Personal Statement Critique - Thanks in advance! Forum

[irobotik]

I know everyone is pretty busy, but I'm curious what you think of my personal statement. Thank you!

In high school, I wanted more than anything to be the best at something. The best at academic competitions, the highest scorer on tests, the smartest person in my school – that was what I aspired to, and competition was the driving force in my life. When I moved to college, this thirst for competition drew me to a very expensive but also very lucrative game, poker. In 2007, Texas Hold’em poker was all the rage, with ESPN’s coverage of professional poker inspiring a generation that hosted home games in their garage. After my first few games, I was completely addicted. Deceptively simple on the face of it, poker was the utmost competitive drug I had been craving. Class, homework, and readings all became a sideshow compared to studying and playing poker. On numerous instances I would take my laptop to class, ostensibly for taking notes, and instead either read a book of poker strategy or even play poker online. The only real competition to poker was my pre-law classes; in the study and practice of law, I sensed a field that induced competition just as vibrant as the poker tables. Certainly, poker was not the worst addiction for a college student; in fact, poker was my primary source of income during and immediately after my undergraduate program. Like any addiction, however, it had consequences.

A few years later, I found myself at a casino for the first time. Freshly 21 and armed with naivety and arrogance, I was prepared to take the poker world by storm. There was nothing for me in those moments except the thrill of winning money and the agony of losing it; for all intents and purposes, there may not have been a world outside the casino. When I finally checked my cell phone, I noticed several missed calls from my family and a text message from my brother asking me to call him as soon as possible. When I did so, he informed me that my grandmother had fallen and broken her hip, and had been taken to the hospital for surgery. Even then, the importance of this event failed to fully register; I simply assumed that everything would be fine and continued with my poker trip until the next day.

When I arrived at the hospital, I was beyond dismayed by how frail she was. She rarely achieved consciousness and when she did, she was extremely disoriented to the point of not knowing who I was. It was then that I began to realize my mistake in not being there for her in the past. My grandmother had raised me with love and affection, and I had relegated her to an afterthought. I had scarcely seen her in my years at college, and was most definitely not there for her when she needed me the most. I could not stop thinking that instead of playing poker, I should have been at home with my family, and all of this could have been avoided. This feeling of guilt was driven home by the fact that when she left the hospital and returned home, she never recovered to her pre-accident state. From the strong, independent woman I remembered, she had transformed, seemingly in the blink of an eye, into someone that could not walk or use the bathroom without assistance and only seldom remembered who I was. I realized, then, that my poker career was over. My other competitive outlet, law school, seemed equally out of reach. I became a full-time caretaker to her; she had taken care of me, and I was determined to take care of her.

Although my previous goals were now far out of reach, what truly struck me was not that I could not achieve them, but instead how selfish and shortsighted my aspirations were. Allowing an addiction to competition to control my life made me intensely focused on myself, not anyone around me or anyone that should have been close to me. I had missed my chance to get to know the most important person in my life as a person, rather than an authority figure, and it haunted me. I resolved never to make the same mistake, to never allow myself to be so incredibly selfish that I disregarded those who should have been the most important people in my life. My grandmother taught me, at the end, the most important lesson of all – compassion.

For me, compassion became more than an action or an attitude, more than mere pity or concern. I had truly lacked it for so long as I was consumed by selfishness, and I now integrated it into my life wholeheartedly. I chose to go into teaching to share that compassion with the world, to provide a greater good for humanity and to others than I ever could provide to myself alone. However, as I quickly realized, I was no more capable of living with compassion as my sole motivation than I was living as a purely selfish being. I realized that I needed a way of combining my newfound compassion and my competitive instincts, and was quickly drawn back towards my other passion during my college studies, the law. Christopher Darden once said “The law has no compassion. And justice is administered without compassion.” This is undoubtedly true. However, I firmly believe that there is compassion in the pursuit of justice, that the moral principles underlying our system of law make the fair application of the law to achieve justice inherently compassionate.

Although I earnestly wish I had spent more time with my grandmother before her accident, I know that my experiences have made me a far better person than I was in college. I have learned that my competitive nature must be countered by compassion and a desire to better the situations of others. Without those experiences, I would likely still be grinding away at the poker tables. Perhaps I would have succeeded, but I highly doubt that I would have the same level of motivation for success that I have today. I hope that the [School Name] will give me the opportunity to apply that motivation and make my grandmother proud.

[Alive97]

I like the organizAton and there are good points made. It certainly gives an honest picture of your path towards law school. I wonder whether some of this should be unpacked into an addendum regarding low grades (if poker resulted in that). This seems to say more about your poker and care taking per say, and less about your desire for law school. For the latter you say "I love competition and I'm compassionate". That's fine and has certainly been demonstrated by your background. but maybe more can be said to connect those to a desire for law? You don't want to be the super idealist saying the justice system is compassionate for all and I love compassion. Also, law being an outlet for competition may not be, in and of itself, a distinguishing factor for an ad comm. especially if you're just saying you want addictive outlet, which I understand you're saying its now tempered by an appreciation for compassion, but maybe develop the nexus between that combo and law school a little more. In that case, in the interest of brevity, you probably don't need to give so many details on poker and gambling and care taking, but get the gist of those things out.

Those are some thoughts anyway. If addiction were covered in an addendum, you potentially could in your PS just very briefly introduce the topic of addiction and say as discussed in my addendum.