I'm wondering if anyone can offer advice on how receptive schools are to hardship. I am scheduled to take the LSAT tomorrow and, well, let's just say that this week has been one of the most, if not THE most mentally and emotionally trying weeks of my life. It has been the culmination of two years of hell.
My mother and father finalized their divorce yesterday after a drawn out battle of two years. Basically, without getting into the huge backstory, my father straight up stole all of the retirement money that had ever been saved up and blew it on a call girl. Not another woman with whom he had a relationship, but a call girl. He never let my mother see the finances and would get very combative and abusive (it started out as verbal, but it became physical towards the end).
Throughout this entire process, my mother kept trying to just come to a settlement. Why? Because she knew that 95% of the retirement money was gone and would not be seen again. So both her and her legal counsel thought it best to just split what was left. You think that my father would have agreed, yeah? Nope!
He tried to blame my mother for everything (Right, she forced him to steal all of the retirement and blow it all away). He lost his job and tried to blame her (It turns out he was fired for massive expense report fraud at his company) and also tried to blame her for discrepancies in his taxes (Oh hey, yeah! He was also lying to the IRS!).
Unfortunately, since this thing carried all the way out to a jury trial, there is barely anything left (of what little remained to begin with) to divvy up. It was a Pyrrhic victory, but hey, at least the bastard is still stuck with his credit card debt and joint credit card debt (yep, he was opening up joint credit cards, getting cards in my mother's name, and then charging them to hell...this has left her credit in the toilet).
So I come home today and find out the following: my mother's house has to be put on the market immediately (Oh hey! Another fun fact about my bastard of a father who is now dead to me....he wasn't paying the mortgage the entire time everything was going down before he was caught. Why? Because he intended to run away and stick the debt to my mother, myself and my siblings), my mother has to declare bankruptcy, and she is applying for food stamps and welfare.
Oh wait, I forgot the best part: She is waiting to hear back on whether or not she has...wait for it..... CANCER! YYYYYAAAAAYYYYYYYYY!!!! /s
Here I am less than 24 hours from the biggest test of my life and I'm a damn nervous wreck. All of this came to light not long after I graduated college. Once I decided that I wanted to pursue law school, I left the tech start-up I was with ( it was a dead end) and got a Paralegal job with a V50 Firm in my city, as it was too late in the last cycle to realistically sit for the February LSAT and expect good results. On top of working for the law firm, I contract out to a client at night to help their GC and work as his assistant. I find myself working ridiculously long days. 18 hours in one day two weeks ago, 12-13 hour days and weekend work at least once every other week. Average work day is 10 hours....this is not normal for an entry level Paralegal/Project Assistant at this firm...the junior associates and I laugh about how I'll cross the associate bonus goal...as a freaking paralegal/PA) But hey, I need the money to help my mother. Hell, I even moved home to help out with upkeep, maintenance, etc. and just so she'd know she's not alone in this.
This is a long post, I know. But I'm freaking out right now. I always knew going into this that I'm not just fighting for myself and doing this for myself, but I'm also fighting for my mother and doing it for my mother.
Can anyone just offer advice? Are schools really receptive to hardship to the point where you can be admitted with lower softs (ex. 3 years of WE) and something that can really only be described as a life altering event? This is literally the worst week that two years of pure hell
