Rough Draft of my Personal statement. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Forum

[jamiesam26]

I should change this to request if you would like to help me with my personal statement then please comment and I will PM you the writing. I'll be happy to also look at personal statements you are working as well. I don't expect to go any feedback without doing the same for others!

[Platopus]

I guess I'm a little confused here. Why were you in the inpatient facility? Having a nurse throw away your cupcake is not a "devastating injustice" and rings a little hollow. Maybe I'm just missing it, but I don't really see a coherent narrative.

[jamiesam26]

My mother had Munchhausen By-Proxy syndrome among a myriad of other mental health issues. I was there because my mother said that at 6 years old I attempted to commit suicide, when the honest to God truth was at that age I had no concept of suicide. It stemmed from me throwing a temper tantrum in public and I ran away from my mother to the car, and locked her out of the car because I had the keys with me.

What I should have gotten was a spanking, but instead my mother asked me if I tried to commit suicide, and that was the first time I had ever heard that word. I remember saying it to her a few times, just trying the word out on my tongue. That was the beginning of a childhood where my mother was able to subject me to pretty much an psychiatrist that she wanted, and they would just drug me. Sometimes she would take me to see two different mental health professionals in the same day and each different one would prescribe me different mental health medications.

The system failed me time and time again, and because my father was not the main custodial parent, he could do nothing to protect me. So my childhood just, I don't even know a good word for it other than, I was let down. I had no voice. It was only when I became older that I had a voice, and I made sure that it was a loud one.

I want to go to law school because the laws in Florida for mental health and for social services is laughable, and there has been no change. I am 26 years old now, and just recently I went through a nightmare with the court systems in relation to an involuntary placement of my elderly father. He was kept for 7 days involuntarily and the law specifically states that if a mental health issue stems from an organic cause, such as dementia or a stroke (which my father had in 08/2016) then involuntary place is not appropriate and they are to be discharged back into community care. It took me having to petition the circuit court for a writ of habeas corpus for me to get my father released. The ex-parte order from the hospitalization came from false information from a family member that lives 7 states away.

Civil rights is why I want to go to law school, because every day of my life was a struggle for someone to recognize that I had any at all.

[cavalier1138]

This isn't a bad starting point, but it needs to be more focused. Even your follow-up post helped clarify things (although, obviously, you don't want this to turn into an airing of the family's dirty laundry), but the current statement skims the surface of the subject. By the end, I get your central thesis, but I don't really understand much of your motivation beyond a generic "system bad, me fix system" idea.

Also, you need to be a lot more attentive to grammar and syntax. There are numerous basic errors throughout.

Edit: I forgot to get more specific about one thing. Drop the entire paragraph talking about how strong you are. Your statement should show your inner strength without you having to literally explain how amazing you are relative to your peers. It comes off as extremely arrogant.

[jamiesam26]

Yeah I know, I understand. I need to put a lot more work into it. I was just more trying to try to get some advice about the content of everything and what more I could focus on. I will definitely clean up and probably reword it a million different times.

So should I totally take out the first paragraph and rewrite it from the standpoint of my mother committing me at 6 years old for attempted suicide?

It is so much more than just a system bad and fix me idea that I want to put into my system. It goes so much farther than. My father had a saying that kind of strikes me as the beginning of my thinking about me going to law school and that is "If I can't find a lawyer who has the courage to stand up to them, then I will raise one."

I want.....no my ambitions of going to law school isn't just because I have an excellent sob story to go with a generic reason. I have through pure hell to get say that I have survived, survived through things nobody should have to to live through. And I don't just want to write a book about my story like so many other people. I want my words to be more than just literature. I want it to move people, but more than anything, I want it to move the wheels of change.

Because I am not so naive to think that my own story is unique. Some other little girl watched some nurse throw away her cupcake too.

Edit: And you are right. That will be removed. Thank you for taking the time to read it. I really appreciate it.

[Platopus]

The story about having to deal with the recent issue with your father is compelling, and I think has the makings to be a really good PS. You definitely don't want to rail against the "system" in your PS, but I think you have a good story of your interaction with the law and courts that can help explain your desire to go to law school. I would be hesitant about making it seem like this one interaction is the sole reason you want to be an attorney, so I think there is some relevance to your background and growing up in a less than perfect system. I agree with the other poster, that you want to SHOW your good qualities, not necessarily make them explicit.