Your personal statement is interesting and honest, I just wanted to point out something that sounds weird-- apparently you had seizures... yet your parents didn't notice it? You said during high school was when your mom "confronted" you about it... why did it take so long? also i would change the wording in that sentence about your mom forcing you to explain your symptoms... That sentence is awkward. Why was she "forcing" you to explain your symptoms? And again, how wasnt she aware? There are some other minor grammar/style changes you could make but overall i like it!
BruceBarr wrote:
If you could just take a minute to let me know how this sounds... I'd really appreciate it.
A few years ago, I found out I wasn’t dumb. But before I discovered this, I spent my first 18 years thinking that my life was destined to minimum wage or being a stay-at-home dad. You may think I am over-exaggerating, but I assure you that my 1.8 High School GPA will clear up any doubt that you may have. But allow me to make one thing clear: I was not a slacker. I repeat: I was not a slacker. Throughout High School, I spent many long nights studying until my eyes could no longer stay open. But regardless of how much I studied, I often found myself unable to retain any information.
I had dealt with this problem since Elementary school. Every morning I would wake up, and within minutes I would experience a sort of dizzy-spell that would wipe my memory clean like erasing the marks off a chalkboard. I would lose all control of my thought process and basic reasoning skills for about five minutes. Simple tasks would seem to have no solution and finding a way to accomplish the most basic of chores would be all but impossible. Worst of all, anything that I had studied the night before would be completely forgotten. As my spells began to worsen and happen multiple times a day, my parents began to take notice of my awkward actions. It was in High School when my mother confronted me and forced me to explain my symptoms. Being a nurse, she found it pertinent for me to see a doctor. Though the doctor was not completely sure what my ailment was, all questions were answered the following month when I had a Grand-Mal seizure. This is the type of seizure that involves severe convulsing, uncontrollable shaking, and a lack of consciousness. They are horrifying to watch and can even be life threatening.
A few days after having my Grand Mal seizure I met with Dr. Cesar Hidalgo, a brain Neurologist who was particularly fascinated by my case. Surprisingly, Dr. Hidalgo was most interested in my bad grades and poor memory. He went on to explain to me his hypothesis that my academic struggle was due to Temporal Lobe epilepsy, and he believed that the spells I was experiencing were small seizures that had the ability to delete about 24 hours worth of my memory. After receiving an electrocardiogram, Dr. Hidalgo confirmed his suspicion when he found a non-malignant mass on my lower temporal lobe. This mass was undoubtedly the cause to my epilepsy, memory-loss, and struggle with school.
Once I started on the medication Carbatrol, I immediately saw an end to my day-to-day struggle with memory. For the first time since Elementary school I was able to retain all the information I studied with ease. Although this was an incredible feeling, it was too late to recover from my 1.8 GPA. I decided at the day of my graduation that I would start my life over and do whatever it took to conquer my dream of going to law school. Although it sounded good in my head, I never fully realized how hard it would be until I began my freshman year of college. For me, being a college student was incredibly difficult. Where most High School students take the four years they are in school to perfect their studying, I did not. Before I took medication nothing worked for me, so I had never taken the time to develop and learn any certain technique. So, throughout my first two years of college, I had the task of learning how to be a student while at the same time being a student at a colligate level. Although it meant taking on an added workload, I never gave up.
After two years I transferred out of community college with a 3.0 GPA. I increased my High School GPA by 1.2 while taking college classes. I continued this upward trend at Wayne State University where I currently have a 3.7 GPA. At Wayne State, the classes were extremely more demanding and the credit load I took was significantly larger. As I am now at a point where I am applying to law school, I believe the last five years of my life is a testament to my hard work. There is no doubt that some of the applicants to your school possess a higher level of intelligence than me, however, intelligence only gets you through the door. I believe there is no person applying to your school that not only works as hard as I do, but also understands what hard work means. I began my college experience with an embarrassingly low level of achievement, but five years later I have proven that I am both capable and deserving of sharing a classroom with some of the most brilliant minds in the country. The law student characteristics of dedication, perseverance, and determination are qualities that I am already intimately familiar with. It is because of these characteristics that I can look at myself today and say with an enormous amount of pride: I am not dumb. I worked hard for this. I am deserving.
Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:13 am