ethiam
Sep 28, 2009
Graduate / Identity - Law School personal statement [3]
I am applying to Law School next year. Please give me your input on my essay. Thanks
Identity
"The house-roof fights with the rain, but he who is sheltered ignores it."
I have traveled a long way since my late grandfather reprimanded me with those words after catching me bullying a kid smaller than I was. Summers came and went, hair grew in then desert places, and wisdom seemed to ease itself quietly in me since the old man uttered those words to my, then, little ears. Listening to myself these days, I wonder if I metamorphosed into the being whom I so admired as a child. He was a simple man, but one who grasped the innermost secrets of the human condition.
I often ask myself, listening to those echoes, what is an identity? Am I just me, myself, and I? Or am I a jumbling of micro identities that came to shape the man that I have become? I wonder if growing up around this man of wisdom, whom I used to emulate; from the way he would delicately caress his long white beard while pondering on a question, to the way he would cross his long thin legs while sitting; allowed me to capture the essence of his identity and unconditionally espouse it. Certainly, I could not escape the veracity of me being a micro version of grandpa; a thought that seems so foreign, but yet so indigenous to my reality. Yet, as my life unfolds, I realize that the influence that grandpa has on my identity has been quintessential to my self-determination.
Growing up in my native Senegal, my world was confined to two schools. On one hand, as a son of a traditional family of jewelers, "Teugg", I was subjected to the laws of inheritance of my ancestors' trade. This school provided me with the possibility to connect with my indigenous roots. My apprenticeship started around my sixth year of age as I became aware of the world surrounding me. Every vacation was spent in the atelier where from sunrise to sunset, precious metals were melted, pounded, rounded, squared, polished, and delivered. My first steps were guided by the atelier workers who flooded me with requests to bring them tools. I could not remember how many trips I made to that tool box located right by the window where greedy days fell, but those trips were ceremonial. I was, then, moved to blowing the bellows to help the fusion of the gold, and ultimately graduated with an initiation into the crafting of small rings, earrings, chains, and bracelets.
My other school, a western school, where the curriculum was taught in the language of Moliere (i.e., French), provided me with another vision of life estranged to my reality. We used to sit by three on a wooden-bench, in a sixty-people classroom like sardines. So consumed we were by our thirst of knowledge that the heat (no ventilation or air conditioning), the sweat, and the smell were no distraction to us. Au contraire, it was part of the décor and sustained the melodrama in the classroom. Throughout the first half of Elementary school, I was puzzled by the reason why I always managed to come second behind Ibra, an outstanding classmate. Though, I believed that he was not smarter than me, I was a little bit intimidated by him. My approach was to embrace him and find out his strategy for excellence. I was able to inherit a part of him, which allowed me to surpass him the following year. There was no silver bullet to Ibra's perpetual ascent to number one all those years, but just one crucial and consistent anthem: "Excellence is not a singular act; you are what you repeatedly do." That anthem became my guiding light as I move through the second part of my life.
From a distant shore, I dreamt of America. I dreamt of its limitless opportunities. My quest for knowledge and yearning for bigger challenges landed me to these shores. I came to study without money, without the command of the language of Shakespeare, but with an uncanny determination to make it happen. Hard days followed my entry to the United States as I started driving a taxi to save money for school and help alleviate my family financial burden back in Senegal. The cab provided me with a platform that mirrors a learning institution. Fares came and went. Enlightened and not so enlightened discussions took place. Cool customers brightened your day or night while unruly ones soiled it. Cops and traffic agents issued moving and flying tickets. Some showed respect and others contempt. Counseling and comfort were given and received. And all contributed to my life schooling.
During evenings, the campus of Chicago State University (CSU) provided a contrast to the cab. Everything was coordinated and organized, from the syllabus, the classroom, the presentation, the tests, to the grades. The structured marketplace of ideas was real for once. I listened, accepted knowledge, scrutinized, challenged, and critiqued my professors and peers. I created study groups where anyone who wanted help would get it. I looked forward to tutoring students because learning from their indispositions also allowed me to become a better student. I ended up leading every work group I was privy to be part of because I always tried to have full command of the subject matter and make sure that the allocation of duties was based on individual strength instead of weakness. These tiny bits of leadership roles afforded me an internship at Seaway Bank & Trust Company in Chicago.
I went to Seaway as a management intern. My assignment, as defined, was to rotate every three months in each of the bank's department (trust, loans, operations, accounting, legal, etc.). I approached this task as an opportunity to showcase my leadership skills as well as my ability and willingness to learn and add value to the bank. After my first rotation, the head of the trust department did not want to let me rotate because of the "outstanding work that I was doing," her words, not mine. As I move through the bank's units, I was praised by the managers whom I espoused a little bit of their management styles and a lot of their knowledge of the business. My good performance got in the ears of the CEO who decided to include me in the project of writing the bank's Fixed Assets Inventory Policy and Procedures by order of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The project was headed by the Chief Accountant and the Comptroller. One other accountant and I were the support system and were summoned to do the initial research. I took ownership of the project and wrote a rough policy draft for the CEO in a week. He was elated and charged me to work with him one on one on the project. Within a twenty-day period, I completed the policy and procedures document and presented it to the board of directors who signed it as the official bank's Fixed Assets Inventory Policy and Procedures. I went on to write the Accounts Payable Policy and Procedures for the accounting department and other important ad-hoc projects.
As my graduation from CSU was looming, I was recruited in the JP Morgan Financial Analyst Leadership Program. The program did not have a recruiting agenda for CSU, but did for more reputable schools. I asked my resume to be forwarded to the New York recruiters as I stated then that sometimes diamonds are on the rough. I was vindicated by an invitation to interview in a large pool of candidates. I came out of it as being the strongest candidate and was signed on as a Program Financial Analyst in the JP Morgan Private Wealth Management group.
Two and half years have gone by in this role. Numbers were crunched, analyses formulated, reports produced, mistakes made, but something has been missing all along. That perpetual challenge of the mind as it pertains to the human condition and the feeling that your craft is relevant to everyday people's lives. I believe that the study of law will provide that, as everything that I will be involved in will have a consequence, no matter how small, on people's lives. Now, I can fully comprehend what grandpa meant when he said that "The house-roof fights with the rain, but he who is sheltered ignores it." He was not specifically referring to my bullying act, but rather the fact that the vulnerable ones have to have a roof to fight the rain for them. At that very defining moment, he was that roof to that kid.
Today, as I contemplate to take this new journey, I can not escape the fact that it is time for me to become a roof, and what a better way to do so than with the foundation of the law. As a lawyer, I know that I will be presented with constant opportunities to help those in need. Good people sometimes find themselves in difficult, even desperate, circumstances. Everyone makes mistakes and many deserve a second chance. The weak and disadvantaged need protection from the rich and powerful. Deserving individuals become victims of incompetence and ignorance or fall through bureaucratic cracks. My intervention and assistance can be the key to leveling the playing field, successfully navigating the procedural terrain and, ultimately, securing their substantive rights. I am itching for that challenge and the opportunity to add more pieces of identities to myself from those that I will be traveling with in my journey through your institution.
I am applying to Law School next year. Please give me your input on my essay. Thanks
Identity
"The house-roof fights with the rain, but he who is sheltered ignores it."
I have traveled a long way since my late grandfather reprimanded me with those words after catching me bullying a kid smaller than I was. Summers came and went, hair grew in then desert places, and wisdom seemed to ease itself quietly in me since the old man uttered those words to my, then, little ears. Listening to myself these days, I wonder if I metamorphosed into the being whom I so admired as a child. He was a simple man, but one who grasped the innermost secrets of the human condition.
I often ask myself, listening to those echoes, what is an identity? Am I just me, myself, and I? Or am I a jumbling of micro identities that came to shape the man that I have become? I wonder if growing up around this man of wisdom, whom I used to emulate; from the way he would delicately caress his long white beard while pondering on a question, to the way he would cross his long thin legs while sitting; allowed me to capture the essence of his identity and unconditionally espouse it. Certainly, I could not escape the veracity of me being a micro version of grandpa; a thought that seems so foreign, but yet so indigenous to my reality. Yet, as my life unfolds, I realize that the influence that grandpa has on my identity has been quintessential to my self-determination.
Growing up in my native Senegal, my world was confined to two schools. On one hand, as a son of a traditional family of jewelers, "Teugg", I was subjected to the laws of inheritance of my ancestors' trade. This school provided me with the possibility to connect with my indigenous roots. My apprenticeship started around my sixth year of age as I became aware of the world surrounding me. Every vacation was spent in the atelier where from sunrise to sunset, precious metals were melted, pounded, rounded, squared, polished, and delivered. My first steps were guided by the atelier workers who flooded me with requests to bring them tools. I could not remember how many trips I made to that tool box located right by the window where greedy days fell, but those trips were ceremonial. I was, then, moved to blowing the bellows to help the fusion of the gold, and ultimately graduated with an initiation into the crafting of small rings, earrings, chains, and bracelets.
My other school, a western school, where the curriculum was taught in the language of Moliere (i.e., French), provided me with another vision of life estranged to my reality. We used to sit by three on a wooden-bench, in a sixty-people classroom like sardines. So consumed we were by our thirst of knowledge that the heat (no ventilation or air conditioning), the sweat, and the smell were no distraction to us. Au contraire, it was part of the décor and sustained the melodrama in the classroom. Throughout the first half of Elementary school, I was puzzled by the reason why I always managed to come second behind Ibra, an outstanding classmate. Though, I believed that he was not smarter than me, I was a little bit intimidated by him. My approach was to embrace him and find out his strategy for excellence. I was able to inherit a part of him, which allowed me to surpass him the following year. There was no silver bullet to Ibra's perpetual ascent to number one all those years, but just one crucial and consistent anthem: "Excellence is not a singular act; you are what you repeatedly do." That anthem became my guiding light as I move through the second part of my life.
From a distant shore, I dreamt of America. I dreamt of its limitless opportunities. My quest for knowledge and yearning for bigger challenges landed me to these shores. I came to study without money, without the command of the language of Shakespeare, but with an uncanny determination to make it happen. Hard days followed my entry to the United States as I started driving a taxi to save money for school and help alleviate my family financial burden back in Senegal. The cab provided me with a platform that mirrors a learning institution. Fares came and went. Enlightened and not so enlightened discussions took place. Cool customers brightened your day or night while unruly ones soiled it. Cops and traffic agents issued moving and flying tickets. Some showed respect and others contempt. Counseling and comfort were given and received. And all contributed to my life schooling.
During evenings, the campus of Chicago State University (CSU) provided a contrast to the cab. Everything was coordinated and organized, from the syllabus, the classroom, the presentation, the tests, to the grades. The structured marketplace of ideas was real for once. I listened, accepted knowledge, scrutinized, challenged, and critiqued my professors and peers. I created study groups where anyone who wanted help would get it. I looked forward to tutoring students because learning from their indispositions also allowed me to become a better student. I ended up leading every work group I was privy to be part of because I always tried to have full command of the subject matter and make sure that the allocation of duties was based on individual strength instead of weakness. These tiny bits of leadership roles afforded me an internship at Seaway Bank & Trust Company in Chicago.
I went to Seaway as a management intern. My assignment, as defined, was to rotate every three months in each of the bank's department (trust, loans, operations, accounting, legal, etc.). I approached this task as an opportunity to showcase my leadership skills as well as my ability and willingness to learn and add value to the bank. After my first rotation, the head of the trust department did not want to let me rotate because of the "outstanding work that I was doing," her words, not mine. As I move through the bank's units, I was praised by the managers whom I espoused a little bit of their management styles and a lot of their knowledge of the business. My good performance got in the ears of the CEO who decided to include me in the project of writing the bank's Fixed Assets Inventory Policy and Procedures by order of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The project was headed by the Chief Accountant and the Comptroller. One other accountant and I were the support system and were summoned to do the initial research. I took ownership of the project and wrote a rough policy draft for the CEO in a week. He was elated and charged me to work with him one on one on the project. Within a twenty-day period, I completed the policy and procedures document and presented it to the board of directors who signed it as the official bank's Fixed Assets Inventory Policy and Procedures. I went on to write the Accounts Payable Policy and Procedures for the accounting department and other important ad-hoc projects.
As my graduation from CSU was looming, I was recruited in the JP Morgan Financial Analyst Leadership Program. The program did not have a recruiting agenda for CSU, but did for more reputable schools. I asked my resume to be forwarded to the New York recruiters as I stated then that sometimes diamonds are on the rough. I was vindicated by an invitation to interview in a large pool of candidates. I came out of it as being the strongest candidate and was signed on as a Program Financial Analyst in the JP Morgan Private Wealth Management group.
Two and half years have gone by in this role. Numbers were crunched, analyses formulated, reports produced, mistakes made, but something has been missing all along. That perpetual challenge of the mind as it pertains to the human condition and the feeling that your craft is relevant to everyday people's lives. I believe that the study of law will provide that, as everything that I will be involved in will have a consequence, no matter how small, on people's lives. Now, I can fully comprehend what grandpa meant when he said that "The house-roof fights with the rain, but he who is sheltered ignores it." He was not specifically referring to my bullying act, but rather the fact that the vulnerable ones have to have a roof to fight the rain for them. At that very defining moment, he was that roof to that kid.
Today, as I contemplate to take this new journey, I can not escape the fact that it is time for me to become a roof, and what a better way to do so than with the foundation of the law. As a lawyer, I know that I will be presented with constant opportunities to help those in need. Good people sometimes find themselves in difficult, even desperate, circumstances. Everyone makes mistakes and many deserve a second chance. The weak and disadvantaged need protection from the rich and powerful. Deserving individuals become victims of incompetence and ignorance or fall through bureaucratic cracks. My intervention and assistance can be the key to leveling the playing field, successfully navigating the procedural terrain and, ultimately, securing their substantive rights. I am itching for that challenge and the opportunity to add more pieces of identities to myself from those that I will be traveling with in my journey through your institution.