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JulieMinFirstEssay 8 - 14 Jun 2021 - Main.JulieMin
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Creatively Envisioning my Practice
Reflection of My Inner Soul at Law School
Helplessness Due to Loss of Motivation
Last fall, I felt skeptical and helpless of choosing to attend law school. I neither was interested in law nor dreamed of becoming a lawyer. I simply wanted a “stable” job that would not require any financial knowledge as I hated numbers. Therefore, I was relieved when admitted to the law school with great employment prospects.
However, learning about the reality of big-law firms and associates’ work-life balance, my immediate response to the fear and anxiety was to drop out. But I had already paid for my tuition and did not want to waste my years-worth of effort of vigorously preparing for law school. Thus, I pushed through a semester, unclear of why I had to attend classes. My internal conflict thus created a mental split between my struggle to not give up and the desire to put an end to a purposeless struggle. To make the “split feel less tearing”—borrowing from Professor Moglen’s words—I relied on alcohol to make it to the end of the semester.
The Initial Shallow Attempt at Solving My Cognitive Dissonance
Applying to Columbia Law, I wrote in my personal statement North Koreans face significant challenges in South Korea, and that I want to pursue a legal education to help these re-settlers frame their past sufferings as human rights violations, mobilizing them to call for reforms in the South Korean government’s resettlement program. This was my personal narrative that I carved out for myself and convinced myself to be my true passion.
Even when I was writing the first draft of this essay, I wrote that my creative attempt at solving my cognitive dissonance was to follow my “passion”, which I defined as refugee empowerment. As an East Asian Studies major, I engaged in North Korean refugee policy related extra-curriculars for years—volunteering at North Korean refugee organizations and interning at legal NGOs serving North Korean refugees. I had internally convinced myself that—as an East Asian Studies major who was born and raised in Seoul—this specialization would make me a unique candidate both as an applicant and student at law school.
Thus, when Professor Moglen pointed out that my purpose to pursue a US law degree would only be “very peripherally associated” and “doesn’t involve practicing US law”, it was the first time I honestly questioned myself: was I consciously conditioning myself to a set “passion” that would conveniently reassure myself I have a set path ahead of me? Something not big law, something public interest related, and something involving a field I would have more experience than others and have more specialty in. I also think my inner moral compass led me to believe that for my law degree to hold value, it must in some way serve the victimized minorities of society.
Redesigning my Path
My Passion for Wine
But really, when someone asks me what makes my eyes light up, and what makes me zone in so strongly that I lose track of time, I always answer “wine tasting”. During and after college, I studied extensively for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust and bartending exam, learning the history and processes of wine making, various regions and wineries that produce grapes, as well as tasting note distinctions for wine varieties. My dream has always been to become a professional sommelier. However, raised by strict Asian parents who constantly told me the money they have invested in my education would go to waste if I were to pursue a non-academic path, and already having built my career for law school for almost a decade, I have for years shoved my greatest passion in the back of my mind and merely regarded wine-related activities as a side “hobby” of mine.
Representing Beverage Clients
With my US law degree, I want to represent beverage clients. Law and regulations apply to all steps of producing, distributing, selling, marketing, and advertising alcohol beverages—including wine. I want to represent various clients such as but not limited to importers, wineries, wholesalers, and unlicensed third parties. These parties are subject to various regulatory investigations under the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as well as various state alcohol legislations. With my enthusiasm and knowledge of global wines and wineries, coupled with personal experience as a bartender and somelier-trainee, representing clients and providing regulatory or licensing guidelines will instill within me purpose and professionalism of working in the beverage industry. I also want to facilitate global import of more diverse wines to the US by representing wineries in purchasing and selling businesses in transactional sales and mergers.
Looking Forward
Even until the second semester of law school, I never imagined I could build my own legal career and link it to my non-academic passion. Knowing now that I can, I am excited but simultaneously scared. While following the traditional big law path would provide me with countless mentors in the industry, this new challenge pushes me to carve out my own path and take greater initiative, as opposed to merely hopping on the big-law associate producing assembly line.
But my fear is what most stifles my growth. Yes, I have never professionally worked with lawyers in the beverage industry, my business plans are not yet “concrete”, and I lack detailed knowledge of how wine import regulations work. It is not that these anxieties or doubts are invalid—in fact, they are practical concerns worth keeping in mind. However, the most important thing to not succumb to such fear. I will accept these challenges and use them as a motivation to more specifically design my practice. As Professor Moglen has advised, it is my job to “revise, reconsider, and redefine” individual decisions in envisioning my career, and my practice is an evolving one. I am thus proud to have completed the first step to building my practice—creatively and autonomously envisioning my legal roadmap.
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JulieMinFirstEssay 7 - 19 May 2021 - Main.JulieMin
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You used more than half the space in this draft for the movie. The best route to improvement is to reduce it to a sentence. The idea of the draft may be your difficult first encounter with law school; the story is harrowing in several respects. You have suffered and you should have sympathetic help. And, like every other student in the first year of law school, you should carefully consider whether to come back after your first year. Not more than people whose adjustments to law school seemed easier, but also not less, you should know for sure when you return in the fall why you are doing so.
Which is what I think this essay is really about. The last sentences of the current draft say, if I understand them correctly, "I have plans for work I want to do, with which a US law degree would only be very peripherally associated, and which don't involve practicing US law." If that's right, the next draft might very well be to provide a more detailed analysis of the statements made here, for the purpose of actually asking whether returning to law school next year is what you want to do.
| | | Creatively Envisioning my Practice
Reflection of My Inner Soul at Law School
Helplessness Due to Loss of Motivation | |
<
< | Last fall semester, I myself felt “stuck” in this feeling of helplessness and skepticism regarding coming to law school. I wasn’t necessarily intrigued by the law and it was not like I had a grandiose dream of becoming a big law firm associate. I simply wanted a “stable” and “well-paying” job that would not require any financial or economic knowledge—I deeply hated numbers and economic calculations. Therefore, I was happy when I got admitted to the law school of my dreams. | >
> | Last fall, I felt skeptical and helpless of choosing to attend law school. I neither was interested in law nor dreamed of becoming a lawyer. I simply wanted a “stable” job that would not require any financial knowledge as I hated numbers. Therefore, I was relieved when admitted to the law school with great employment prospects. | | | | |
<
< | However, starting my studies and learning more about what actual big-law firm associates do and what their work-life balance looks like, I felt a larger dissociation than I ever had in my life. My immediate response to the fear and anxiety I felt was a want to drop out; but I had already paid for a semester’s worth of tuition, and it felt like it was too late. After all, I did not want to merely throw away the four years during my undergraduate career in which I vigorously prepared for law school admissions. I simply pushed through a semester, unclear of why I had to be studying all these theoretical legal classes. My internal conflict did indeed create a mental split, and to make the “split feel less tearing”, borrowing from Professor Moglen’s words, I relied on nicotine and alcohol to make it to the end of the semester. | >
> | However, learning about the reality of big-law firms and associates’ work-life balance, my immediate response to the fear and anxiety was to drop out. But I had already paid for my tuition and did not want to waste my years-worth of effort of vigorously preparing for law school. Thus, I pushed through a semester, unclear of why I had to attend classes. My internal conflict thus created a mental split between my struggle to not give up and the desire to put an end to a purposeless struggle. To make the “split feel less tearing”—borrowing from Professor Moglen’s words—I relied on alcohol to make it to the end of the semester. | | | | |
<
< | My Initial Shallow Attempt at Solving My Cognitive Dissonance
When I applied to Columbia Law School, I wrote in my personal statement North Koreans face significant challenges in South Korea, and that I want to pursue a legal education to help these re-settlers frame their past sufferings as human rights violations, mobilizing North Koreans to call for reforms in the South Korean government’s resettlement program. This was my personal narrative that I carved out for myself and I think convinced myself was my true passion. | | | | |
<
< | Even during the time when I was writing the first draft of this essay, I wrote that my creative attempt at solving my cognitive dissonance was to follow my “passion”, which I defined as education and refugee empowerment. As an East Asian Studies major during my undergraduate career, North Korean refugee policy was the main academic and professional extra-curricular activities I engaged in for years—working as head volunteer of North Korean refugee organizations and legal intern at legal NGOs serving advocacy for North Korean refugees. I think deep down I convinced myself that—as an undergraduate East Asian Studies major who was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea—this specialization would make me a unique candidate both as an applicant and student at law school. | >
> | The Initial Shallow Attempt at Solving My Cognitive Dissonance
Applying to Columbia Law, I wrote in my personal statement North Koreans face significant challenges in South Korea, and that I want to pursue a legal education to help these re-settlers frame their past sufferings as human rights violations, mobilizing them to call for reforms in the South Korean government’s resettlement program. This was my personal narrative that I carved out for myself and convinced myself to be my true passion. | | | | |
<
< | Hence, when Professor Moglen pointed out that I have plans for work I want to do but with which “a US law degree would only be very peripherally associated” and “doesn’t involve practicing US law”, this was the first time I think I truly, honestly questioned myself for the first time whether I was consciously conditioning myself to a set “passion” that would conveniently reassure myself I have a set path ahead of me. Something not big law, something public interest related, and something involving a field I would have more experience than others and have more specialty in. I also think that somewhere deep inside, my inner moral compass led me to think that my law degree must in some way serve the victimized minorities of society to hold value. | >
> | Even when I was writing the first draft of this essay, I wrote that my creative attempt at solving my cognitive dissonance was to follow my “passion”, which I defined as refugee empowerment. As an East Asian Studies major, I engaged in North Korean refugee policy related extra-curriculars for years—volunteering at North Korean refugee organizations and interning at legal NGOs serving North Korean refugees. I had internally convinced myself that—as an East Asian Studies major who was born and raised in Seoul—this specialization would make me a unique candidate both as an applicant and student at law school.
Thus, when Professor Moglen pointed out that my purpose to pursue a US law degree would only be “very peripherally associated” and “doesn’t involve practicing US law”, it was the first time I honestly questioned myself: was I consciously conditioning myself to a set “passion” that would conveniently reassure myself I have a set path ahead of me? Something not big law, something public interest related, and something involving a field I would have more experience than others and have more specialty in. I also think my inner moral compass led me to believe that for my law degree to hold value, it must in some way serve the victimized minorities of society. | | | Redesigning my Path
My Passion for Wine | |
<
< | But really, when someone asks me what makes my eyes lit up, and what makes me zone in so strongly that I lose track of time, I always would answer “wine tasting”. In fact, during and after my time in college, I studied for months for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust exam, learning the history and processes of wine making, various regions and wineries that produce grapes, as well as tasting note distinctions for different wine varieties. My dream was always to become a professional sommelier, but raised by strict Asian parents who always told me the money they have invested in my education up until this point would all go to waste if I were to pursue a non-academic path, and already having studied for and built my career for law school until this point in time, I have for years shoved my greatest passion in the back of my mind and merely regarded it as a small “hobby” I have. | >
> | But really, when someone asks me what makes my eyes light up, and what makes me zone in so strongly that I lose track of time, I always answer “wine tasting”. During and after college, I studied extensively for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust and bartending exam, learning the history and processes of wine making, various regions and wineries that produce grapes, as well as tasting note distinctions for wine varieties. My dream has always been to become a professional sommelier. However, raised by strict Asian parents who constantly told me the money they have invested in my education would go to waste if I were to pursue a non-academic path, and already having built my career for law school for almost a decade, I have for years shoved my greatest passion in the back of my mind and merely regarded wine-related activities as a side “hobby” of mine. | | | Representing Beverage Clients | |
<
< | With my US law degree, I want to represent alcohol beverage clients. Laws and regulations apply to all steps of producing, distributing, selling, marketing, and advertising alcohol beverages--including wine. I want to represent various clients such as but not limited to importers, wineries, wholesalers, and even unlicensed third parties. These parties are subject to various regulatory investigations under the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as well as various state alcohol controlling legislations. With my enthusiasm for and knowledge in specific wines and wineries globally, as well as personal direct experience as a bartender and somelier-trainee, representing clients will instill within me purpose and professionalism in the regulatory and licensing guidelines I provide; I also want to partake in facilitating import of more diverse wine products globally in to the US by representing wineries in purchasing and selling businesses in transactional sales and mergers. | >
> | With my US law degree, I want to represent beverage clients. Law and regulations apply to all steps of producing, distributing, selling, marketing, and advertising alcohol beverages—including wine. I want to represent various clients such as but not limited to importers, wineries, wholesalers, and unlicensed third parties. These parties are subject to various regulatory investigations under the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as well as various state alcohol legislations. With my enthusiasm and knowledge of global wines and wineries, coupled with personal experience as a bartender and somelier-trainee, representing clients and providing regulatory or licensing guidelines will instill within me purpose and professionalism of working in the beverage industry. I also want to facilitate global import of more diverse wines to the US by representing wineries in purchasing and selling businesses in transactional sales and mergers. | | | Looking Forward | |
<
< | Even until the second semester of my law school career, I never imagined I could build my own legal career and link it to the passion I have. And this scares me. While following the traditional big law path would provide me with thousands of mentors in the industry, this new challenge ahead of me would lead me create and carve out my own path, taking initiative, instead of merely following the paths that tens and thousands have set ahead of me.
Since my practice is an evolving process, as Professor Moglen has advised, I hope to “revise, reconsider, and redefine” individual decisions as I envision my career. | >
> | Even until the second semester of law school, I never imagined I could build my own legal career and link it to my non-academic passion. Knowing now that I can, I am excited but simultaneously scared. While following the traditional big law path would provide me with countless mentors in the industry, this new challenge pushes me to carve out my own path and take greater initiative, as opposed to merely hopping on the big-law associate producing assembly line. | | | | |
<
< | I think my largest reluctance stemmed from the fact that my plans may not seem “concrete” enough. After all, I have never professionally worked with lawyers in the food and beverage industry. I do not have a business background, I have no idea how wine import regulations work, nor do I have any mentors who work in the food and beverage sections of the legal industry. I now realize that it’s not that these anxieties or doubts are invalid—they may very well be practical concerns worth keeping in mind.
At the same time, however, I think these anxious thoughts were what made me constantly think of reasons why not to, succumbing myself to those thoughts. Fear does indeed However, I will from now on accept the challenge as it is and not run away from the challenge, dismissing my anxieties no matter how valid they may be. | >
> | But my fear is what most stifles my growth. Yes, I have never professionally worked with lawyers in the beverage industry, my business plans are not yet “concrete”, and I lack detailed knowledge of how wine import regulations work. It is not that these anxieties or doubts are invalid—in fact, they are practical concerns worth keeping in mind. However, the most important thing to not succumb to such fear. I will accept these challenges and use them as a motivation to more specifically design my practice. As Professor Moglen has advised, it is my job to “revise, reconsider, and redefine” individual decisions in envisioning my career, and my practice is an evolving one. I am thus proud to have completed the first step to building my practice—creatively and autonomously envisioning my legal roadmap. | | | |
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JulieMinFirstEssay 6 - 10 May 2021 - Main.JulieMin
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You used more than half the space in this draft for the movie. The best route to improvement is to reduce it to a sentence. The idea of the draft may be your difficult first encounter with law school; the story is harrowing in several respects. You have suffered and you should have sympathetic help. And, like every other student in the first year of law school, you should carefully consider whether to come back after your first year. Not more than people whose adjustments to law school seemed easier, but also not less, you should know for sure when you return in the fall why you are doing so. | | | Even during the time when I was writing the first draft of this essay, I wrote that my creative attempt at solving my cognitive dissonance was to follow my “passion”, which I defined as education and refugee empowerment. As an East Asian Studies major during my undergraduate career, North Korean refugee policy was the main academic and professional extra-curricular activities I engaged in for years—working as head volunteer of North Korean refugee organizations and legal intern at legal NGOs serving advocacy for North Korean refugees. I think deep down I convinced myself that—as an undergraduate East Asian Studies major who was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea—this specialization would make me a unique candidate both as an applicant and student at law school. | |
<
< | Hence, when Professor Moglen pointed out that I have plans for work I want to do but with which “a US law degree would only be very peripherally associated” and “doesn’t involve practicing US law”, this was the first time I think I truly, honestly questioned myself for the first time whether I was consciously conditioning myself to a set “passion” that would conveniently reassure myself I have a set path ahead of me. Something not big law, something public interest related, and something involving a field I would have more experience than others and have more specialty in. | >
> | Hence, when Professor Moglen pointed out that I have plans for work I want to do but with which “a US law degree would only be very peripherally associated” and “doesn’t involve practicing US law”, this was the first time I think I truly, honestly questioned myself for the first time whether I was consciously conditioning myself to a set “passion” that would conveniently reassure myself I have a set path ahead of me. Something not big law, something public interest related, and something involving a field I would have more experience than others and have more specialty in. I also think that somewhere deep inside, my inner moral compass led me to think that my law degree must in some way serve the victimized minorities of society to hold value. | | | Redesigning my Path
My Passion for Wine | | | With my US law degree, I want to represent alcohol beverage clients. Laws and regulations apply to all steps of producing, distributing, selling, marketing, and advertising alcohol beverages--including wine. I want to represent various clients such as but not limited to importers, wineries, wholesalers, and even unlicensed third parties. These parties are subject to various regulatory investigations under the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as well as various state alcohol controlling legislations. With my enthusiasm for and knowledge in specific wines and wineries globally, as well as personal direct experience as a bartender and somelier-trainee, representing clients will instill within me purpose and professionalism in the regulatory and licensing guidelines I provide; I also want to partake in facilitating import of more diverse wine products globally in to the US by representing wineries in purchasing and selling businesses in transactional sales and mergers.
Looking Forward | |
<
< | Even until the second semester of my law school career, I never imagined I could build my own legal career and link it to the passion I have. And this scares me. While following the traditional big law path would provide me with thousands of mentors in the industry, this somewhat non-traditional path definitely seems like a challenge. Since my practice is an evolving process, as Professor Moglen has advised, I hope to “revise, reconsider, and redefine” individual decisions as I envision my career. | >
> | Even until the second semester of my law school career, I never imagined I could build my own legal career and link it to the passion I have. And this scares me. While following the traditional big law path would provide me with thousands of mentors in the industry, this new challenge ahead of me would lead me create and carve out my own path, taking initiative, instead of merely following the paths that tens and thousands have set ahead of me.
Since my practice is an evolving process, as Professor Moglen has advised, I hope to “revise, reconsider, and redefine” individual decisions as I envision my career.
I think my largest reluctance stemmed from the fact that my plans may not seem “concrete” enough. After all, I have never professionally worked with lawyers in the food and beverage industry. I do not have a business background, I have no idea how wine import regulations work, nor do I have any mentors who work in the food and beverage sections of the legal industry. I now realize that it’s not that these anxieties or doubts are invalid—they may very well be practical concerns worth keeping in mind.
At the same time, however, I think these anxious thoughts were what made me constantly think of reasons why not to, succumbing myself to those thoughts. Fear does indeed However, I will from now on accept the challenge as it is and not run away from the challenge, dismissing my anxieties no matter how valid they may be. | | | |
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JulieMinFirstEssay 5 - 07 May 2021 - Main.JulieMin
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< | Creatively Envisioning My Practice to Overcome my Soul's Internal Split
-- By JulieMin - 22 Feb 2021
Reflection of the Pixar Animation "Soul"
Brief Summary of the Movie
I recently watched Pixar’s animation “Soul”. In the movie, the protagonist is a jazz piano player who desperately wants to achieve his goal of performing on stage in front of a large audience. He has been trying to achieve this dream for years, but fails to pass every single audition. Instead, he grudgingly teaches high school students music because he has to sustain his life. By the end of the movie, he finally succeeds in performing in front of a large audience with a famous jazz band. However, unlike the expectations he had, after the performance, the only feelings he holds are emptiness and futility. Even though he believed that once he achieves his singular goal of performing on stage he will be happy as he has reached a long-chased goal, in reality, he was not satisfied with the results.
The highlight of the movie is that after a long period of introspective soul-searching, he realizes that happiness does not always lie in one’s long awaited professional goal, but rather comes from the smaller moments that often go unnoticed in everyday life—like the friendly chat he had with his neighbor, or a sunny afternoon when he watched leaves rustle against the wind.
Soul's Lesson is Unsatisfactory
Why Limit Happiness to Fleeting Moments Outside One's Career?
To me, however, this ending was extremely unsatisfactory and I questioned how so many people found this cliché ending satisfactory. The movie should have instead gone a level deeper, questioning how the jazz piano performer could develop his musical practice to satisfy his needs as a creative performer and build a musical career that fills his heart with excitement and joy every day. The reason he felt futility and emptiness after the performance could stem from a variety of reasons. Perhaps the rush and euphoria he felt from playing in front of a large audience was not as strong as he had expected. Perhaps he realized his future might entail repeatedly performing like a mechanical record player every day at 6PM. Regardless of his reasons for the helplessness the protagonist felt, the movie' s solution that the man should instead find happiness in non-musical activities and fleeting moments of everyday life was unsatisfactory to me. The movie seemed to take a binary approach, implying that the protagonist could not take charge of his own musical career, and because his goal-achieved life as a jazz pianist is now a fixed variable, his autonomy to find happiness in life shall come from components outside his career.
Don't Abandon, Make Better
If that is the case, however, then how do we then justify or make up for the protagonist 's artistic talents and lost endeavors of practicing the piano for decades? Neglecting and abandoning the career as a whole due to feelings of dissociation is irresponsible.
As we have discussed in class repeatedly, our goal is not to simply quit our jobs when we are disillusioned by the disassociation between the job and our own moral and political needs. It is to rather take charge of our practice by creating our individual practice which aligns with our own moral, political, and even material needs.
Reflection of My Inner Soul at Law School
Helplessness due to Loss of Motivation
Last fall semester, I myself felt “stuck” in this feeling of helplessness and skepticism regarding coming to law school. I came straight to law school after graduating from college. I always wanted to go to law school since high school, and during undergraduate I never once doubted whether I wanted to go to law school or not. I wasn’t necessarily intrigued by the law and it was not like I had a grandiose dream of becoming a big law firm associate. I simply wanted a “stable” and “well-paying” job that would not require any financial or economic knowledge—I deeply hated numbers and economic calculations. Therefore, I was happy when I got admitted to the law school of my dreams. However, starting my studies and learning more about what actual big-law firm associates do and what their work-life balance looks like, I felt a larger dissociation than I ever had in my life. My immediate response to the fear and anxiety I felt was a want to drop out; but I had already paid for a semester’s worth of tuition, and it felt like it was too late. After all, I did not want to merely throw away the four years during my undergraduate career in which I vigorously prepared for law school admissions—carefully managing my GPA and scoring high on the LSAT. I simply pushed through a semester, unclear of why I had to be studying all these theoretical legal classes. My internal conflict did indeed create a mental split, and to make the “split feel less tearing”, borrowing from Professor Moglen’s words, I relied on nicotine and alcohol to make it to the end of the semester.
My Creative Attempt at Solving My Cognitive Dissonance
As the movie Soul suggested, yes I did remind myself of the fleeting and seemingly unimportant moments like mornings sipping hand dripped coffee while listening to my favorite singer H.E.R’s songs. But appreciating those small moments lacked the ability to cure my cognitive dissonance regarding my motivation to continue pursuing a legal career. I had to address the problem in its very core. I have been thinking about what my greatest passions as an East Asian Studies major were outside of the law—education and refugee empowerment—and how I could use the law to expand the influence of areas in which I am greatly passionate about.
During my time as head volunteer of the NGO Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center, my North Korean student Yeon, to whom I have been teaching English, has told me that even with South Korean citizenship, it feels like she’s always the nam, the other, and can never be part of the “us.” North Koreans face significant challenges in South Korea, and I want to pursue a legal education to help these re-settlers frame their past sufferings as human rights violations, mobilizing North Koreans to call for reforms in the South Korean government’s resettlement program. However, I want to go even beyond merely amending existing discriminatory policies and instead support refugees’ future careers by establishing a social enterprise—an educational institute in South Korea led by North Koreans teaching Chinese. My legal expertise will flexibly be helpful in establishing basic company guidelines, and I hope to further my practice to offer legal advice for North Korean re-settlers in South Korea facing various socio-economic discrimination.
Conclusion
Reminding myself that my legal practice allows for the flexibility to broaden my influence in the areas I am deeply passionate about has been an enlightening experience. At the same time, however, one of the fears I still have to conquest is recognizing that imagining a practice I want to build for myself involves and will continue to involve practical concerns, not just ideological and moral goals I envision for myself. In this sense, it worries me that I lack the business acumen that may be needed to sustain my own practice—but then again, perhaps devising ways to best take care of these more practical, business concerns is all part of the creative process. Will there be a sense of futility or emptiness I may feel, even if I create my own practice that creatively employs my legal knowledge to solve problems and issues I am passionate about? If so, will this first attempt to creatively build my practice empower me to face future challenges? | | |
You used more than half the space in this draft for the movie. The best route to improvement is to reduce it to a sentence. The idea of the draft may be your difficult first encounter with law school; the story is harrowing in several respects. You have suffered and you should have sympathetic help. And, like every other student in the first year of law school, you should carefully consider whether to come back after your first year. Not more than people whose adjustments to law school seemed easier, but also not less, you should know for sure when you return in the fall why you are doing so. |
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JulieMinFirstEssay 4 - 07 May 2021 - Main.JulieMin
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> | Creatively Envisioning my Practice
Reflection of My Inner Soul at Law School
Helplessness Due to Loss of Motivation
Last fall semester, I myself felt “stuck” in this feeling of helplessness and skepticism regarding coming to law school. I wasn’t necessarily intrigued by the law and it was not like I had a grandiose dream of becoming a big law firm associate. I simply wanted a “stable” and “well-paying” job that would not require any financial or economic knowledge—I deeply hated numbers and economic calculations. Therefore, I was happy when I got admitted to the law school of my dreams.
However, starting my studies and learning more about what actual big-law firm associates do and what their work-life balance looks like, I felt a larger dissociation than I ever had in my life. My immediate response to the fear and anxiety I felt was a want to drop out; but I had already paid for a semester’s worth of tuition, and it felt like it was too late. After all, I did not want to merely throw away the four years during my undergraduate career in which I vigorously prepared for law school admissions. I simply pushed through a semester, unclear of why I had to be studying all these theoretical legal classes. My internal conflict did indeed create a mental split, and to make the “split feel less tearing”, borrowing from Professor Moglen’s words, I relied on nicotine and alcohol to make it to the end of the semester.
My Initial Shallow Attempt at Solving My Cognitive Dissonance
When I applied to Columbia Law School, I wrote in my personal statement North Koreans face significant challenges in South Korea, and that I want to pursue a legal education to help these re-settlers frame their past sufferings as human rights violations, mobilizing North Koreans to call for reforms in the South Korean government’s resettlement program. This was my personal narrative that I carved out for myself and I think convinced myself was my true passion.
Even during the time when I was writing the first draft of this essay, I wrote that my creative attempt at solving my cognitive dissonance was to follow my “passion”, which I defined as education and refugee empowerment. As an East Asian Studies major during my undergraduate career, North Korean refugee policy was the main academic and professional extra-curricular activities I engaged in for years—working as head volunteer of North Korean refugee organizations and legal intern at legal NGOs serving advocacy for North Korean refugees. I think deep down I convinced myself that—as an undergraduate East Asian Studies major who was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea—this specialization would make me a unique candidate both as an applicant and student at law school.
Hence, when Professor Moglen pointed out that I have plans for work I want to do but with which “a US law degree would only be very peripherally associated” and “doesn’t involve practicing US law”, this was the first time I think I truly, honestly questioned myself for the first time whether I was consciously conditioning myself to a set “passion” that would conveniently reassure myself I have a set path ahead of me. Something not big law, something public interest related, and something involving a field I would have more experience than others and have more specialty in.
Redesigning my Path
My Passion for Wine
But really, when someone asks me what makes my eyes lit up, and what makes me zone in so strongly that I lose track of time, I always would answer “wine tasting”. In fact, during and after my time in college, I studied for months for the Wine & Spirit Education Trust exam, learning the history and processes of wine making, various regions and wineries that produce grapes, as well as tasting note distinctions for different wine varieties. My dream was always to become a professional sommelier, but raised by strict Asian parents who always told me the money they have invested in my education up until this point would all go to waste if I were to pursue a non-academic path, and already having studied for and built my career for law school until this point in time, I have for years shoved my greatest passion in the back of my mind and merely regarded it as a small “hobby” I have.
Representing Beverage Clients
With my US law degree, I want to represent alcohol beverage clients. Laws and regulations apply to all steps of producing, distributing, selling, marketing, and advertising alcohol beverages--including wine. I want to represent various clients such as but not limited to importers, wineries, wholesalers, and even unlicensed third parties. These parties are subject to various regulatory investigations under the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as well as various state alcohol controlling legislations. With my enthusiasm for and knowledge in specific wines and wineries globally, as well as personal direct experience as a bartender and somelier-trainee, representing clients will instill within me purpose and professionalism in the regulatory and licensing guidelines I provide; I also want to partake in facilitating import of more diverse wine products globally in to the US by representing wineries in purchasing and selling businesses in transactional sales and mergers.
Looking Forward
Even until the second semester of my law school career, I never imagined I could build my own legal career and link it to the passion I have. And this scares me. While following the traditional big law path would provide me with thousands of mentors in the industry, this somewhat non-traditional path definitely seems like a challenge. Since my practice is an evolving process, as Professor Moglen has advised, I hope to “revise, reconsider, and redefine” individual decisions as I envision my career. | | |
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JulieMinFirstEssay 3 - 01 Apr 2021 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Creatively Envisioning My Practice to Overcome my Soul's Internal Split | | | Reminding myself that my legal practice allows for the flexibility to broaden my influence in the areas I am deeply passionate about has been an enlightening experience. At the same time, however, one of the fears I still have to conquest is recognizing that imagining a practice I want to build for myself involves and will continue to involve practical concerns, not just ideological and moral goals I envision for myself. In this sense, it worries me that I lack the business acumen that may be needed to sustain my own practice—but then again, perhaps devising ways to best take care of these more practical, business concerns is all part of the creative process. Will there be a sense of futility or emptiness I may feel, even if I create my own practice that creatively employs my legal knowledge to solve problems and issues I am passionate about? If so, will this first attempt to creatively build my practice empower me to face future challenges? | |
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You used more than half the space in this draft for the movie. The best route to improvement is to reduce it to a sentence. The idea of the draft may be your difficult first encounter with law school; the story is harrowing in several respects. You have suffered and you should have sympathetic help. And, like every other student in the first year of law school, you should carefully consider whether to come back after your first year. Not more than people whose adjustments to law school seemed easier, but also not less, you should know for sure when you return in the fall why you are doing so.
Which is what I think this essay is really about. The last sentences of the current draft say, if I understand them correctly, "I have plans for work I want to do, with which a US law degree would only be very peripherally associated, and which don't involve practicing US law." If that's right, the next draft might very well be to provide a more detailed analysis of the statements made here, for the purpose of actually asking whether returning to law school next year is what you want to do.
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JulieMinFirstEssay 2 - 24 Feb 2021 - Main.JulieMin
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< | | | | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | |
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> | Creatively Envisioning My Practice to Overcome my Soul's Internal Split | | | -- By JulieMin - 22 Feb 2021 | |
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> | Reflection of the Pixar Animation "Soul"
Brief Summary of the Movie
I recently watched Pixar’s animation “Soul”. In the movie, the protagonist is a jazz piano player who desperately wants to achieve his goal of performing on stage in front of a large audience. He has been trying to achieve this dream for years, but fails to pass every single audition. Instead, he grudgingly teaches high school students music because he has to sustain his life. By the end of the movie, he finally succeeds in performing in front of a large audience with a famous jazz band. However, unlike the expectations he had, after the performance, the only feelings he holds are emptiness and futility. Even though he believed that once he achieves his singular goal of performing on stage he will be happy as he has reached a long-chased goal, in reality, he was not satisfied with the results.
The highlight of the movie is that after a long period of introspective soul-searching, he realizes that happiness does not always lie in one’s long awaited professional goal, but rather comes from the smaller moments that often go unnoticed in everyday life—like the friendly chat he had with his neighbor, or a sunny afternoon when he watched leaves rustle against the wind.
Soul's Lesson is Unsatisfactory
Why Limit Happiness to Fleeting Moments Outside One's Career?
To me, however, this ending was extremely unsatisfactory and I questioned how so many people found this cliché ending satisfactory. The movie should have instead gone a level deeper, questioning how the jazz piano performer could develop his musical practice to satisfy his needs as a creative performer and build a musical career that fills his heart with excitement and joy every day. The reason he felt futility and emptiness after the performance could stem from a variety of reasons. Perhaps the rush and euphoria he felt from playing in front of a large audience was not as strong as he had expected. Perhaps he realized his future might entail repeatedly performing like a mechanical record player every day at 6PM. Regardless of his reasons for the helplessness the protagonist felt, the movie' s solution that the man should instead find happiness in non-musical activities and fleeting moments of everyday life was unsatisfactory to me. The movie seemed to take a binary approach, implying that the protagonist could not take charge of his own musical career, and because his goal-achieved life as a jazz pianist is now a fixed variable, his autonomy to find happiness in life shall come from components outside his career. | | | | |
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If that is the case, however, then how do we then justify or make up for the protagonist 's artistic talents and lost endeavors of practicing the piano for decades? Neglecting and abandoning the career as a whole due to feelings of dissociation is irresponsible.
As we have discussed in class repeatedly, our goal is not to simply quit our jobs when we are disillusioned by the disassociation between the job and our own moral and political needs. It is to rather take charge of our practice by creating our individual practice which aligns with our own moral, political, and even material needs. | | | | |
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Last fall semester, I myself felt “stuck” in this feeling of helplessness and skepticism regarding coming to law school. I came straight to law school after graduating from college. I always wanted to go to law school since high school, and during undergraduate I never once doubted whether I wanted to go to law school or not. I wasn’t necessarily intrigued by the law and it was not like I had a grandiose dream of becoming a big law firm associate. I simply wanted a “stable” and “well-paying” job that would not require any financial or economic knowledge—I deeply hated numbers and economic calculations. Therefore, I was happy when I got admitted to the law school of my dreams. However, starting my studies and learning more about what actual big-law firm associates do and what their work-life balance looks like, I felt a larger dissociation than I ever had in my life. My immediate response to the fear and anxiety I felt was a want to drop out; but I had already paid for a semester’s worth of tuition, and it felt like it was too late. After all, I did not want to merely throw away the four years during my undergraduate career in which I vigorously prepared for law school admissions—carefully managing my GPA and scoring high on the LSAT. I simply pushed through a semester, unclear of why I had to be studying all these theoretical legal classes. My internal conflict did indeed create a mental split, and to make the “split feel less tearing”, borrowing from Professor Moglen’s words, I relied on nicotine and alcohol to make it to the end of the semester. | | | | |
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> | My Creative Attempt at Solving My Cognitive Dissonance
As the movie Soul suggested, yes I did remind myself of the fleeting and seemingly unimportant moments like mornings sipping hand dripped coffee while listening to my favorite singer H.E.R’s songs. But appreciating those small moments lacked the ability to cure my cognitive dissonance regarding my motivation to continue pursuing a legal career. I had to address the problem in its very core. I have been thinking about what my greatest passions as an East Asian Studies major were outside of the law—education and refugee empowerment—and how I could use the law to expand the influence of areas in which I am greatly passionate about. | | | | |
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> | During my time as head volunteer of the NGO Teach North Korean Refugees Global Education Center, my North Korean student Yeon, to whom I have been teaching English, has told me that even with South Korean citizenship, it feels like she’s always the nam, the other, and can never be part of the “us.” North Koreans face significant challenges in South Korea, and I want to pursue a legal education to help these re-settlers frame their past sufferings as human rights violations, mobilizing North Koreans to call for reforms in the South Korean government’s resettlement program. However, I want to go even beyond merely amending existing discriminatory policies and instead support refugees’ future careers by establishing a social enterprise—an educational institute in South Korea led by North Koreans teaching Chinese. My legal expertise will flexibly be helpful in establishing basic company guidelines, and I hope to further my practice to offer legal advice for North Korean re-settlers in South Korea facing various socio-economic discrimination. | | | | |
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> | Reminding myself that my legal practice allows for the flexibility to broaden my influence in the areas I am deeply passionate about has been an enlightening experience. At the same time, however, one of the fears I still have to conquest is recognizing that imagining a practice I want to build for myself involves and will continue to involve practical concerns, not just ideological and moral goals I envision for myself. In this sense, it worries me that I lack the business acumen that may be needed to sustain my own practice—but then again, perhaps devising ways to best take care of these more practical, business concerns is all part of the creative process. Will there be a sense of futility or emptiness I may feel, even if I create my own practice that creatively employs my legal knowledge to solve problems and issues I am passionate about? If so, will this first attempt to creatively build my practice empower me to face future challenges? | | | | |
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JulieMinFirstEssay 1 - 22 Feb 2021 - Main.JulieMin
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-- By JulieMin - 22 Feb 2021
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| Revision 8 | r8 - 14 Jun 2021 - 08:07:58 - JulieMin |
| Revision 7 | r7 - 19 May 2021 - 07:27:07 - JulieMin |
| Revision 6 | r6 - 10 May 2021 - 06:32:33 - JulieMin |
| Revision 5 | r5 - 07 May 2021 - 21:41:10 - JulieMin |
| Revision 4 | r4 - 07 May 2021 - 20:19:45 - JulieMin |
| Revision 3 | r3 - 01 Apr 2021 - 17:37:49 - EbenMoglen |
| Revision 2 | r2 - 24 Feb 2021 - 16:19:41 - JulieMin |
| Revision 1 | r1 - 22 Feb 2021 - 13:41:45 - JulieMin |
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