Cliffnotes: Leaving for University of Colorado Law School in about a month. Explanation on why I'm going and the steps that got me this far, and my plans for the near future.
My journey started in high school. When I was a sophomore at St. Francis Prep, I knew I was going to be a doctor. I wanted to study neurology and used my entire science background to do it. I was a part of the Science Research program there, a pretty prestigous program at the school. I decided to do research on the effects of violent video games on adolescents. It was fascinating to me as a person who equally loved video games and wasn't allowed to play Grand Theft Auto, because my mom felt that the game was too violent.
Anyway, I embraced this field of study and was prepared to spend the summer working with a professor at SUNY Geneseo doing further research on the topic. Everything was going well. I enjoyed the research and loved the topic of study and at the year end symposium, people who passed by my project loved the idea. As the year was ending I told my teacher that I would prove that violent video games didn't cause long term aggression in children and did so with pride. My teacher stopped me and said, "That's not what scientists do. Scientists don't prove things. They do experiments and report what happens." This disheartened me, and I knew that I had no interest in doing that. I wanted to prove things because I felt that I was right. I knew that I wouldn't be returning to the program in the fall, and that I no longer had interest in doing any of these experiments at all. I alson knew that due to suffering performance and an overall depression, I wouldn't be back. I was going to lose my scholarship and figured that I would have to leave St. Francis and go to another school ending my tenure with the program, anyway.
I did lose my scholarship but through various means I was still able to finish out my high school years at St. Francis Prep. I spent the next couple of years fumbling around trying to decide what was next for me. In my senior year, I took a Criminal Justice class, detailing all of the processes involved with the criminal justice system. I went on a day trip to Queens County Criminal Courthouse. I loved it there and was fascinated by the things that went on. I also applied to one college, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
I decided that I wanted to become a lawyer before going for various reasons. I realized that my personality, and skill set lent itself to lawyering. Reasonable doubt and legal ideas surrounding the defense of the accused fascinated me and felt natural. I had no idea what it would take to get there, but I knew that this was what I wanted to do.
My first 2 years at John Jay was filled with great information and more support. While all of the school isn't the same way, in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program, I found myself surrounded with people with great ideas and interesting perspectives, something that I hadn't experienced before, at least not to the extent that it was offered in Interdisciplinary Studies. I didn't enjoy every class, but every class offered me something to enjoy.
During sophomore year of college, a couple of my professors suggested that I apply for the Ronald H. Brown Law School Prep program. I hadn't heard of it yet, and it didn't seem like something I was certain that I wanted to do. It required me to devote my summers to getting in to law school and required that I didn't go to work or take summer classes. I loved my job, and didn't want to risk losing it for this program. A couple of weeks after I decided that I didn't want to be a part of the program, I got a call from the professor that ran it. She sold it to me over the phone and I decided to just apply. At worse, I wouldn't get in anyway.
I got in. I spent the next two summers taking mock law school classes with law professors at St. John's University, doing LSAT preparation, learning the ins and outs of personal statement writing, doing an internship at the Queens Criminal Courthouse with the same judge that was doing arraignments during my high school trip, and another with the Legal Aid Society.
By the fall semester of my senior year, I had my plans set. I was going to apply to a couple of different law schools, reach for some and see where I could get in. I was dissatisfied with New York and decided that I wanted to leave the area unless I didn't get into any schools out of state. While I applied to a couple of local schools I realized that this would be my last opportunity to leave NY and try something new. Also, I had to deal with problems at home and in my inner circle.
As a result of the aforementioned issues I applied to schools later than I would have liked, likely costing me tons in scholarship money. Where my peers applied in November or december and were done with the process, I had yet to send out my first application until January. The first set of apps were the ones I wanted and could afford on limited means. 4 schools including Colorado.
I got in. No money offered where I recieved offers of much more to go. Even then Colorado is where I wanted to be. I didnt even have a particularly good reason to choose Colorado over other schools. Rank bore no importance to me and I got into other schools that were far from home. I suppose I didnt see myself living in California and didnt want to be 3 timezones over. Also, I figure that I wont have other opportunities in life to spend a lot of time in Colorado whereas California will always offer opportunities.
Once I visited the Boulder-Denver area, I was set. It was everything I wanted and everything just felt right, from the facilities to the people I encountered. The only thing it's missing is a white castle. Boulder's quiet enough and Denver is city enough. More importantly, crime is low enough so it does feel different from home. I wont have to worry about the question fireworks or gunshots as often as I do here. Diversity is low, but that's to be expected.
Last Week, the Supreme Court decided on a case involving a law banning the sale of violent video games. It was the case I would have loved to present, more than any other case in history I suppose. That's not an exaggeration in any way. Its the sort of thing that I want to be a lawyer to be a part of. A law was passed to make selling violent video games fineable. The law was misguided and was passed based on inaccuracies. Lawyers presented a case to invalidate that law, and they were successful in doing so. They had a point to prove and they proved it. What I noticed in reading the references after the opinion was a familiar piece of writing. There was a study titled "Looking at the world through Mortal Kombat colored glasses", the same study which I based my science research on over 6 years ago. Life coming full circle? Maybe. A sign? Probably not. But certainly ironic that the same things that were brought up and the questions that were asked all that time ago that caused me to want to practice law and get away from science were the same questions that popped up all this time later as I prepare to go to law school.
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