion, clearly on the right path.

“Oh, I do not mean to offend,” he said. “But a man your age should not be in politics. Politics is so vicious. If you spend all of your time in the fight you lose perspective. A man like you should find a girl. Build a strong foundation. Learn what is really worth fighting for.”

The conviction that I already knew what was and was not worth fighting for had brought me to political work. The freedom to love and marry who you want. That was worth a fight. The chance to earn a wage and status in society on merit and not lineage. That was worth a fight. A struggle for barren land that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. That, most certainly, was not.

My political consciousness formed in response to the US invasion of Iraq a few days after my sixteenth birthday. The war reached into my home when my mother got called to service. Her tenure as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve had previously been limited to one weekend a month and two weeks a year. Now she fed a vampire of a war by collecting, storing, and shipping to the front lines hundreds of gallons of blood for field hospitals. As a member of the Medical Corp she was far from danger. But I felt also that she was far from me. I turned to politics for the first time as I voiced my opposition to the war.

In college this new desire for political efficacy competed with my longstanding ambitions in science. During the days I studied chemistry and assisted with research in the Pharmacology Department. In the evenings I attended meetings, drafted policy proposals to lobby the administration, and organized trips to battleground states to get out the vote in close elections. I founded several campus organizations including the #### chapter of the ##### Institute of which today I now serve on the national board. I launched a chapter of Roots & Shoots and proposed and implemented recycling and bicycle sharing programs that continue to this day. And I planned the largest anti-war protest on campus since Vietnam, a milestone I hope never needs to be exceeded. The abstract end products of pure science had my respect. But the living people and communities impacted by the outcomes of activism garnered my passion. After a summer in DC as an intern, I committed fully to professional politics and switched my major and my career path.

The same energy that led me to graduate from college with 62 credit hours and one more Bachelor’s degree than necessary made me perfectly suited for campaign politics. I returned to DC with my first job and a desire to learn the skills needed to build a progressive movement in the South. Shuttling between the Chinatown consulting firm where I worked to the Democratic National Committee to sit daily with Rep. ##### “dialing for dollars”, I worked to raise almost $4 million for his re-election. Even a visit from President Obama could not turn the district. On Election Night we lost by 18,000 votes. Eager for the next fight, I returned to Mississippi to work for the ##### for Governor campaign.

From Mississippi I moved upward on the map and in my career as I joined a nationally watched Congressional campaign in #####. Both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and EMILY’s List. As tension mounted the staff began cracking under the pressure. First the Finance Director left and then, a month later, the Campaign Manager. After a promotion, I was the only remaining senior leadership on the campaign. I discovered improper recordkeeping required us to reconcile eight months of bank statements or risk allegations of campaign finance fraud. We combed cabinets of check copies and deposit slips to trace every cent from receipt to expenditure before the campaign finance reporting deadline. Yet even short staffed we produced the strongest fundraising quarter in the history of the district. Exceeding that in the next quarter, we moved toward our eventual win.

Since then I have lived and worked in five states as I worked to organize for workers’ rights, elect a Mayor, raise over $8 million in donations, and have played a small part to help elect a President. As an aide to candidates and elected officials, one is seen as an insider. I have left events through the kitchen entrance to climb into black SUVs to avoid the press, and I have flown on so many private planes I am now only a few flight hours short of getting my Private Pilot’s License. But in the ways that count we are outsiders in the community. We sweep into town and take over, but we are not from there. I sign a three-, six-, or nine-month lease on an apartment I barely visit. There is the job, the election outcome, and then a week packing the office and moving to the next campaign. All of the time in the fight. Trying to not lose perspective.

Now, I understand what that man was telling me on the juke joint porch that day...CONCLUSION TO BE WRITTEN

Abc3956427253 wrote:Thank you for your comments. Are my political statements offensive to you as someone who may not necessarily agree with them?

I'm a movement progressive, but I don't want to be a jerk, in my essay or anywhere else.

LFCNY9 wrote:I would be careful including your political views.

Abc3956427253 wrote:I had faced rabid anti-abortion protestors