Undergraduate / "Nothing will work unless I do" LAW PERSONAL STATEMENT, very open ended instructions [3]

So the instructions for this undergrad program are pretty open ended. It's for a 30 day may interim type program where you pretty much get to see what it's like to be a law student. Anything will help! Thank you!

INSTRUCTIONS: The Admissions Committee seeks a talented and diverse student body and will consider such factors as exceptional personal talents, leadership potential, and other factors. In addition, the Committee considers obstacles or accomplishments, including but not limited too: economic need requiring significant employment during college, social and cultural disadvantages, linguistic barriers, and extraordinary family or personal responsibilities. Feel free to include any of the above information that you would like the Committee to consider in your personal statement.

PERSONAL STATEMENT:

I wake up every morning to look at the quotation I carefully taped on the wall opposite of my bed. It reads: "Nothing will work unless you do". After about five hours of sleep, I felt it necessary to put something motivational up to get me out of bed every morning. I lack sleep because three days a week, I work student security in the residence halls on campus. It's a minimum wage job that starts at 11 PM and ends at 3 or 4 AM depending on the day. While it is not a rigorous job, it takes a toll on my education where I am either powered by coffee or falling asleep during class. Nevertheless, it is a job I am extremely grateful for and depend on for basic necessities most students here take for granted. My mother and father immigrated to California from Mexico about 22 years ago in search of the "American Dream" that they have yet to find. My father has driven trucks since I can remember. He used to drive out of state until my youngest sister no longer recognized him when he would come home and now only works night shifts. Growing up as an orphan in Mexico, he never had the opportunities that my sisters and I have had for a better education. Even as young girls, both he and my mother would stress to my sisters and me the importance of higher learning. As poor Latina women, it is our only opportunity to have a better life.

I am the first of four to attend a four year university. At the moment, my parents are paying for three of us to go to college, all in different places. One in _____________ to be a chef, another at the local community college by our cramped two bedroom apartment, and myself at _________ in __________. I have always perceived education as the only way to be successful. Throughout my childhood, I cannot remember a time where our family has ever had money to spare or go on a vacation. While stressful, I can't imagine my life any other way and because of these stringent economic circumstances, my motivation for obtaining the highest level of learning has always been priority.

When I started school, I only spoke Spanish. My parents refused to put me in the bilingual neighborhood school and instead, sent my sisters and I to one of the most affluent schools in the district. I remember coming home in tears for being the only Latina in my classroom and not speaking any English. My parents would take no pity assuring me that the only way to succeed in America was to speak proper English, none of that "spanglish". Though I became a fluent English speaker, I developed a speech impediment that would follow me all throughout my educational career. That is, until I joined the _________ speech and debate team. The experiences I gained in the four years I was involved are indescribable. My senior year I was president and even won a national championship title. But one experience in particular altered my life forever.

My sophomore year I met __________, an individual who had been involved in the local gang and like many, turned his life around when he joined the speech team. He was under the foster care of one the Booster Club parents and was loved by everyone. My junior year of high school he went back to live with his mother and stopped going to school. Once again, he stepped into a life of streets and drugs. I was disappointed in him because I lived on the same street with the same negative influences around me, but I had never let that cloud my ambitions and plans to have a career and get out of the ghetto. I was walking home from school one day when I saw him riding his bike. When he tried making conversation, I snapped. I told him I was angry at him because he left and that I was going to stop talking to him just like I had stopped talking to everyone on that street. I said it was shameful to see someone with so much talent and intelligence throw his life away. He heard me out, apologized and left. About an hour later, I heard he was dead. He had been shot getting his bike off the public bus in the neighboring city of Anaheim by local gang members. Only an hour ago I had seen him and I was sure he had gotten on that bus after we had talked. I dealt with this guilt for years telling myself that if I had been polite and talked to him a little longer, maybe he would have never gotten on and he would still be here.

I realize now that I couldn't have saved Taureq. But I have the extraordinary personal responsibility to show my peers in that neighborhood that is it possible to succeed. You don't have to be a ______ or any of the other poor boys whose names I see all over the news that get murdered in the name of a street. I've accomplished so much. I overcame that speech impediment; I overcame that cultural barrier and I am the first in my family to attend a university, setting the example for all of my sisters and helping them fill out their FAFSA and sign up for classes-things I had to teach myself. I wake up every morning to that quotation on the other side of my room. It is a reminder that I can be tired, I can be poor, and I can be stressed. But I cannot be defeated and I cannot let my socioeconomic status or surroundings dictate who I am and how I will live. Nothing will work unless I do. And I can assure you, that is exactly what I am doing.