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Many college students know exactly what field to enter after graduation and have been preparing for that field over the course of their entire college career. However, I had difficulty discovering a career field rewarding enough to devote my entire life to, a career field worthy3 of education. While I had always considered pursuing the law and majored in public policy as an undergraduate, I was never passionate4 about it. I didn't have clear goals, and it seemed to me as if my degree and my circumstances were pushing me into studying the law; I needed to rediscover why I fell in love with the law in the first place.
As a college senior, I took the LSAT because all of my classmates were taking it. I did not prepare, and I really did not want to attend law school after college; thankfully, my low LSAT score guaranteed this. I needed to understand more about life before I could give myself to a career. After being in school for about two decades, I felt completely out of touch with reality and did not think I would ever find career direction by attending more schooling5. With these thoughts in mind, I determined6 I needed real-world experience to help me find the direction I so desperately7 sought.
I accepted an investor8 relations position in
While I may not have taken the direct route to law school, I took the course that suited me well. I needed to find goals that would drive me through all-nighters and exam periods. Over the course of the past few years, I have transformed from an inexperienced college graduate to a respected professional. My departure from classroom study has helped me grow into a more confident, independent inpidual who has developed the ability to set goals and focus on the path to achieving them. I believe I am now prepared to make the most of my future educational experiences, and I hope for the opportunity to do this at ______.
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Essay Number: 1026 - Posted on: Mar15 30, 1999 Expires on: Apr 30, 2005 CollegeGate LLC * CollegeGate LLC *
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In
sky. They are considered intelligent and attractive, and celebrities17 and
famous athletes have been known to take stewardesses19 as their wives. As you
can imagine, this reputation has made stewardessing one of the most popular
jobs among young Japanese women. When I was in
growing up to be a stewardess18: I would speak English fluently, fly all over
the world, marry someone after 5 or 6 years of my work, and eventually quit
the job to take care of home and children.
After spending three years in
States, however, I changed my goals quite a bit. The things I've seen and
the people I've talked to have reshaped my perspective on life: No longer
will I be content with a job that has little social impact. Instead, I plan
on attending law school so I can pursue a career in international business
law.
What caused such a dramatic shift in my future plans? Part of it was my
first-hand exposure to foreign relations. The three years I spent living,
studying, and teaching in Korea enabled me to view my country from an
outside perspective. Korea had been occupied by Japan for 36 years, and the
people had strong feelings of hostility20 and distrust toward Japan. At
first, I thought the negative feelings were because of Japan's aggressions
during its colonial rule of Korea. But my job as a Japanese instructor21 gave
me the opportunity to discuss this issue with my Korean students, and I
soon learned the real reason behind their feelings: Koreans resented Japan
not just for past grievances22, but more importantly, because Japan still
refused to admit any wrongdoing. Coming to this realization23, I aspired24 to
have a career which would enable me to solve problems between Japan and
other countries.
My desire to explore the complex relationships between groups or countries
did not sTOP once I left Korea. At Dartmouth College, I majored in both
Sociology and Asian Studies, which allowed me to do comparative studies on
different societies of the East and the West. During my senior year at
Dartmouth, my honors thesis explored the Japanese religious cult2 which was
responsible for the 1995 Tokyo subway gas attack. I found the project to be
one of the most valuable educational experiences I'd ever had. The subject
intrigued25 me because the explanation provided by the media--that all the
terrorist acts committed by the group had been masterminded by the
leader--did not satisfy my desire to understand roots of the attack.
However, I was limited by what I found in newspapers, and I found it
difficult to collect other materials since few academic articles on the
event existed at that time. So I turned to other sources of research,
including my correspondence with Professor Helen Hardacre at Harvard
University and Professor Manabu Watanabe at Nanzan University, Japan.
With their help, I was able to examine the terrorist group from a different
perspective. After nine months of studying Aum publications, newspapers
and reports, and other cult literature, I found that complex
relationships between the group and society outside -- the media, families
of the members, anti-cult movements, and the government -- contributed to
Aum's violence and, finally, led to the attack. My paper demonstrated that
it was difficult for a deviant religious group to exist peacefully in a
disapproving26 society, and religious institutions would have to be regulated
to prevent conflict.
After my graduation, I had two internships in Washington, D.C. At
Consumers for World Trade, a nonprofit organization dedicated27 to promoting
free trade and open market through advocacy and education, I attended
trade-related 百度竞价推广inars and Congressional hearings on trade legislation,
wrote articles for CWT's weekly and monthly newsletters, and conducted
research for a database of U.S. regulations and restrictions28 on imports.
This first-hand experience with issues related to trade policy enabled me
to examine the benefits of free trade and liberalization of market while,
at the same time, learning more about the xenophobic Japanese market. I
became particularly interested in exploring this issue and chose to intern16
at the Economic Strategy Institute, which was known for its research on the
economic and trade issues between the United States and Japan.
At the Economic Strategy Institute, I have been involved in two major
projects. One is a study on a WTO competition policy agreement and
U.S.-Japan trade relations, which was sponsored by the Japan-U.S.
Friendship Commission, and the other project involves research on U.S.
influence on the development of Japanese anti-trust law. I examined the
origin and prominent characteristics of Japanese anti-trust laws or
competition policies.
Through these projects and others in the future, I aim not only to
understand how Japanese competition policies have contributed to Japanese
market structures andpatterns of business organizations, but also to
examine possible changes to the current economic structure of Japan. These
questions fascinate me, because I think it's time for Japan to open up its
markets to foreign competition, to develop stronger and more democratic
economic structures.
Some might be surprised that a young Japanese girl whose only ambition was
to be a stewardess would have such lofty ambitions only ten years after
leaving her country. But now that I have been exposed to the bigger picture
of international trade and economic issues, and now that I know I am
capable of one day influencing relations between Japan and other countries,
how can I demand less of myself? My current ambition is to study
international business law, which is crucial in solving trade frictions29 and
other trade barrier related problems between Japan and other nations,
especially the United States. With the excellence30 of its legal instruction
and its strength in international business law and comparative law, I
believe _____ Law School would provide me with an unparalleled opportunity
to pursue that goal.
