Feedback on my Personal Statement
Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2021 6:55 pm
Tell me what you think. Don't be afraid to be honest. This is the first draft:
Oh boy, do I love to explain things. Do you want to know how the crusades helped to fuel the renaissance? Can I explain to you why elephants have such large ears? Do you want to know why in Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens,” Plato is depicted pointing to the sky, while Aristotle points forward? Do you want to know? No? Are you sure?
Not surprisingly, the most fun that I have ever had in a work environment was when I was tasked with giving several separate presentations explaining how electronic, custom order forms work to the inside sales team at *insert company name*. For security reasons, many suppliers in the medical industry still use fax machines and paper forms to receive orders. This method is so antiquated that it is the least likely to result in a breach of Protected Health Information (PHI), but its sluggishness means that some medical providers do not want to go through the process of submitting orders. My task was to explain to the sales team that they can work with their accounts to build a custom order form. This form can pull patient data from an electronic medical record (EMR), and then transmit that data directly to Exact Science’s fulfillment center.
In Philosophy, there are considered to be two ways that someone can attain knowledge: a posteriori, meaning from experience, and a priori, meaning--roughly--from deduction. For example, I a posteriori understood what a custom order form was because I had worked with an account of mine to build one (the experience), and it was my task to educate my colleagues a priori on what a custom order form was by exhibiting that it is functionally equivalent to a normal order form (the deduction). To do this, my presentation began with two slides: the first slide showed our normal order form that is faxed, the second showed the custom order form that I had helped to build. I then told each of my audiences that while these two forms look different, it can be deduced that they are functionally the same because they transmit the exact same data, with the caveat that the one of them does this in a much more efficient way.
Plato might actually have enjoyed this discussion. In Plato’s version of theology (or metaphysics), all entities that we perceive with our senses are tied to what he referred to as an “ideal form.” All things that are beautiful, for example, are merely a reconfiguration of the ideal form of beauty, and so on. For Plato, these ideal forms have an almost divine stature to them, which is why Raphael depicted him pointing to the sky. By contrast, Aristotle--who was more empirical--points outward, in front of himself, indicating his belief that a true understanding of our reality must come from our perception. Extrapolating from Plato’s thought, he might have considered the patient information to be the ideal form, and that the two order forms are merely reconfigurations of that information.
I want to go to law school and become a lawyer one day for the same reasons that presentation has so far been the zenith of my professional career: my love of providing insights and explanations, and my fascination with abstract concepts, like Knowledge and Justice. In an effort to avoid being a reconfiguration of the ideal form of naivete, I will concede that I know that not everything a lawyer does is as romantic as delivering a heartfelt presentation that derives insight from different schools of philosophy. But lawyers certainly have to be proficient communicators, whether they are speaking to a jury, or a client, or an international arbitrator. And more than perhaps any other vocation (outside of literally being a philosophy professor), lawyers have to consider--and then communicate--answers to abstract questions, like when does protected speech become hate speech, or when does involuntary manslaughter become premeditated murder? Just like Plato and Aristotle devoted their professional careers to the pursuit of knowledge and ethics, I want to dedicate my own career to that other school of moral philosophy: Justice.
Hey, do you want to know why--just kidding. Kind of.
Oh boy, do I love to explain things. Do you want to know how the crusades helped to fuel the renaissance? Can I explain to you why elephants have such large ears? Do you want to know why in Raphael’s painting “The School of Athens,” Plato is depicted pointing to the sky, while Aristotle points forward? Do you want to know? No? Are you sure?
Not surprisingly, the most fun that I have ever had in a work environment was when I was tasked with giving several separate presentations explaining how electronic, custom order forms work to the inside sales team at *insert company name*. For security reasons, many suppliers in the medical industry still use fax machines and paper forms to receive orders. This method is so antiquated that it is the least likely to result in a breach of Protected Health Information (PHI), but its sluggishness means that some medical providers do not want to go through the process of submitting orders. My task was to explain to the sales team that they can work with their accounts to build a custom order form. This form can pull patient data from an electronic medical record (EMR), and then transmit that data directly to Exact Science’s fulfillment center.
In Philosophy, there are considered to be two ways that someone can attain knowledge: a posteriori, meaning from experience, and a priori, meaning--roughly--from deduction. For example, I a posteriori understood what a custom order form was because I had worked with an account of mine to build one (the experience), and it was my task to educate my colleagues a priori on what a custom order form was by exhibiting that it is functionally equivalent to a normal order form (the deduction). To do this, my presentation began with two slides: the first slide showed our normal order form that is faxed, the second showed the custom order form that I had helped to build. I then told each of my audiences that while these two forms look different, it can be deduced that they are functionally the same because they transmit the exact same data, with the caveat that the one of them does this in a much more efficient way.
Plato might actually have enjoyed this discussion. In Plato’s version of theology (or metaphysics), all entities that we perceive with our senses are tied to what he referred to as an “ideal form.” All things that are beautiful, for example, are merely a reconfiguration of the ideal form of beauty, and so on. For Plato, these ideal forms have an almost divine stature to them, which is why Raphael depicted him pointing to the sky. By contrast, Aristotle--who was more empirical--points outward, in front of himself, indicating his belief that a true understanding of our reality must come from our perception. Extrapolating from Plato’s thought, he might have considered the patient information to be the ideal form, and that the two order forms are merely reconfigurations of that information.
I want to go to law school and become a lawyer one day for the same reasons that presentation has so far been the zenith of my professional career: my love of providing insights and explanations, and my fascination with abstract concepts, like Knowledge and Justice. In an effort to avoid being a reconfiguration of the ideal form of naivete, I will concede that I know that not everything a lawyer does is as romantic as delivering a heartfelt presentation that derives insight from different schools of philosophy. But lawyers certainly have to be proficient communicators, whether they are speaking to a jury, or a client, or an international arbitrator. And more than perhaps any other vocation (outside of literally being a philosophy professor), lawyers have to consider--and then communicate--answers to abstract questions, like when does protected speech become hate speech, or when does involuntary manslaughter become premeditated murder? Just like Plato and Aristotle devoted their professional careers to the pursuit of knowledge and ethics, I want to dedicate my own career to that other school of moral philosophy: Justice.
Hey, do you want to know why--just kidding. Kind of.