personal statement rambling, part two

So, this was supposed to be my opening paragraph and about half of my personal statement. I work terribly slow, and it took about 4 days to write these three paragraphs. I read it over and over and realized that I'm rambling too much; it's too much like a section of a novel rather than a personal statement. Probably gonna scrap about 80% of this and start over.

Anways, Enjoy :)

My grandpa continued to stand just outside the doorway, watching to see if I had locked the gate correctly. The day before, he took me along the route I was to take in order to reach the Supreme Court of the Philippines. As I locked the front gate, I rehashed my route: walk two blocks, pass the teenagers playing basketball while wearing flip flops, board a modified World War II military Jeep functioning as a public bus, disembark at España Boulevard, board another bus, endure pollution smog, pass Rizal park and yell “Stop,” get off the bus, walk past the dental school and voilà, the Supreme Court. Yet, as I walked through the neighborhood, I was still venturing into the unknown. It seems that all of my important journeys in life start with a journey into the unknown.

I held this gleaming vision of the Supreme Court as a white-marbled, pristine institution in the middle of the gritty, raw Manila city life. In that respect, I was correct - every weekday morning, I walked through the security checkpoint and encountered a neo-classical styled, white-marble facade that held a certain amber glow in the tropical morning sun. Every other preconception about the Court was shattered. The hallways of the main building were subject to dim fluorescent lighting and indoor temperatures closely matched the lingering tropical heat outside. Work inside the Court paralleled life in Manila: gritty, sweaty, blunt. Even some simple legal research was conducted by dusting off old volumes of Court decisions in the law library and carefully flipping through yellowed pages. Yet, amidst the tropical heat, Justice Reyes’ office kept churning along.

I was truly humbled by my first week’s experience. My first important internship, in another country to match, began not with a fanfare entrance, but with a stumble into a very different environment. So, for the start of the second week, I decided to embrace the gritty commute, the heat, and the dusty legal books in the law library. And not surprisingly, I did not undergo an instant personal transformation as planned. Throughout my internship, work did not become easier and my morning commute still left me with sweat stains. Ordinary life in Manila simply did not consist of the simple luxuries I was accustomed to back in the U.S. This simple, banal fact of life only become apparent to me when I consciously made the effort to drop my preconceived notions of the city and start from scratch.

personal statement rambling, part one

This is part of a series of posts relating to my personal statement for law school. Essentially, not all of what I wrote below will make it onto my statement, but I want to get a feel for what I would like to include. Just remember, this is raw material for now.

On Japan - Just write what you want to say, BOSS RAVIOLI

Six thousand, three hundred and thirteen miles. Tokyo, Japan is six thousand, three hundred and thirteen miles away from Chicago. I was truly away from my comfort zone. As I took the train from my dorm to the business district of the city, a different world emerged in front of my eyes: a world filled with Japanese signs that I could not read, hordes of men in black business suits walking towards the train station, endless streams of commuters cramming into commuter trains, countless women with the same Louis Vuitton handbag. Everything in Tokyo seemed to happen in waves of people.

Some people went to Japan thinking they could integrate themselves into Japanese society while others came for the sole purpose of partying. A few individuals at my dorm, upon realizing how far away they were from home, upon realizing that no one spoke English, upon realizing that there was no fast food available to eat, slowly cocooned themselves in their dorm rooms with computer games and bags of snacks. And then, there was me.

During the first two weeks, I spent a considerable amount of time daydreaming. It was difficult to spend so much money going out to bars and restaurants, so initially, I declined several invitations to explore the city. As I sat in my dorm room, I often thought to myself, what if I meet a Japanese girl that I really like?, what if I meet a person with a rich family?, what if, what if... All the while, other study abroad students were exploring new parts of Tokyo, meeting Japanese students at school, going out to try exotic sushi. I was on the verge of spinning my own cocoon; I was on the verge of spinning a collection daydreams into my personal cocoon.

And then, sometime in the third week, amidst the controlled chaos of the evening commutes, my former preconceptions of self became separated from me, got lost in the maze of subway station exits, got lost somewhere on the train home to my dorm. I was to start anew. If I were to make friends, sulking and daydreaming were activities to be avoided. It sounds improbable, but it felt as if one moment amidst my evening commute changed my naturally introverted personality. After three weeks in Tokyo, I finally realized that, in order to survive this journey, I had to embrace the unknowns, the “what ifs,” and embrace my limited time in this amazing city.

In retrospect, studying in Tokyo made me realize that, to truly excel, you have to place yourself in the unknown. You have to be bold enough to go the opposite direction of the crowd, and you must be humble enough to realize that stumbling and making mistakes are part of the journey into the unknown.

This is one of the many lessons I learned in Tokyo.