The Ideal Leading me to Study Law Essay -- Law College Admissions Essa

The Ideal Leading me to Study Law The war in the former Yugoslavia is an intensely personal matter for me. I had, for some time, been more aware of the strife in Croatia than many of my peers. My family is originally from Zagreb. As the war progressed, my parents worried about relatives and friends whom they could no longer reach. My father gave up his medical practice in the summer of 1991 to volunteer his medical skills in Zagreb. Throughout this time, I struggled between my sense of responsibility to my relatives and "homeland" and my comfortable life as an American college student. Concentrating on classes and career plans became less important as the war progressed. As I read my father's letters during my senior year detailing the horrible conditions in Croatia, my grades went into a shameful decline. But my heart was nowhere near a textbook; it was at my father's side helping the victims of this international travesty. I didn't even look for a "career option" in the United States. Instead, I sought a volunteer job, sponsored by the University of Zagreb, rebuilding homes destroyed in the conflict and teaching English. Croatia provided a hot blast of reality. During my first week in Krasic, the village where I was assigned, I watched Croatian teens yelling "Cetnik!" (Serbian nationalists during WWII) pelt an elderly woman, who lived in the village for over fifty years, with rocks. Until then, I had never seen such overt and utter hatred, but I learned that such events occurred frequently in the village. Sadly, in a few months all the non-Croatian villagers were forced to leave for Serbia or Bosnia, countries that they did not consider home yet knew were safer for them. I remain... ...equired that, raised one way, I learn another. The lessons I learned, however, go beyond personal growth. I now know that justice is not a passive condition. It is not an intellectual concept. Rather, it is an active and practical application of values by people dealing with real problems affecting individuals at the most essential level. That is the ideal leading me to law school. I learned in Croatia that our current social and political problems run deep, and addressing them requires sophisticated legal skills as well as zeal and compassion. I think my father was right in saying that one can accomplish more with greater education, and that I was right in going to help when I needed to. But now I need to return to the classroom, knowing that I can accomplish more if I return in three years with the skills needed to achieve even more than I already have.